are you one of the Worried Out? 5 signs you are, 5 ways to help

You know that feeling you get, your mind’s frazzled after what seems to be just the normal activity of the day: work, shopping, socialising, relationships; just living and this living has got you worried out. It’s a low but quite chronic sensation, not quite an anxiety or deep seated angst, it’s not panic, but it’s still very real and it leaves you worn out, as if you want to run away or burst into tears (if you’re a male you might want to lash out).

Stress, anxiety, panic, trauma, they all exist on a spectrum from the normal stresses that we all experience as part of day to day to living to the extreme sense of agitation and anxiety that prevents any kind of useful functioning.

What’s becoming clearer in the digitally driven 21^st Century is that there is a kind of gap between high anxiety-as-such and low stress. I call this the “worried out” and lately in my clients I’ve seen it more and more; it tends not to get in the way of workaday functioning (it’s a sort of functional anxiety) but is it is pervasive and it is a signal that it might be a slippery slope of worse to come.

Here’s some signs that you might be “worried out”

1. You experience a sense of repeated distraction; it feels as if you can’t fully concentrate on tasks at hand
2. You have begun to snipe or pick fault with your partner; you’ve gone off sex or your libido’s fallen dramatically
3. You feel more emotional that you have done in the past and yet you can’t quite locate this emotion or name it
4. You feel disconnected from life and the things that you previously enjoyed
5. Your resources and resilience are failing you

What’s happening here?

Thousands of centuries ago when we existed and lived on the bright but dangerous savannah we developed, in common with our reptilian ancestors what we now call our “old brain”-essentially this is our threat and drive system and it activates our fight and flight that in turn helped protect us from lions and tigers. In the modern would, of course, we don’t have to face the tigers of the savannah, yet the paper tigers of emails, targets and performance indicators and the thousands of digitally driven stressors that impact on everyday life take their toll; quite literally our threat-drive system ends up locked in fight and flight, moving forwards and backwards at the same time; we’re like a car trying to be driven with the accelerator and the brake on at the same time.

Luckily there is a way out; we have this old brain system, but to combat the “Worried Out “part of us we also have the new brain system, which, when we consciously activate it, can actuate our resources and rebuild our resilient selves. This is called the soothing system, and basically to work with feeling Worried Out we have to bring it more online.

Here’s how to help: 5 tips

1. Pause: take a pause or just stop what you are doing and get into a more being
2. Breathe-sounds simple, but breathing out, a deep-felt exhale activates the soothing system and releases tension, stress and worry
3. Talk in the good around you; look around you and develop a curiosity about all the things around you you can be grateful for-there’s more than you think
4. Get a massage (or give one) from your partner; the act of human touch promotes feelgood chemicals that relax you from the inside out
5. Look at self-care: start reflecting on what really nourishes you in your life and get more of this

And let worry out!