During a pandemic, you’re in an elevator, the door opens, and someone steps in wearing no mask, stands right next to you, and starts pressing the buttons with their naked fingers. What do you do?
You see your coworker in the break room grab a roll of paper towels and stuff it in their backpack. When they turn around and see you standing there, do you tell them what’s on your mind?
At the grocery store, someone cuts in line in front of an elderly person. Do you say something or just let it slide?
On a near-daily basis, we’re faced with situations that we know are wrong, but saying something might make us or others feel uncomfortable, might cause a confrontation, or in a worst-case scenario might even lead to violence. It can happen. For example, at a Waffle House in Aurora, Colorado, a man was arrested for attempted murder after opening fire on an employee who refused to serve him because he wasn’t wearing a mask.
Some people have no problem piping up when they seem someone doing something that’s wrong. But for others, especially people with anxiety who are conflict-avoidant, it’s a real challenge to work up the nerve to speak up.
Here are ways to get your point across effectively without creating a confrontation.
Weigh the pros and cons of saying anything. Is the infraction trivial? Is there little to gain from confronting the person? Or is it an important safety issue? Put your energy into things that really matter.
Rather than accosting someone by telling them what they’re doing wrong, give them the benefit of the doubt by asking them if they’re aware what they’re doing is not allowed, is unsafe, or is inappropriate. Consider something along the lines of, “Hey, did you know you’re not allowed to [use your cell phone, ride a scooter, or bring your dog] in here?” The person may genuinely be unaware that what they’re doing is wrong, and it gives them an opportunity to correct their behavior without feeling like they’ve been reprimanded.
If someone is doing something that violates a store or company policy, don’t make it personal. Simply state the policy or point to a posted sign where the policy is in writing.
Screaming, yelling, or raising your voice can quickly escalate matters.
After you’ve said your piece, listen to what they have to say. There may be an explanation for their behavior. Give them the courtesy of responding to you.
Rather than trying to prove that you’re “right,” think of the interaction as a way to find a mutually beneficial solution. When you focus on making someone feel like they are wrong, it’s more likely to escalate into an unpleasant confrontation.
Acting aggressively, wagging your finger in someone’s face, or threatening them in any way is the quickest way to invite trouble. When a person feels like they’re being attacked, they are likely to retaliate. Remaining even-tempered and maintaining a relaxed posture helps keep things civil.
Avoid put-downs and name-calling—“Hey, jerk!” “What are you, stupid?” “Hey, dummy!”—which immediately puts the other person on the defensive.
If the person responds to you with something rude or menacing, stand your ground but continue to stay calm. This shows them that you won’t be bullied but also that you aren’t interested in engaging in a heated argument or violent confrontation.
If you’ve made your point and the other person is now threatening you or getting physical, it’s time to move on.
Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and other mental health issues can’t wait. During these uncertain times, your mental well-being is more important than ever and waiting to get treatment until the pandemic is over is likely to make your symptoms worsen over time.
At Amen Clinics, we’re here for you. We offer mental telehealth, remote clinical evaluations, and video therapy for adults, children, and couples, as well as in-clinic brain scanning to help our patients. Find out more by speaking to a specialist today at 888-288-9834. If all our specialists are busy helping others, you can also schedule a time to talk.
Feeling more anxious due to the coronavirus pandemic? Join the club. A report published mid-April of 2020 shows that the number of prescriptions filled for anti-anxiety medications spiked by over 34% during the pandemic. And the number of new prescriptions filled for drugs like Xanax, Valium, and Ativan while people were under COVID-19 quarantine orders was even higher at nearly 38%. This is very troublesome.
What’s wrong with popping prescription drugs to feel better fast? All psychiatric medications—like all prescription drugs—come with side effects, but those associated with the anti-anxiety medications called benzodiazepines are some of the most concerning. Although they may be helpful in the short-term, anti-anxiety drugs can cause long-term problems, including:
When you’re feeling overwhelmed by anxiety—even during high-stress periods like the pandemic—asking your primary care physician for Xanax or other anti-anxiety medications is literally the last thing you should do. Here are 12 alternatives you should try before considering medication.
Note: If you’ve taken Xanax or another type of benzodiazepine for a long time, don’t stop taking it abruptly as this can heighten anxiety. Work with a physician to gradually taper off the drug as you try these other techniques.
In Dr. Daniel Amen’s book The End of Mental Illness, he details the 11 BRIGHT MINDS risk factors that steal your mind and can increase mental illness, including anxiety. BRIGHT MINDS stands for:
B is for Blood flow
R is for Retirement/Aging
I is for Inflammation
G is for Genetics
H is for Head Trauma
T is for Toxins
Mi is for Mind-Storms
I is for Immunity and Infections
N is for Neurohormones
D is for Diabesity
S is for Sleep
In The End of Mental Illness, you can learn how to prevent, treat, or minimize your risk factors to help calm anxiety and other mental health issues. You can also watch below for more information on how the BRIGHT MINDS risk factors impact anxiety and what you can do about them.
Low blood sugar, anemia, and an overactive thyroid can cause symptoms of anxiety. If you have anxiety that doesn’t respond to other solutions, it’s a good idea to have your healthcare provider perform the following 3 tests:
Aspartame can cause anxiousness, red dye #40 is associated with irritability, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been linked to anger and irritability. Be sure to check nutrition labels for these ingredients. Be aware that MSG is sometimes listed only as “natural flavors,” so you may not know you’re ingesting it.
Food can trigger allergies, which often impact the brain. Anything that impacts the brain can affect your mind because your brain creates your mind. To see if foods are contributing to your anxiety, eliminate sugar, gluten, dairy, corn, soy, and other categories of potentially allergenic foods from your diet for 3 weeks. Then add these back one at a time (except for sugar, which you should eliminate for good) and be alert for reactions to them, which would indicate that you should permanently avoid that food.
Research shows that these techniques can calm stress and anxiety. You can use helpful audio programs for guided meditation and self-hypnosis on BrainFitLife. If you respond to prayer, Dr. Daniel Amen’s book Stones of Remembrance offers Bible verses for anxiety, such as:
Worry weighs a person down;
an encouraging word cheers a person up.
Proverbs 12:25
I know the Lord is always with me.
I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.
Psalm 16:8
You can find many more soothing verses on anxiety, depression, fear, loneliness, and more in the book.
Research in Frontiers in Psychiatryshows that anxiety is linked to low levels of HRV, but you can hack your way to a healthier HRV with biofeedback apps, such as HeartMath.
Deep breathing can help calm anxiety, and it’s so easy. Just take a deep breath in for 3 seconds, hold it for 1 second, then exhale for 6 seconds, and hold it again for 1 second. Do this 10 times, and it will trigger a relaxation response. Watch Dr. Amen’s Facebook Live on the 2-Minute Anxiety Solution where he describes in detail how to do this exercise. As you practice diaphragmatic breathing, do a hand-warming exercise at the same time in which you imagine that you’re holding a hot cup of tea or you’re holding your hands up to a fireplace.
The automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) that invade your thinking drive anxiety. Some of the most anxiety-inducing thoughts are called Fortune-Telling ANTs, such as:
“This pandemic is never going to end.”
“I’m never going to get a job again.”
“I’m never going to have a successful business again.”
Fortunately, you do not have to believe every stupid thought you have. You need to develop an internal ANTeater to get control of your thoughts. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you’re thinking. That helps get the thought out of your head. Then, use a powerful exercise developed by Byron Katie and ask yourself, “Is it true?” Then write down the opposite of your negative thought, such as:
“This pandemic will end.”
“I will get another job.”
“I can have a successful business again.”
Ask yourself which statement is more true. You can find an ANT-killing exercise on BrainFitLife.
Yoga, qigong, and tai chi are wonderful exercises that can reduce stress and fight anxiety. They help you learn how to direct your energy in a positive way. A 2017 study using EEG in Frontiers in Psychiatry found that qigong affects brainwaves in a positive way that induces relaxation.
Several natural supplements have A-level or B-level scientific evidence for anxiousness and stress. What does that mean? A-level means there is robust research conducted with more than 2 placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials. B-level means there are multiple studies where at least 2 are placebo-controlled, double-blind studies. Among these well-studied supplements are l-theanine, GABA, and magnesium—all found in BrainMD’s GABA Calming Support. To help you feel calm under stress—like during a pandemic—you can also try Magnesium Chewables.
Did you know that 93% of the population is low in omega-3 fatty acids? The Omega-3 Index is a blood test that measures your omega-3 level. Try to get it above 8% by using 1,400mg (or more) of omega-3 fish oil with a ratio of approximately 60/40 EPA to DHA. Make sure to choose a high-quality fish oil like Omega-3 Power.
Neurofeedback is a type of biofeedback that measures brainwave activity in real-time and gain control of your brainwaves to achieve the desired brain state, whether the goal is to experience greater relaxation or to maintain better concentration.
Anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and other mental health issues can’t wait. During these uncertain times, your mental well-being is more important than ever, and waiting to get treatment until the pandemic is over is likely to make your symptoms worsen over time.
At Amen Clinics, we’re here for you. We offer mental telehealth, remote clinical evaluations, and video therapy for adults, children, and couples, as well as in-clinic brain scanning to help our patients. Find out more by speaking to a specialist today at 888-288-9834. If all our specialists are busy helping others, you can also schedule a time to talk.
You might think that being a social media influencer with 40 million Instagram followers, as well as being a successful singer, actress, and model would mean your life is perfect. But not for superstar Lele Pons. She admitted in her new Youtube docuseries, “The Secret Life of Lele Pons,” that she has been battling mental health issues for most of her life.
“My deepest, darkest secret is that I have OCD,” she says in the first episode of the docuseries, adding that she also suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, ADHD, and depression.
OCD, which affects about 1 in 40 adults and 1 in 200 children, is a serious and debilitating disorder characterized by recurring thoughts known as obsessions and repetitive behaviors called compulsions. Pons explains it by saying, “My OCD is thoughts, very, very powerful thoughts, that make me do stuff that I don’t want to do.”
Similar to what Pons describes, people with OCD are subjected to intrusive thoughts and mental images rooted in fears that cause anxiety. Some of the common obsessions seen in OCD include the fear of germs, contamination, forbidden sexuality, violence, being out of control, religion, and a need for perfection.
In an effort to suppress or control these thoughts and the anxiety they induce, people are driven to engage in compulsive behaviors. The most common compulsions include:
In the docuseries, Pons reveals that her obsessions trigger rituals, touching, and other compulsions. “When I was little, it got to a point that I could not move from my car, and I stayed an hour there doing some rituals and touching things, and my dad had to carry me out of the car,” she says. “If I didn’t touch everything, I thought my family was going to die, so I started touching everything.”
OCD brains work differently. In people with this condition, brain SPECT imaging studies have shown excessive activity in two regions of the brain—the basal ganglia and anterior cingulate gyrus.
Unfortunately, most psychiatrists never look at the brain. They make diagnoses based solely on symptom clusters—the same way Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed with depression over 150 years ago. The problem with this is that the symptoms of OCD overlap with those seen in other mental health conditions, such as ADD/ADHD, anxiety, bipolar disorder, autism, PTSD, or even schizophrenia. This can lead to misdiagnoses. In fact, a 2015 study among primary care physicians found that half of OCD cases were misdiagnosed.
Getting an accurate diagnosis is a critical step in finding the most effective treatment. For superstar Pons, treatment has helped her overcome those times when she would get stuck. In her docuseries, her mother recounts episodes when Pons, as a little girl, would get stuck and couldn’t open a door or cross a room to get to her bed. That’s the kind of behavior that could ruin a career, Pons says. “Imagine [if]…on stage, I just get stuck.”
Superstar singers like Pons can’t afford to freeze on stage, but no one can afford to get stuck during a test at school, while making a presentation at the office, or on a date. Seeking help is key.
With the right treatment, people with OCD can get unstuck, learn to deal with the anxious and uncomfortable feelings that accompany obsessions, and put a halt to repetitive compulsive behaviors. You can get your life back.
At Amen Clinics, we take a comprehensive approach to diagnosing and treating our patients with OCD. Through our brain imaging, lab work, and extensive assessment of your personal history, we are able to identify biological, psychological, social, and spiritual factors that may be contributing to your symptoms.
If you want to join the tens of thousands of people who have already enhanced their brain health, overcome their symptoms, and improved their quality of life at Amen Clinics, speak to a specialist today at 888-288-9834. If all our specialists are busy helping others, you can also schedule a time to talk.