Tag: Screen Time

stressed-out-woman

Anxiety: A quick tip for my friends with anxiety

Posted on by Karac Avalron

Attacks in Afghanistan are up, Israel and Hamas are fighting, Inflation is rising, Covid is still a thing. Anxiety is still running rampant; it never really ebbs does it? How do you clear the fog of the information wars? How do you escape all this negativity which is fueling your anxiety? The truth? You can’t. I know that’s not what you were expecting was it? I would be lying to you if I told you there was some magic elixir to shut your anxiety off.

Stop looking at screens? Ya sure that will cut it down. Sleep more? You bet you will feel fantastic. There will always be something or someone who is able to contaminate your state of mind with anxiety. They don’t even mean harm most of the time, many of them are anxious too so they talk about some of these issues NON STOP. “Well that wasn’t very helpful Karac, what’s the tip then?”

The tip is to spend more time focusing on your positives. I know that’s broad but let me give you an example. Everyone has something they really enjoy doing, mine is gaming it’s an old hobby that I have loved for nearly 40 years. Do I let it consume all of my time? No but when I focus on it and spend time with it I am able to wall off negativity from other sources.

Glogg
How about learning how to make Glug?

Maybe your thing is golf? Maybe it’s gardening, maybe it’s walking the dog…. Whatever it is accumulate as much energy as you can to identify what it is that you like to do that makes you happy. It can be anything, honestly, staring at fish in a bowl, ANYTHING. Once you identify it you have to commit to making more time for that activity. This begins the long journey of reprograming your mind to start to gravitate toward things you like, instead of absorbing things that make you anxious.

Once you find one thing, look for a second, then a third. Before you know it you will have multiple things you are doing that engender positive thoughts not anxiety. It takes years to accumulate multiple positive activities, maybe a life time. Start working on this today and start fighting back against anxiety with positive actions, deeds, activities and thoughts.

Thank you for coming by and supporting my blog I really appreciate it. Want to see another post like this one? Click here.  

stressed-out-woman

Anxiety: A quick tip for my friends with anxiety

Posted on by Karac Avalron

Attacks in Afghanistan are up, Israel and Hamas are fighting, Inflation is rising, Covid is still a thing. Anxiety is still running rampant; it never really ebbs does it? How do you clear the fog of the information wars? How do you escape all this negativity which is fueling your anxiety? The truth? You can’t. I know that’s not what you were expecting was it? I would be lying to you if I told you there was some magic elixir to shut your anxiety off.

Stop looking at screens? Ya sure that will cut it down. Sleep more? You bet you will feel fantastic. There will always be something or someone who is able to contaminate your state of mind with anxiety. They don’t even mean harm most of the time, many of them are anxious too so they talk about some of these issues NON STOP. “Well that wasn’t very helpful Karac, what’s the tip then?”

The tip is to spend more time focusing on your positives. I know that’s broad but let me give you an example. Everyone has something they really enjoy doing, mine is gaming it’s an old hobby that I have loved for nearly 40 years. Do I let it consume all of my time? No but when I focus on it and spend time with it I am able to wall off negativity from other sources.

Glogg
How about learning how to make Glug?

Maybe your thing is golf? Maybe it’s gardening, maybe it’s walking the dog…. Whatever it is accumulate as much energy as you can to identify what it is that you like to do that makes you happy. It can be anything, honestly, staring at fish in a bowl, ANYTHING. Once you identify it you have to commit to making more time for that activity. This begins the long journey of reprograming your mind to start to gravitate toward things you like, instead of absorbing things that make you anxious.

Once you find one thing, look for a second, then a third. Before you know it you will have multiple things you are doing that engender positive thoughts not anxiety. It takes years to accumulate multiple positive activities, maybe a life time. Start working on this today and start fighting back against anxiety with positive actions, deeds, activities and thoughts.

Thank you for coming by and supporting my blog I really appreciate it. Want to see another post like this one? Click here.  

Separating work and personal time

Posted on by Karac Avalron

Like many people I have a home PC I use for personal use. I have a lap top, I just do. I have another lap top for work. I have an I phone. I have multiple ways for people to get in contact with me. For a long time I would tell myself “I need this work”. I would get emails, calls and text’s at literally all hours of the night. Now none of this was unexpected, I knew what I was getting into, I was a manager. Today? Everyone is connected, even the AP staff at my current company. That’s not a slam on them for being lesser, rather it’s an indication of how connected to work many of us have become.

I found a good article here on the subject of boundaries between work and personal life and how it can increase your stress.

From the article: “Most people simply can’t work without a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer,” said Dr. YoungAh Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

“These technologies are so ubiquitous and convenient that it can lead some people to think that employees have to be always on or always available. Clearly, this kind of after-hours intrusion into the home or personal life domain is unhealthy, and our research shows that an always-on mentality has a big downside in the form of increased job stress.”

The article does a good job of mapping out how the “intrusion” of being “always on” can increase job stress. Job stress can be a trigger for larger anxiety issues and being “on call” is a slippery slope for many of us with anxiety. How many times in your career have you laid in bed the night before a big day at work and worried about the days outcomes? I have DOZENS of times, and it sucks. Now at 3AM when I can’t sleep I can start working again if I want…

“I Can’t sleep, let me check my email”

So how do we combat this? For some of you this isn’t a big deal, you don’t have these work expectations and or hooks into your life. If that is the case that’s awesome, believe me it sucks when you wake up in the morning and your boss has already lined up 3-4 emails for you. How to fight it? You work 9-5 (as an example), at 5 the work persona goes off.

That means, the devices you use for work get shut off. It also means that people at work don’t have access to your personal email, phone, Facebook whatever. Take the time and start working on creating two online presences, one for work and one for your personal life. I am a gamer, I write a blog… No one at work knows who “Karac Avalron” is. It took me a while to separate from work in a timely fashion. I am a manager, people still want me to be available after work hours.

In the end I have been diligent and do not reply to emails after a certain time. Everyone in my immediate work circle knows this now but it took time to achieve it. You can do it too, it takes time and effort but in the end, disconnecting from work, after work, is critical to helping you manage your anxiety.

Interested in more posts on how to disconnect? Check out this post here.

Beyond the Trees

Middle of the week grind

Posted on by Karac Avalron

One thing I will say about the Covid Crisis is since I have been working from home I have had a lot of opportunities to get outside. Not going to be a long post today but what I will say is if you can go somewhere and see something new if possible. As individuals with Anxiety 2020 has been one hell of a year. For me I’m hanging in there pretty well, I hope you are well. Today I’m heading to the spot below.

This Pic was taken last fall

I’ve visited here before it’s about 8 miles from my house. I live somewhere in the middle of New England and I have all sorts of parks near me which is great. Getting outside and getting away from screens is like an expresso shot for your soul. Ya I love being online, not going to lie about that. However being online nearly 24/7 can be draining. It’s a constant stream of negativity it’s like everyone is at each other’s throats.

So I’m taking a quick break and going outside today, see if I can find a waterfall and let the noise of dropping water consume me. I find it pretty relaxing, minimally it’s all I can think about as it’s pretty loud, LOL. Is your anxiety flaring up today? Go back to nature you won’t regret it!

Interested in another post about getting outside? Check out my post here.

The Importance of Sleep

Is this all a bad dream?

Posted on by Karac Avalron

Do you remember your dreams? Parts of them? I do I have good dreams, I am thankful as I do know someone who has told me in the past they have vivid bad dreams. She claims they are the kind that wake her up at night. Now I have had those kinds of dreams before, you know your leg jumps, you fall and you wake up? I don’t have them regularly though. Apparently many people right now are having very vivid dreams tied to anxiety.

I found an interesting article here that discusses the issue

From the article: “In essence, our bodies are in a flight or fight response, which, as we know from watching any horror movie, is incompatible with sleep,” said Jason Ellis, a professor of sleep science at England’s Northumbria University and the director of Northumbria Sleep Research Laboratory. He and his colleagues recently published an article in the Journal of Sleep Research about practical tips for dealing with sleep problems during home confinement. He calls our unprecedented circumstances “the perfect sleep storm.” 

That maelstrom, he said, is unlikely to increase the amount of dreams we actually have, but it’s likely to increase the amount of dreams we remember. “The question,” he said, “is, why is the content so weird?”

The point here is people are remember more of their dreams, not actually having more. The article does a good job of giving examples and correlating the dreams to increased anxiety levels due to Covid 19 concerns. On this blog I have given out dozens of posts on how to fight anxiety, one of the key weapons we use is a good night’s sleep. So where does that leave us now?

We have to create the conditions of relief BEFORE we go to bed at night. If you are having bad dreams and they are becoming more and more vivid below are three things you can do before bed to help you first, get a better night’s sleep, second reduce the vivid bad dreams.

  1. 2 minutes of deep breathing: in through the nose out through the mouth. The deepest breaths you can take, in the dark in your bed sitting up. Do this BEFORE you lay down.
  2. Screens off 30-60 minutes before you retire: I’m not going to go on and on about how much screen time you should have. If its 15 min or 15 hours, you need to shut off the screen an hour (ideally) before you lay down to sleep not shut down and then go to bed.
  3. Prior to logging off the screens, laugh: Watch a funny video, read a joke, read a positive story. Whatever you have to do to actually laugh and smile do it. This will be the last “imprint” on your brain before you retire.

These steps are of course in reverse order. However they are listed in order of importance. Do step 3, then 2 then 1 and you will have the best result. Minimally you do step 1 every night. IF you are having more and more bad dreams due to the heightened anxiety world we are currently in, try these steps they will help you.

You are doing awesome, one day at a time.