How to control anxiety around in laws? There is a lot of trouble in making one understand how it feels to be dealing with anxiety.
While there are so many forms of anxiety disorders, if we talk about generalized anxiety disorder, you feel excessive, unexplainable, and unrealistic worries, and tensions, with or without any reason.
Such emotions are hard to explain and then you are expected to be perfect all the time. How to control anxiety around in laws then? Let’s discuss a few points in this blog.
How to control anxiety around in laws?
No, I cannot tell to my mother in law, how I am feeling today. I don’t even want to get up and cook but I will have to, as I can’t explain my feelings to my family members. Reason? They might not understand and in turn, you might get labelled as a lazy person, which you are not. There is a very thin line between not being able to do things and not being willing to do things.
Anxiety elevates your fear, worries, and tensions. It affects you internally which is hardly seen. It becomes more of a challenging task when you are staying with your in laws in a joint family. Not everyone is aware of such mental distress and its effects on one’s health. Then, how to control anxiety around in laws? Will they understand it or make it worse?
Anxiety is very common but if it elevates it may not go away for many weeks, months, or years. It can worsen over time, sometimes becoming so severe that it interferes with our daily life. Environmental, psychological and social elements contribute a lot to the increase in anxiety levels.
Seven ways to control anxiety around in laws and help yourself
The reason behind your anxiety could be due to some underlying issue at a personal level or maybe because of the difficult in laws you are dealing with every day. In both cases, it aggravates each negative instance. We cannot stop moving, but yes we can find measures to make the road easy for us.
The most important part of dealing with such a situation is that these things affect one internally or maybe at the cellular level, which is quite invisible so nobody cares or pays attention to them. Eventually, it becomes a very miserable condition to deal with for some. Let us try to understand what we can do internally so that our anxiety does elevate to the point that it starts affecting us externally (physically).
| 1. Evaluate |
| 2. Communicate |
| 3. Draw a fence |
| 4. Exercise |
| 5. Meditate |
| 6. Join Support Groups |
| 7. Meet a Counselor |
1. Evaluate
Self-awareness and self-evaluation are key aspects of anxiety control. Again it depends upon the level of anxiety you face in your day-to-day life, whether it is generalized anxiety or a chronic one. But honestly speaking, even if it is generalised anxiety, it needs your immediate attention. Do not focus on getting attended by others, you have to find your own ikigai ( feeling of well-being).
Evaluate your coping strategies, have you ever developed any strategy or do you just go with it? How do control anxiety around in laws when you yourself lack awareness of your own needs? If you are blessed with good in laws then the road will be easy but in case you just landed up with the in laws who cause problems in marriage and relationships. All this will only give rise to tensions, worries, negative thoughts, and fear, which becomes too difficult and disturbing to handle after a while.
2. Communicate
It is wisely said and widely accepted that communication is the key. Anxiety fills you with a distaste for everything and interferes with your daily tasks. As little as cooking and doing the laundry. If you do not speak about how you are feeling, your spouse or your in laws will never learn about your problems.
The fear that your in laws will not understand and treat you indifferently listening to your story that how their ignorant behavior to you leads you to anxiety, is natural. But you have to find ways to overcome this before it starts taking a toll on your physical body. You rin laws might not understand, instead, they might even label you or judge you but need to involve your spouse and tell him how it is affecting you and that you need help.
3. Draw a fence
It is said that healthy boundaries make great neighbours, this is very much applicable in relationships too. Especially when you stay with in laws in a joint family. It is a sad thing to say that most marriages get affected due to the arrogant behavior of the in laws and hurtful acts of the family members, which leaves an invisible scar in one’s mind.
Since the pain is invisible, no one care, rather they keep on adding to it. How to control anxiety around in laws? We cannot control the hurtful or disrespectful behavior of our in laws but we can always maintain a safe distance from them to prevent ourselves from getting hurt. Yes, we should do this, avoiding confrontation to save your sanity is not a sign of a loser but a person mature enough who chooses his or her sanity over others’ drama.
4. Exercise
We never ever give importance to our physical health, do we? I have seen women working out, making kick-ass abs and toned-up bodies, for whom? For themselves. They find purpose, get up daily and struggle and hustle with their own body and try to carve their best versions. Here my aim is not to tell you to lose or gain weight but to love your body and feed it with some exercise.
A healthy mind leaves no space for negativity rather it gives you immense strength to fight against those unhealthy thoughts. You work out and you sweat, just imagine with your sweat you let all your negative toxins pass out of your body, just imagine this for once and you feel the difference after every workout you do. Be it 15 minutes or half an hour, start with some exercise.
There are plenty of videos available on YouTube and informational books are also available. I recently read a powerful book by a fitness coach, Rujuta Diwekar, Don’t Lose your mind, Lose your weight, a path-breaking book on our eating habits. We have always something to look around, it’s up to us how far we are willing to widen our horizons.
5. Meditate
This is my personal favourite coping mechanism, wait did I say coping mechanism? Yes, come on even I have in laws and I do have my occasional episodes of anxiety in my life. But meditation is that one thing in my life that brings the spark back in me. It reconnects me with myself. I could never control my mother in laws’ intrinsic thought process or my sister in law’s biased behavior towards me, but yes I learned to overcome my anxiety issue around them as I learned to connect with myself.
It is a little difficult initially, to sit still for some time and not think about anything else. Let me tell you, it is absolutely ok at the beginning, it requires practice and patience. But the important is we start, we take out time and sit in a calm, clean and airy corner of our house, Use some fragrant candles or diffuser to make it more peaceful and soothing, concentrate on your breathing pattern, slow down, feel your inner self, try to connect with it and soak at the moment.
6. Join Support Groups
Joining support groups help. It is when you find like-minded people or people going through similar situations, you feel you are not alone and it somehow gives you a little hope or strength to be in life and bring that positivity back. Self-help groups are formed in order to help each by listening actively and sharing personal experiences with each other to help them overcome difficult situations.
You can find such groups on the internet near your area, it doesn’t even cost much, most of the time joining such groups is for free. as the motive is to enable people to talk and share their concerns to help each other.
7. Meet a counsellor
I know it happens in an extreme situation. But I would suggest that if you feel overwhelmed and your anxiety keeps on increasing. If your family members are not understanding, or your husband is not able to relate to what you feel or how you feel then it is advisable to meet someone who is an expert in this. A counsellor will listen to you with an unbiased mind and help you vent out whatever bothers you.
A counsellor might put you on medication, some anti-depressant which will calm your nervous system, but still, you will have to work on yourself.
Things to avoid when you are living with your in laws?
Just to save yourself from anxiety. You can call these warning signs or triggers which will only worsen your condition. How to control anxiety around in laws or how to control anxiety around other things along with them? Identifying some common triggers and applying the seven measures I stated above, trust me it will help, no side-effect, no negative impact, just a little hope for a better tomorrow.
| 1. Watch how you speak to yourself
When we are in the negative zone, we curse ourselves, doubt ourselves, and treat ourselves in a very negative manner. Will you ever do this to anyone you love? Then why your own self. |
| 2. Missing Meals
The most common mistake we all make, we skip meals, eating less to show our anger, or feeling sad. It has become our way to respond to things that are not in our favour. But we forget that it hampers our body in the long run, although the negative impact is not instantly visible, it will bounce back. |
| 3. Issues in letting go
How much can we hold on? We have our capacities, right? The sooner we learn to let go of things; the sooner we learn to embrace this little mess called life. |
| 4. Health Issues
If you are facing some underlying health issues, then such feelings will worsen your condition. Physical and mental health are very much interconnected and interrelated. Please take note of this. |
| 5. Financial Issue
One of the common issues every human facing in his daily life, sometimes the situation gets worse and it leads to enormous stress in an individual. But without a sane mind, how will we work for a better future, we have to keep this in mind and work on ourselves internally, |
Anxiety gives you uncontrollable worry, fear, physical discomfort, panic, and restlessness but sometimes all this might be temporary and maybe you are facing generalized anxiety. which is not harmful, rather it mellows down on some days. But you should never self-diagnose yourself and feel sad about the condition because it will make this worse.
You should work on yourself, despite all this. Let’s make ourselves life-ready.
