Don’t Let Emotional Overload Capsize Your Life

Imagine riding in a raft as you maneuver your way through rushing whitewater rapids. Suddenly, you are thrown out of the raft into the water. What do you do?

Instinct tells you to resist the rapids and try to climb back into the raft. But that will end up in failure because the raft is slippery and keeps moving downstream, and attempting to stand up in the water will get your feet stuck in the rocks.

Your rafting instructor will tell you to do things differently. Take a breath, wrap your arms around your life jacket or preserver, put your feet up in front of you and stay relaxed until the rapids take you to calmer water.

Between the pandemic, the current political situation and the unrest that is gripping our nation, many of us feel as though we are riding that whitewater current. We are experiencing what Jacqueline Amor-Zitzelberger called “emotional overload.”

Amor-Zitzelberger is a certified mental health first-aid instructor with Penn State Extension Services. She conducted a recent webinar in which she discussed coping skills for anxiety and depression.

Emotional overload, she said, is a state of being affected by intense emotion that is difficult to manage, and it can affect your ability to think and act rationally.

“Many of us are feeling fearful and helpless,” she said. “High levels of anxiety over a long period of time often lead to depression. It’s important that we learn to recognize and understand our feelings without judgment. We can learn to own our feelings and deal with them appropriately.”

Anxiety, Amor-Zitzelberger said, “is a normal reaction to stress, and it can be beneficial to us in certain situations so it can alert us to dangers.” But unproductive anxiety, she added, “differs from the normal feelings of nervousness and anxiousness, and it involves excessive fear. This type of anxiety can cause people to avoid situations that trigger them and can affect your job and your personal relationships. This unproductive anxiety can lead to an anxiety disorder.”

The pandemic has magnified certain fears that lead to anxiety, she said. “It’s the fear of being alone, fear of illness, fear of germs.”

Social Distancing Isn’t Helping

People who have anxiety are usually encouraged to help control it by seeking social contacts, Amor-Zitzelberger said. But social distancing is leading to isolation and loneliness. “Worrying about your finances, caring for children and elderly parents, job insecurity, food insecurity —they all contribute to anxiety,” she said.

During the pandemic, it might be difficult for the average person to detect whether someone is social distancing or suffering from anxiety, Amor-Zitzelberger said.

“So it’s important to ask them how they are managing at this time,” she said. “You can ask them something like, ‘How are you keeping busy?’ And their response should give you a clue.”

With more people working from home, it also may be more difficult to determine whether someone is experiencing anxiety or simply adapting to the WFH lifestyle. “If you see someone is not bathing every day or is wearing the same clothes every day, it’s hard to tell whether they’re having difficulty with anxiety or it’s just because it’s easier to throw on a jacket and sit in front of a computer, since they don’t have to get dressed up for work,” she said.

Recognize The Signs

Someone who is experiencing anxiety or a mood disorder will display various signs, depending on the severity of their emotions, Amor-Zitzelberger said. She provided a rundown of the symptoms.

Early signs: Sadness, worry, showing up late, canceling personal or professional commitments, looking tired, wearing disheveled clothing, appearing more unkempt than usual, no longer enjoying work activities or hobbies.

Worsening signs: Withdrawal from friends and family, absenteeism from work, odd or erratic behavior, declining personal hygiene, agitation, increasing sadness and worry, hopelessness, rage and despair.

Crisis signs: Threatening to hurt or kill themselves, acting recklessly or engaging in risky behavior, excessive vomiting, difficulty breathing, overdosing on drugs or alcohol, dramatic changes in mood, and feeling trapped and believing there is no way out.
Stamp Out ‘Stinking Thinking’

Dr. Aaron T. Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, pioneered the practice of cognitive behavioral therapy in the 1960s. He found that patients who have anxiety experience streams of negative thought that pop up spontaneously. Beck called them “automatic thoughts.” Amor-Zitzelberger called them “stinking thinking.”

“It’s a cognitive distortion that takes place in our minds when we experience upsetting events,” she explained. “Those events could be something relating to the pandemic or an argument that we had with someone. And we think about it in a way that justifies or reinforces our negative emotions and feeling bad.”

Examples of this stinking thinking include thinking the worst will happen, believing that life is unfair and focusing on the negatives of a situation.

It’s easy to become trapped into a cycle of negative thinking, Amor-Zitzelberger said. But one easy way to break out of the cycle is to reframe your thoughts. She cited the whitewater rafting analogy mentioned earlier in this article and said it is an example of how to manage your thoughts and emotions at a time of crisis.

She provided the following steps to deal with negative thoughts and emotions during anxiety-inducing times.

1. Catch it. Recognize when you are having negative or unhelpful thoughts.

2. Control it. When you find yourself thinking negatively, silently say “stop” to yourself to stop the downward spiral of thoughts leading to sadness, guilt, anxiety, self-doubt or hurt.

3. Challenge it. Challenge what you say to yourself.

4. Change it. Change the negative messages you say to yourself to more realistic and positive ones in order to bring about more positive and pleasant emotions.

5. Cherish it. Enjoy the moment and the feeling you have just created

Susan Rupe is editor in chief, magazine, for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected].