Learn about managing your anxiety and practice staying in the moment with this exercise from "The Worry Workbook for Teens" by Jamie A. Micco, PhD.
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Staying in the Moment
For You to Know
By definition, worry focuses on the future-"What's going to happen next? What could go wrong? What if...?" Worriers also tend to ruminate (or obsess) about the past and wonder if they could have done something differently. Such emphasis on the future and the past, which has been shown to increase stress, keeps worriers from being able to concentrate on what's happening now. Further, because people who worry often take on many different responsibilities, they try to do more than one thing at a time (for example, completing a math assignment while sitting in on a play rehearsal as a friend whispers something in their ear). Such multitasking seems efficient, but it actually leads to making more mistakes and feeling burned out. Why? Because every time you turn your attention away from a task to focus on another one, you have to reorient yourself to the first task (over and over again).
The antidote is something called mindfulness, a process that involves paying attention to the present moment by taking it in with all five of your senses. (You get bonus points if you objectively observe the moment without judgement!) Even five minutes a day of staying in the moment can help to reduce stress; in fact, regularly practicing mindfulness has been shown to reduce physical symptoms of stress and improve self-esteem in teens with anxiety and depression (Biegel et al. 2009). It can be hard at first to keep your mind focused on just one aspect of the present-you have to gently and repeatedly bring your mind back to the task at hand-but it gets easier with practice.
For You to Do
This first exercise is an example of mindfulness meditation-it involves taking a "time-out" for five minutes to completely focus on your internal experience. This might feel scary for some who are used to a lot of activity or distraction, so if five minutes feels overwhelming, start with one minute and see if you can gradually increase the amount of time over the course of a few days.
Find a comfortable chair to sit where you're unlikely to be interrupted (yes, that means turning your phone off and putting it away). If you're comfortable doing so, close your eyes. Take one slow deep breath-your belly, not your chest, should rise and fall as you breathe to ensure you're breathing in a way that's relaxing. Feel the chair beneath you as it supports your body. As you slowly take your next breath, silently count "one," and as you breathe out, count "two." Inhale "three," exhale "four," inhale "five," exhale "six," and so on until you reach ten. Once you reach ten, start to count backward as you breathe-inhale "ten," exhale "nine," inhale "eight," continuing until you get back to one. When you get to one, do it all over again, counting all the way up to ten and back to one. As you complete this exercise, your job is to keep your mind focused on counting your breaths. This is easier said than done, so when your thoughts start to drift away, no big deal-just gently bring them back to the exercise, even if you have to do this many times. If you lose count of your breaths, or if you accidentally count higher than ten, start the exercise over again.
Complete this mindfulness practice every day for the next week, ideally for five minutes at a time, keeping track in the chart that follows. To download blank copies of this chart, please visit https://www.newharbinger.com/35845.
If you don't have a printer, just make these notes on your own in a notebook or on a spare piece of paper.
If you want to talk to an understanding adult about your anxiety or if you need more resources about how to manage your anxiety, email us at teen@nileslibrary.org. We're here to help connect you with ebooks and online tools!
