Studies suggest that mood can be manipulated by behavior and experiences. Those who change their behavior and experiences can then improve their mood. The idea is that we can’t control our feelings or our mood. We can control our behavior so changing our behavior will then force our mood to change.
If you change jobs or location, it is possible for symptoms of social anxiety to emerge as you adjust to your new lifestyle. Changes in life responsibilities such as now having to meet new people, give speeches, or other new tasks can also trigger new symptoms.
What triggers your anxiety may be different from what triggers mine, but regardless we all benefit from becoming more attentive to our internal landscape. Whether it’s that we need to clean up our diet, get more exercise, sleep more deeply, reduce our stress, or pull the skeletons from our closets (perhaps all of the above) there are many things we can do to support our mental health.
Hope that things will get better and that the storm we’re currently in will pass. It helps us keep our moving toward our goals. It motivates us to achieve. It gives us a reason to fight and try to get out of our circumstances, even against negative odds.
Anxiety is something we all experience as humans. If you have been alive for more than a few days, chances are you have experienced anxiety at some point in your life. It often has a negative connotation, but anxiety can also be protective or helpful to an extent.
While one person challenged with Social Anxiety Disorder might feel anxious communicating with even one other person, another might be more tolerant to interacting with a small group of three to five people before feeling the effects of nervous symptoms.
When you set time aside each day to think positively, you feel fantastic at that moment. You have those positive thoughts floating around your head, and you can feel great about every situation. The problem? Eventually, you will have to stop thinking positively and go back to facing life’s realities.
If you find yourself wanting to or actually responding in anger, you need a break. It could be that the mental demands of the job are too much. Or, you could need more support at work. This might include training, additional staff and backup, or a shift in responsibilities.
Eventually, we associated asking for help with weakness, inadequacy and clinginess. That’s why when people ask, “How are you?” we will instinctively say, “I’m fine.” And when they say, “Do you need anything?” we will answer, “No thank you.”
It is important to note that all of the possible relationships between positive thinking and well-being, outcomes, etc., have not been explored. Maybe they never will be, but there still remains a fair amount of evidence dating back to the 1960s that shows how positive thinking can be beneficial.