Anxiety, like a contagion, moves rapidly from person to person to person. Without a calming presence, it intensifies creating stress tornados that are hard to settle down. A family member demands attention, colleagues share frustrations, and a new appointment requires changing three other obligations. Even our most virtuous efforts helping others are challenged by pressures coming from various directions. How does anxiety influence your life? Can you see its movement through your family or team?

Despite attempts to promote calm, stress finds a way to creep in. Anxiety has a permanent place in our world and makes many of us shudder. However, anxiety comes from basic survival instincts and can be a positive force stimulating performance and change. Stress becomes problematic when levels are chronically high, decreasing resilience and sustainability. The good news is we can create calm keeping stress at healthy levels.

As we choose to decrease the pull of anxiety tornados, we promote life balance for ourselves and everyone around us. Integrate daily activities to promote calm and perspective. Implement activities to create inner calm such as walk your dog, play with a child, or meditate. Apply some of the following perceptual changes to really increase calm and tap into the positive forces of anxiety.

1. Guide decisions and responses with key values, virtues, and purpose. Awareness of what is important increases our ability to respond in ways we feel good about even when anxieties are high. Anxiety can send us into automatic responses that are not always helpful. Take a deep breath and pair with a calming word to slow down your emotional reaction. Remember core values and purpose to promote thoughtful responses rather than reacting emotionally to others’ expectations or anxiety.

2. See anxiety’s possibilities. We change the power of stress by perceiving it differently. Rather than seeing anxiety as always being a negative, look for the positives to create a force for good. What can help bring about healthy change? What can you let go of?

3. Make the distinction between your emotions and those of others. Caring about others does not require us to take on their emotional journeys. We create calm and care more effectively when choosing not to take on other people’s emotions. This is true whether we are dealing with a confrontational family member, unhappy friend, or someone grieving a loss. Use resources, such as counselors, to get an objective perspective when you feel caught up in emotional storms making it difficult to differentiate.

4. Choose perspective. Intentionally promote a positive outlook rather than fall into a negative norm. We are responsible for our own emotions, perceptions, and responses and can choose a way of being. Cultivate attitudes of gratitude, joy, and hope. Such ways of seeing the world do not just happen, but need to be fostered daily. How do you want others to remember you? Create reminders such as a gratitude alert to remind you of the presence you want to bring into the world.

5. Defuse emotional triggers. When we figure out what creates higher emotional responses, we can do things to make it harder for others to push our triggers. Establish a helpful response to increase self-regulation. For example, prepare a statement you can use to calm yourself when your heart rate starts to speed up.

6. Allow others to be responsible for their own emotions, perspectives, and wellbeing. This is probably one of the most difficult strategies for us helpers. We can care about others, but making sure they are happy is not our responsibility. When we try taking on other people’s responsibilities, we increase anxiety and decrease effectiveness for everyone involved.

As we walk in a highly anxious world, stress will frequently make its presence known. Helping others during difficult times often presents a variety of pressures pushing us in different directions. We cannot eliminate anxiety, but we can influence how much it determines our journey through efforts to see and experience pressures differently. As we do so, we create a calm that radiates into the world reducing anxiety in families and teams.

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Helping others can feel like being tossed around in a boat during a storm at sea. We say kind words only to get a rude response. Or someone responds with a smile and enthusiastic “Thank you!” We fall in bed at night, but the next day someone tells us we have increased responsibilities. We offer a helpful strategy that once again gets ignored. Winds push us in all directions while the joys and challenges, like waves, leave us bobbing up and down.

People in helping roles experience the best and worst the world has to offer. We hold others during difficult times, while manifesting hope even when it is hard to see. We family caregivers, human and veterinary healthcare providers, first responders, educators, social workers, non-profit leaders, and other helpers bring much needed care into the world. How do we take on such a valiant journey sustainably when there is so much brokenness and need?

Clear purpose balanced with self-care fuels determination and provides valuable guidance on the caregiving journey. As the philosopher Seneca noted, “If one doesn’t know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” Reasons why we help others can inform how to do so in ways that promote effective caring and balanced living.  We can rely on core values and purpose to guide our responses rather than other people’s anxieties, responses, or assumptions. Strategies to clarify a balanced purpose include:

1. Thoughtfully consider and write down beliefs, values, and important virtues. We often think we know what these are, but until we write them down they remain on the periphery of our thinking rather than at the center of decision making. Tease through outside influences to determine what you believe. Take time, but pay attention to what first comes to mind.

2. Develop a purpose statement that helps you remember core beliefs, values, and virtues. Edit and rework to make a one sentence statement easy to memorize. Be creative by using a metaphor or acronym. For example, the statement “I will bring HOPE into the world” can mean “I will bring healing, openness, peace, and equality into the world.” Your purpose statement only needs to remind you what is important and inspire you. It should apply to every context and stage of life.

3. Make sure your statement is balanced to promote self-care. It is too easy to put off our own needs and offer others help when there is so much need. However, balance in our own lives is vital for sustainable caring. Self-care is not selfish. It promotes effective caring and resilience for facing challenges. Re-word your statement so it reminds you to take care of yourself as well as others.

4. Know and apply purpose and core values to daily life. Place a framed copy on your desk, put on the background of your phone, write a note to yourself, and read every day. Memorize your purpose statement so core values inform responses even when anxiety tries to create chaos.

Balanced purpose helps us move forward on the helping journey even when facing winds and waves. We can discern between favorable and distracting winds. The sea becomes calm enough for self-care. Our core values, direct how we help rather than anxieties trying to push us off course. As we strengthen this part of who we are, we find the courage to establish healthy boundaries, deal with conflict, and recover from loss. We can experience the joys of our own lives even while helping others face challenges.

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