4 Strategies for Relieving Anxiety without Alcohol this Holiday Season
One of the most common reasons people give for their heavy substance use, PMO, or other behavioral habits is that they believe it relieves their anxiety and stress. For some, the holiday season brings on enormous anxiety and stress, and this can crank up a problematic habit.
As you know from listening to our podcasts, reading our books, and watching our videos, alcohol, drugs, and pixels on a screen do not actually have the power to alleviate your anxiety and stress. These emotions exist within your mind and are the result of your beliefs, thoughts, and interpretations of events and circumstances in your life. For those learning The Freedom Model, seeing this truth can be freeing, but it can also create a void. After all, you just learned your go-to substance or activity for anxiety relief doesn’t actually provide those benefits, so you are left wondering what can actually help you to relieve those feelings.
It’s important to remember that all those times you believed your stress was relieved by a substance or other habit, it was actually you doing it in your mind, not the substance or activity itself. With respect to substances, this relief is an active placebo. You have a belief that the substance will relieve it; so as you begin to feel the physical effects of the substance (which you find pleasurable), you interpret those physical effects as relieving your anxiety. And if you’re being honest with yourself, you began feeling that relief prior to ingesting it. You likely felt it as you were going through the ritual of procuring and preparing your preferred substance.
When your habit involves pornography, sex, shopping, gambling, scrolling social media, etc., the stress relief you feel is simply the result of you distracting yourself from your anxious and stressful thoughts with a behavior you find pleasurable. Of course, this means you can do that with any behavior.
If you are struggling with anxiety and stress during this holiday season, here are 4 simple strategies that are quite effective to relieve your anxiety and stress:
1. Bring your focus back to the present moment.
People typically feel anxious because of uncertainty about the future or regrets they have from the past. You can bring your focus back to your present moment in a variety of ways: take a few slow, deep breaths, look around you and notice where you are, and realize that right now, you are safe and comfortable.
2. Shift your thinking to envisioning a positive outcome.
If your anxiety stems from envisioning worst-case scenarios happening to you in the future, shift your thinking to envisioning a positive outcome. Ask yourself, “How often do worst-case scenarios actually happen to me?” If you had a difficult and traumatic childhood like I did, perhaps bad things were happening often at that time. That is likely when you developed this habit as a means to protect yourself. It’s important to realize now that you’re an adult, this habit of envisioning bad outcomes is no longer necessary and can be a real detriment to your happiness. You can also alleviate your anxiety by making checklists and writing out your plans, as this can very quickly alleviate those details running through your mind and increase the probability of a positive outcome.
3. Go for a walk outside.
It doesn’t have to be a long walk or even a brisk walk, but go outside, walk, and pay attention to the world around you. Bundle up if you live where it’s cold. Breathe deeply. Notice the feel of the air, sun, wind, rain, or snow on your face. You can listen to music you love or listen to the sounds around you: a distant train, birds chirping, the leaves blowing along the ground, cars going by, children playing, the wind in the trees, etc.
4. Make time for fun and relaxation.
And no, fun and relaxation don’t have to involve substances! Prior to struggling with your current habit, what did you like to do to relax and have fun? Or is there something you’ve been wanting to do or learn how to do? Are there friends you haven’t seen in a while, a movie you’ve been wanting to see, a book you’ve wanted to read? The list of possibilities is endless!
So often, and especially this time of year, we can get overwhelmed by all that we feel we need to do. Even when we are spending time at a holiday party or with friends, we may waste it by worrying about all of our perceived obligations. Be sure to stay in the moment and savor your recreation and relaxation time. Whether you are Christmas shopping, making gifts, baking cookies, making dinner, doing the laundry, or relaxing on the couch watching TV, be mindful of the moment you’re in, and your anxiety will quite literally fall away.
Make checklists if that is helpful to you, and work through those tasks methodically. In time, everything will get done. It always does, and even those few times you don’t finish every little thing, I bet everything worked out just fine. If you look back at your life, you will see that feeling anxious, stressed, and worried has never helped you to accomplish a single thing and has only made your life harder than it has to be.
If you’re looking for effective addiction coaching or want to learn more about how substances like alcohol influence your beliefs and habits, contact us today.