Please fall. You'll thank me later (hopefully).

There is nothing like the start of the fall season to encourage a spike in anxiety around the country. While this may sound a bit grim, a lot is going on for many this time of year (and this is common!). Some are starting a new academic year, a new job, or a transition to their first fall (semester) not going back to school. It could be a move to a new city, developing new friendships or losing touch with others from the summertime, or even current events around the world or this year's upcoming election. Really, you can take your pick for what anxiety triggering topic applies for you.

We can be so overtaken by anxious feelings that we will no doubt have times where we are feeling overwhelmed, grasping at ways to deal and cope with the stress. We may even fall; fall being loosely defined as emotionally crash, or have a panic attack amidst all of the triggers that are affecting our current ability to manage our emotions and moods. Everyone falls. We set ourselves apart from the next by not just how we pick ourselves up, but by how we manage to stay standing given the life and personal events that happen to us outside of our control (which can often feel like, almost everything!). So how does one remain steady and standing tall when dealing with anxiety? Well, it can vary but I can tell you that working proactively rather than just re actively (dealing with it only after you fall) is a place to start.

Managing your own anxiety is person specific in learning and developing the tools you need to help yourself reach a state of calm and feeling centered in yourself There are a plethora of ways that a person can both de stress and relax (and some of which I mention in my prior self-care post). What is really important to think about is the ways in which you have done this in the past, whether its reading, exercising, hiking, watching sports, TV, mindfulness tools, yoga, music, art, or writing; all of these can be and need to be completed on a regular basis in order to help yourself take more time for yourself to address your stresses. They may not feel directly related to that one work project you have been stressed out about, but they are. They each provide an opportunity to proactively work against the development of your anxiety that may build up within and that may cause you to fall. But again, I can't knock falling down. If anything its a true indicator of showing you that your body needs to spend more time relaxing and de stressing on the regular. And that is truly never a bad thing.