U.S. MILITARY H BOOK EXCERPT 4TH OF A SERIES

THE RESILIENT WARRIOR

REDIRECTION

BY COLLEEN M. CANESTRARI

Book Editor's Note: Featuring self-help, mental health, and mind and body tactics from a variety of sources — veterans, former and active U.S. Marines, Navy, Army Rangers, Green Berets, family members and caretakers — The Resilient Warrior is collaborative collection providing needed wisdom for complete well-being for all of us. The first step to thriving is surviving, and the first step to surviving is knowing how to get what you need, when you need it. The following excerpt of this essential self-help guide to living a healthy, resilient, fulfilled and better life is the fouth in a series of five that EP Magazine will feature over the coming months.

Regain control and re-direct your life. I wish I could tell each one of you that it will pass. That feeling of helplessness, loss of control, the overwhelming sense that you are alone in this feeling you are having. The problem with anxieties and depressions is that they convince you that you are, in fact, alone. That no one will understand what you are going through, that you will seem crazy if you talk about it, that you will be judged somehow for being a broken human being, when in reality what you are going through is a very human and common experience.

This is especially the case after going through traumatic events or injuries, but is also present in everyday civilian life. Your heart is racing, you cannot breathe. You feel like you may faint, or even die right there where you stand. You are in the middle of a grocery store and no one here knows you, would help you, would know what you are going through. You are frozen; all you want to do is escape this moment. These thoughts are paralyzing and all too common with many types of anxiety.

The problem with these attacks being thoughts is that visually, everyone around you may think you are fine. If you do not voice it, strangers will just assume nothing is wrong. You are standing alone, trying to accomplish an everyday task and

you feel completely unable to function. The good news is (and yes, even in this terrible moment there is good), there are tools you can use to help pull yourself out of this and accomplish your task, grab your groceries, and go about your day. One of the most difficult (for me) yet important things to embrace is that you have power over these thoughts. Though they may still occur from time to time, or worse, you may anticipate them (a la "pre-anxiety"), they never have to be as bad or as long-lasting as they once were.

Years ago, after over a year of talk therapy visits once per week, I took away a couple particularly useful tools (requiring zero actual tools or therapy visits) that greatly eased my anxious thoughts. The first: Firetruck. Yes, really. Bear with me. You are beginning to feel stress and anxiety build. Imagine these feelings as actual tangible things. For this exercise, there is a firetruck. Horn blaring, a 5-alarm fire somewhere across town. You know it is coming based on how loud it is. You also know, it will get louder before it passes. Do you hear it louder as it is coming closer and yet… there it goes? The moment and the anxiety have passed. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

The second: Counting. This one requires a little patience and, let us be real – the items here can be interchangeable for whatever works for you in the moment. This one is great for