How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
These tips on How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown are provided by Nicola Bird a bestselling author who struggled with severe anxiety for more than 20 years. She is currently launching a national ‘let’s grow together’ campaign to help bring communities closer together.
What is anxiety?
According to the NHS anxiety is
Anxiety is a feeling of unease, like a worry or fear, that can be mild or severe. Everyone feels anxious from time to time and it usually passes once the situation is over.
It can make our heart race, we might feel sweaty, shaky or short of breath. Anxiety can also cause changes in our behaviour, such as becoming overly careful or avoiding things that trigger anxiety.
When anxiety becomes a problem, our worries can be out of proportion with relatively harmless situations. It can feel more intense or overwhelming, and interfere with our everyday lives and relationships.
So let us take a look at How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
- Slow down to the speed of life: Instead of rushing around trying to create things to do to fill our time so that we never have to sit still, try the reverse. Experiment with slowing down to the speed of life as it currently is – you can’t do anything else when you’re growing flowers. Slowing down is the key in the quest of how to cope with anxiety in lockdown
- Get present. When we’re anxious it’s often because we’re ‘what-iffing’ about the future. We think we’re just figuring out how things will work out, when in fact all we’re doing is taking ourselves away from this moment. Stop anxiety in lockdown by being in the moment
- Misunderstanding where anxiety comes from. Nowhere have I seen worry and stress listed as a symptom of coronavirus. Those feelings of anxiety in lockdown always and only come from our thinking – and thinking changes all the time. So if you don’t like how you’re feeling, don’t worry, it will change in a minute.
- Stop watching the news on a loop! One of the most helpful things I did at the start of the pandemic was check-in with a reputable news source once a day then ignored my social media and news sites and programs for the rest of the day.
- Realise there’s no need to discuss how anxious you are feeling. When we feel anxious, our thinking becomes predictably distorted and negative – it’s a little like being drunk – you simply can’t think straight. Talking about it makes it seem more real and we buy into our thoughts as if they are facts. The best advice I have when you feel anxious is to ignore yourself for a while, engage fully with what’s in front of you, and before you know it, you’ll notice it has disappeared all on its own.
About Nicola Bird and The Floral Project
Nicola has launched The Floral Project to help parents encourage their children to spend less time on their devices and more time in the garden, planting and growing flowers.
The aim is that the bunches of blooms will then be gifted to older people in local neighbourhoods, once it is socially safe to do so, or simply enjoyed in the home.
Nicola is the founder of A Little Peace of Mind through which she shares her revolutionary approach to helping people with anxiety, stress and panic attacks. She is also the author of Hay House’s best-selling book of the same name.
The mother-of-three admits that thanks to finding an outlet in the garden, she is enjoying being at home during lockdown – a situation that, in the past, she would have found ‘absolutely terrifying’.
Nicola has been learning how to cope with anxiety in lockdown through the medium of flowers
How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown through having a purpose
Nicola said: ‘The aim of The Floral Project is to give a sense of purpose and a sense of hope for the future right now.
‘There is that beautiful Audrey Hepburn quote that to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
‘It is a brilliant distraction, it is incredibly therapeutic, it keeps you moving, you get quite absorbed in it and you feel like you’re giving something back to the community when you grow them for others.’
The floral project and how to cope with anxiety in lockdown
Nicola came up with the concept for the project after discovering how environmentally damaging shop-bought cut-flowers can be, so she looked into alternatives – such as growing them herself.
Nicola’s children – Tilly, 16, Ned, 14, and Bea, 12 – are also involved in the project, helping to sow and cultivate the seeds. Tilly is helping behind the scenes, on the website and social media, Ned is taking photos of the project and Bea is getting her hands dirty in the soil. Her husband Matt, 49, has also been involved, helping Nicola make the raised flower beds.
But after starting, Nicola – who began her working life in a care home for the elderly – realised she was growing too many – so she decided to donate the flowers to her local Age Concern – and The Floral Project was born.
How to take part
Those who want to take part can buy a starter pack for £30, which includes a variety of 22 flower and foliage seeds – including Centaurea, Euphorbia, Gypsophila, Snapdragon and Zinnia.
Nicola believes the current climate is the ideal time for parents, children and individuals to learn a new skill – and if the lockdown has ended by the summer, the flowers can be gifted.
‘It is learning a new skill, doing something that absorbs your time, if you’re lucky you get your kids out as well, it is good exercise but it is incredibly calming and about bringing things to life rather than think about all the doom and gloom that is out there.
So let’s get growing some bee-friendly flowers to help you learn how to cope with anxiety in lockdown
Create Your Own Calm ( How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown for Kids)
My own book Create your own Calm for Kids will be out in September and contains 50 self-calming techniques for children. It is published by Harper Collins and available to pre-order now
Further reading on from How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
You can read more about the benefits of gardening for children here
You might also like my post on simple ways to overcome frustration
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How To Cope with Anxiety in Lockdown
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