Surviving with Only Three Senses
Let’s paint a picture of your average teenager’s life. They go to high school and work a part-time job when they can around their school sports/clubs. This is not including her social calendar with her friends and family. Where does one find all the time to do all this? I68f I do not do all this how will I get the scholarship my family needs to send me to college? Do I risk becoming socially awkward for college because I am so focused on my future now? What do you think life would feel like without stressors or anxieties? Would people be happy all the time? Do commodities come at a cost? All these responsibilities generate anxiety. Stress and anxiety appear within the end result regardless. Anxiety and stress is everywhere and most of the time unavoidable. Coping mechanisms are key to learning to eliminate the brutal force stress can have.
Stress and anxiety are our body’s natural way of telling our brain we fear the unknown. So how can we help ourselves find ways to stress less and relax more? Mental health through the course of history has been improperly viewed in the eyes of society. Thankfully, we're on course to deliberately combat the mental diseases that can make life so debilitating. This has recently been done via the utilization of new pharmaceuticals, and infinite types of therapy. I would like to introduce a fairly easy and simple technique we can all potentially use and apply to calm and ground ourselves. This technique can particularly be used during moments of escalating anxiety and panic attacks.
Your five senses are used daily for everything you will ever perform in life, they are often taken for granted. Imagine never being able to smell or hear again, would life be the same? Your five senses are extremely strong and important, sending messages to your brain to create an answer for your curiosity. Let us use the five senses to ground us back to reality when life starts to get the best of us. Start by saying, what do I see? Then name three objects you might see. Next, what do I hear? Find a noise in the distance or take pleasure in the quiet surroundings, but you need to try and find three noises. Finally, what can I touch? Physical sensation is the strongest sense a human can have besides hearing in my opinion. So why not use it to your advantage? In the middle of an anxiety attack try and submerge yourself by closing your eyes and running your fingers across random objects to get your mind distracted by trying to figure out what you are touching. Such simple techniques can be practiced without the overwhelming feeling of starting them. This coping mechanism is so easy because your body is trained to do it every day to survive, so let’s use it for another reason and to stay happy today!
-Stefan Skok
