Q: My doctor recently gave me a prescription to help me deal better with my anxieties. She thinks that I am too “up-tight.”
I know that I worry a lot but I cannot seem to help myself. I have tried to cut down on the time and energy I spend worrying, but so far not successfully. If you have some thoughts about anxiety, please pass them on.
A: According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of Canada, one in four Canadians will have a significant anxiety episode at some time in their lives. Two million Canadians are probably feeling anxious as you read this.
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Anxiety is future oriented. No one ever worried about something that happened in the past.
For some, it is those agonizing few moments in the waiting room before being called into the dentist’s office. For others, it is the obsession with mortality, worrying so much about when they are going to die sometime in the future that they forget about living in the present.
Most anxiety dwells too much in between those two extremes. The trick is to live in the present.
Think about it. If you are worrying about an upcoming appointment with your banker and you are doing this while you are preparing your machinery for this year’s seeding, you may not be paying as much attention to what you are doing as you could be. That is when accidents happen.
I have never seen studies correlating anxiety to farm safety, but my guess is that the link between worrying and getting hurt on the farm is stronger than it should be.
It might take some time, and perhaps the medication your doctor prescribed will help, but breathing can sometimes help break the obsession and relieve you from fretting. It can help you focus on what is going on right now.
Just go through the cycle, counting to 10 while breathing in, holding your breath to the count of 10, exhaling while counting to 10 and holding that for another 10.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but the chances are reasonably good that going through the breathing cycle a few times morning, noon and night will make you more aware of what is going on around you .
