The Impact of Anxiety on Personal Organization

This is how anxiety influences our ability to organize ourselves in the face of our responsibilities.

Imagine the following situation of this person we'll call Ana. She has an excellent job and a life with many activities; however, for some time now she has been feeling overwhelmed with so many commitments and pending things to deal with, and she does not know how to manage in these situations.

For Ana, the activities are all happening at the same time. She does them at home, at work, in whatever space and time she can find. There are many times that she fails to fulfill her responsibilities and that causes problems, until she reaches a point where she does not know what to do; she feels distrustful, afraid, and feels that she will no longer be able to continue with everything.

She begins to cry, feels frustrated and although she tries to organize herself, she feels nervous, palpitations and thinks that everything is going to start going wrong.

She believes that this is affecting her interpersonal and couple relationships, and she does not know what to do, lately, she feels aggressive, serious and discouraged.

The relationship between anxiety and Personal Organization

This fictitious description is nothing more than a simple representation of what we can all feel at some point with the tasks of everyday life. Can someone help you and improve with all the symptoms? Should you treat the symptoms first and then the ability to organize? Some could probably give her a hand with helping her, specifically with time organization, and maybe do some of the things she needs until she feels better.

When a person sees a psychologist, he/she usually identifies and describes his/her symptoms and general condition. After inquiring and conducting the initial interview, psychological evaluations, a high level of anxiety can be identified and, additionally, it can be determined that he/she does not have organizational tools, in addition to a large number of commitments that can compromise mental health.The reader should now consider the following points in order to determine whether the person has a high level of anxiety and, in addition, a lack of organizational tools, as well as a large number of commitments that may compromise mental and physical health.

Now, the reader should be thinking that the ideal is for her to learn to organize herself, offering her time management tools and techniques. techniques and tools for time management and organization, so that she is autonomous and feelsShe should be autonomous and feel in control in the face of this avalanche of commitments and the many demands of the environment and multiple tasks. This is the right thing to do, but it is not enough.

The main objective is that the person learns techniques that allow him/her to face environmental stress, as well as to manage the symptoms that are generated by it.. This is why I recommend the development of Combative Coping Strategies and Preventive Coping Strategies.

What is Combative Coping and Preventive Coping Strategies?

Combative Coping strategies refer to a reaction to a stressful stimulus and involves suppressing the stress-generating stimuli, such as disorganization, disorganization of the stressor, andsuch as disorganization.

In addition, it is essential that the person learns task and time organization strategies, as well as structuring and discriminating between urgent and important tasks using the Eisenhower Matrix.

Although this would only be a part of what would be done in the consultation: other aspects of anxiety would be assessed. The goal is for the individual to develop psychological resources with the help of the tools provided for anxiety management. Coping with the situation will consist of learning new organizational habits, and then the individual will perceive that he/she is in control to organize. the individual will perceive that he/she has the control to organize him/herself..

On the other hand, preventive coping strategies refer to coping styles to prevent stressful stimuli from appearing, or to help the organism to respond to it, i.e. to anticipate and avoid the negative consequences of stress, for example.

The Locus of Control

Here arises a new concept of much importance, the concept of Internal Locus of Controlwhich is the individual's perception that his or her behavior is initiated from an internal source.

On the other hand, External Locus of Control occurs when the person perceives that the initiation of his behavior originates externally, i.e. he has no control over it. This is important, because depending on whether the person perceives his or her internal or external locus of control, the person defines his or her autonomy and subjective perception, feeling more or less empowered.

Keys to personal empowerment.

When a person feels empowered, aware of his abilities and with the perception of Internal Locus of Control, anxiety decreases and he feels confident to face it.

On the contrary, when the person has a predominant External Locus of Control profile, he/she does not even try to make changes because he/she feels that nothing he/she does will have any effect, since he/she thinks that external events have control over him/her, feeling that they overwhelm her capacities..

The role of procrastination

I cannot fail to mention, albeit briefly, the concept of procrastination, that is, the tendency to postpone the responsibilities or tasks that we had proposed to accomplish.

If the person procrastinates in planned activities, it may be due to several factors: he/she feels fear for thinking that he/she will not be able to perform the activity, there is a lack of skills to carry out a task, he/she has difficulty in making decisions, feels that his/her creativity is blocked, or his/her expectation of effectiveness is unreasonable. All this contributes to the exacerbation of anxiety.

Therefore, procrastination is another issue, procrastination is another issue to work on when it comes to organization and anxiety management.. But read me in the next article about this topic.

Trust and take the first step in your organization and anxiety control.