Managing Anxiety in Quarantine – including a personal coaching exercise
(10 minute read, without doing the associated exercise)
by Jill Williams, ACC, BOLD Waves Coaching

Anxiety about the future is gripping us. How can we manage?

Things are crazy. They’re disrupted. We’ve been outwardly disrupted, but we’re not internally disrupted. We still have choice. As my friend and mentor Coach Mike Davis says, “We always have choice”. And we can choose to welcome our anxiety, listen to the message it’s telling us and take appropriate action to strengthen ourselves.

What’s the message of your anxiety? It’s something about facing an uncertain future and taking action to be prepared. If you are truly experiencing an immediate threat right now and not a vague, unwanted event in the future – you are likely feeling fear or grief more than anxiety. If this is the case, you are dealing with an unwanted event that has already happened. The content of this article may still be a source of strength for you, but you may need to find additional resources for help.

Regarding anxiety specifically, it’s telling you to take some action to get on firm ground. A good friend of mine recently sent me a picture of a caulk job she completed during this time. It was pristine! She said you “gotta control something”. True. And you can control your response to take action that sets you on a more secure foundation – even in these incredibly insecure times.

One very appropriate action you can take in response to anxiety is to remember – or realize - you have an eternal home. We have a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul – a promise from God of the certainty of our eternal inheritance. This promise in Hebrews 6 anchors us to our certain hope freeing us to endure in faith daily, as we are certain of our future that is ultimately to come. Our preparation to inherit this future home is to receive the gift. That’s it. Jesus has done the work if we will place our trust in Him. See Romans 3:23 and 6:23.

We also have to remember that setting an anchor does nothing to still the waves. We depend on God’s promise that this is not our home and indeed, He is preparing for us a place even as the loneliness, the monotony, the unknown the loss of this quarantine builds day by day. Anchor yourself to your certain hope in Christ and don’t be surprised if the waves keep crashing.

Another appropriate action is to shift yourself to a more desirable emotional state. It’s something we can do. The book The Emotional Hostage: Rescuing Your Emotional Life, by Leslie Cameron-Bandlor and Michael Lebeau is rich with ways, but to be simple, three tools from their expertise you can use to shift your emotional state are to shift your time frame, shift your tempo and shift your outlook. You’ve likely done each of these before.

1. Shift your time frame.
My husband tells me counselors call this “grounding”. While we have an anchor for our soul grounded in our eternal future, anxiety manifests only when we focus on an unwanted future we may experience in this world. So, we can ground ourselves in the present, again assuming you are indeed dealing with anxiety and not fear. If you want to feel something different than the anxiety you are feeling right now, get out of the future. Choose to shift your time frame to the present, to what’s going on all around you today. In fact, Cameron-Bandler and Lebeau mention that if you are anxious, you are likely doing okay right now else you’d be too consumed by your present situation (fear or grief) to be anxious about an upcoming uncertainty.

Intentionally, and genuinely, ask yourself, “How am I doing right now? Look around. How are things? Strengthen yourself by shifting your thoughts to your here and now. And intentionally do it again, and again.

2. Shift your tempo.
Anxiety manifests in a tempo, a pace that can be different for each of us. Some experience anxiety driving them to a fast, whirlwind kind of pace. For others, anxiety covers them with a slow, bogged down kind of pace. Cameron-Bandlor and Lebeau use athletes to illustrate tempo. Think about an athlete moving too fast and making errors on the court or on the field of play. If she takes the time to think about her pace, she can intentionally choose to slow down and she’ll most likely benefit from her choice. Likewise, if you want to feel something different than anxiety, intentionally choose to take the time to identify the tempo of your anxiety. Are you jumping from action to action or are you slowing down? Once you’ve identified your pace of anxiety, consciously choose to shift your pace to one more desirable for you.

Put on some music that matches your desired tempo, shifting you out of your anxiety tempo. Strengthen yourself by shifting yourself to your desired tempo.

3. Shift your outlook daily.
Anxiety ultimately manifests when we imagine an unwelcome future outcome where our level of involvement is passive, rather than active. I’d suggest due to our levels of anxiety that whether we’d admit it or not, many of us feel as though we are trapped with our hands tied, only having the choice to be passively involved in watching the chaos develop all around us.

But we can choose active involvement. We can choose to create attainable, welcome, wanted outcomes. If you don’t take the time to form any such desired and attainable outcomes for yourself, you won’t have any reason to believe there is anything you can do. And you will continue to battle with your imagination defaulting to that “unwanted” future outcome.

You can use this defined, desired outcome to move forward productively and authentically today, toward something you want rather than spending your time focused on things you don’t want. And you can do this to begin each day.

Choose daily to put on your BOLD:

Be more curious and less controlling about what you can and want to do today.
Offer more respect and less judgement for yourself and others to see what’s true and possible today.
Look forward with more expectancy and less fear believing good can and will come of this time.
Deeply rest in the midst of this chaos doing what you can to keep moving forward.

After putting on this BOLD Presence and Mindset, take the time to think about what you want today by taking the time to AIM. We often ready. Fire. Aim. Let’s take the time to AIM, then fire.

AIM: Gain Awareness and Insight in order to determine the forward Movement you want to – and can – make today. If you’d rather remain anchored to the whim of your circumstances, don’t take the time. Otherwise, you can choose to AIM and use the following resource to help yourself to your own private coaching session as often as you like.

Your BOLD Waves Outcome-Based Coaching Session

1. To begin, pray and put on your BOLD curiosity, respect and expectancy. Then ask yourself:

”What do I want today?”. Don’t make it too complicated. Just think about what you want today.

Your desired outcome for today:

2. When you know what it is you want, ask yourself, “What elements, if any, are not in my control to attain this outcome?”. If you are able to do this, keep reading. If not, circle back to what you want and make adjustments to go after something you want that you are able to attain.

3. Next boldly imagine your wanted outcome.

Deeply rest and allow yourself to see all the things you’ll see when you’ve gotten it. Allow yourself to hear all the things you’ll hear. Allow yourself to feel all the things you’ll feel. Don’t skip this emotions part. You know you don’t skip it when you think about the things you don’t want. You’re putting yourself right there – feeling all the things you’d feel if you were actually in the middle of that an unseen, unwanted reality. That’s what works up your anxiety so much. So, don’t skip this part when you’re imagining the thing you do want! Put yourself smack dab in the middle of that unseen, but wanted and attainable reality. And don’t sell yourself short on what’s truly attainable, either.

Things I’ll be seeing when I’ve accomplished the thing I want:

Things I’ll be hearing when I’ve accomplished the thing I want:

Things I’ll be feeling when I’ve accomplished the thing I want:

4. Then, ask yourself sincerely the following questions.

What’s important to me about this?

Who do I want this with?

What will I lose of value when I get this, if anything?

What will I gain?

What do I need that I don’t already have to get this?

What do I want to do today to move toward attaining this thing?

5. Now, take a step forward toward achieving that outcome you want.

What will you do?

When will you do it?

What will stop you from doing it? (If something will stop you – take a different step that you’re confident you can and most importantly will do.)

Who will you tell for accountability?

Having such a take on outcomes opens us up to feelings of motivation and ambition. You can do something that will lead to something you want. And maybe this is just the time for you to have the time to do it. Strengthen yourself by changing your outlook and choosing to actively involve yourself in outcomes you want to see happen. Do this daily or weekly.

Anxiety about the future is gripping a lot of us. It’s going to get the best of us some days. But knowing we have a choice is the first step toward managing – perhaps even thriving - in the midst of it.

If you want a fillable PDF copy of the BOLD Waves Outcome-Based Coaching Worksheet, email Jill Williams at Jill@BOLDWavesCoaching.com

Reference: Cameron-Bandler, Leslie, and Michael Lebeau. The Emotional Hostage: Rescuing Your Emotional Life. Real People Press, 1986.