How To Befriend Your Anxiety With FOCUS² Intelligent Therapy

Cultural And Economic Anxiety

Today, we're constantly receiving messages that suggest we are not good enough. These messages can come from teachers, parents, bosses or within social circles and social media. Comparative thinking or messages intended to encourage achievement can instead create a deep sense of insecurity and inadequacy.

Relational Anxiety

We have many kinds of relationships to navigate these days, and everyone is dealing with cycles of connection and avoidance. This sometimes leads to intense but unstable relationships. If you're having trouble in one or multiple relationships, talk therapy and having a third party unpack difficult communication or unhealthy patterns can be helpful.

Another place where FOCUS² Intelligent Therapy have seen an increase in relational anxiety on social media is marked by the prevalence of Social Comparison. More specifically, it can be triggered by comparing your life to the curated, idealized versions presented by others, leading to feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction.

Also part of the social media related anxiety are the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Seeing posts about experiences you're not part of can trigger anxiety about being excluded or not living life to the fullest. Even worse, negative feedback and cyberbullying can provoke a physiological stress response and increasing anxiety levels.

Health Anxiety

After Covid-19, the world – and Hong Kong specifically – saw a rise in health anxiety that is still impacting people today. The fear of illness, coupled with isolation and uncertainty, has created conditions where anxiety thrives.

Sometimes minor unknown symptoms lead to Google searches that fire off an anxious response in the body, creating more symptoms. A full blown panic attack can feel like a life threatening event: shortness of breath, tightness in the chest and a sense of dread.

How To Handle Anxiety

A few simple but effective strategies to deal with anxiety include:

1. Addressing False Anxiety: In her book Anatomy of Anxiety; Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response, Dr Ellen Vora talks about the term 'false anxiety'. This can be reduced by getting adequate sleep, monitoring magnesium intake, reducing or delaying coffee intake, cutting back on alcohol, keeping an eye on blood sugar levels, and managing dopamine spikes and crashes by reducing social media and gaming.

2. Acknowledging and Accepting: Though it may seem counterintuitive to accept symptoms of anxiety, understanding that the physical sensations and racing thoughts are the body’s attempt to perceive threat and keep you safe can go a long way in calming the body down.

3. Developing Quick, Reliable Strategies: To care for acute or very intense symptoms, you can follow the 5,4,3,2,1 mindfulness tool for anxiety or "bottom up" strategies like taking a cold shower or holding something icy cold.

4. Strengthening the Muscle of Self-talk: How we speak to ourselves comes largely from how our parents spoke to themselves or spoke to us as children. If your inherited self-talk or social media consumption do not have a positive, supportive, powerful and compassionate effect, then you may need to re-write the scrip and then practice it, practice it, practice it.

5. Get Assessed By A Therapist: If you have long-standing chronic anxiety or have had a major life event that kicked off anxious episodes, see a therapist who can assess for trauma. Once trauma is treated, clients often report more manageable levels of anxiety.