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Julie Cohen is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist MFT and a Child Mental Health Specialist with a private practice in Los Angeles Her areas of focus include depression anxiety panic post-traumatic stress bipolar…
FAST FACTS
Anxiety wreaks havoc in so many ways. One that seems universal among anxiety sufferers is an inability to focus or stay on task. What makes this worse is that the anxiety doesn't just have to be about negative events or worry. It can also be about positive things. For instance, if you get excited about something like a new job and you can't stop ruminating about this positive event in your life! Now of course a certain degree of distraction is normal when positive things happen. But typically anxiety sufferers can't distinguish between the two. And what starts as a happy event can turn ugly quickly as ruminations can keep someone from completing normal daily tasks.
This can be a very tough issue to master and takes a lot of practice and patience. But, it is essential to remain awake and aware and retrain your brain to stay on task. I encourage clients in my private practice to visualize and then describe their distractions. Although this seems a bit silly, it sends a message to the negative thoughts that you are paying attention and will soon be in charge!
Next, try to get in touch with what purpose the negative thoughts or distractions are serving. Often, they remain in the unconscious so it can be hard to pinpoint but look towards avoidance. Avoidance is one of anxiety's best friends. If you feel anxious ask yourself if there is something you are avoiding.
Give yourself a directive. Once you get in touch with the underlying purpose of the anxiety or anxious behavior, try to redirect that energy elsewhere. This is an important tangible activity that brings power back to you and away from unconscious negative behaviors.
Finally, be patient with yourself as this is a process that takes, as I said earlier, practice and patience. Don't beat yourself up if you can't master this right away as negative self talk is the fuel that feeds anxiety.
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I find that getting up at 5:00 AM when it's still dark and I'm ready to get my day started is still not enough time for my alone time to focus - read my e-mail, my fitness routine, writing my screenplays. The when everybody else gets up by 8-8:30, there goes my day. Then the phone rings, I get frustrated when my mother hands me the phone knowing good and well I'm in no mood to talk to anybody, so I quickly get the caller off the phone and by that time I lost my focus.
I know that I'm going to have to do some work here in applying the directive method, finding the underlying purpose of my negative thoughts that pop up and just learn how to tune out things and set certain boundaries so I can get a grip and move forward.
I've heard that the thoughts/worries/ect... that we don't act on, in some way, will keep popping up in
our head, they've no where to go, 'til they're taken care of.