Placement

[Lola_Lou]

Hey 👋🏻 guys

so currently I’m doing my final placement, but the thing is I have such huge anxiety about going into placement as my last one was horrible and left me with anxiety. I go in then then halfway through placemat I panic and have to go home. I don’t know what to do? Is there coping skills I can use. I am going to talk to my teacher about it tomorrow. But I need to stop myself from calling in sick and leaving early.

thanks

[P0L0]

Hi Lola Lou,

I'm glad you're reaching out, and congrats on asking for help!

I have had one friend who dealt with anxiety for a very long time now. She says that anything that helps calm her down works miracles. For her, that includes meditating mostly (but if you're in a professional setting and you can't meditate, breathing exercises can work just as well). For her, she focuses on breathing whenever she feels she is getting overwhelmed. I have used this technique as well. For example, when I was getting overwhelmed with University study obligations coming in and various emails piling up, I found that solely focusing on your breathing for a couple minutes helps in making all my problems be forgotten for a moment. After the breathing/meditation, I found that my feeling of stress was still there, but much more manageable.

Overall, I find just focusing on breathing (the app, Headspace is a real help with this by the way) calms me down momentarily so that I can put my obligations into perspective.

Also, here are two articles I found to be insightful and helpful:

https://www.anxietyaustralia.com.au/slow-breathing-to-decrease-anxiety-and-panic/

https://www.stress.org/take-a-deep-breath#:~:text=Abdominal%20breathing%20for%2020%20to,promotes%20a%20state%20of%20calmness.

Hope this helps!

P0L0

[leesy_lou]

Hi Lola Lou,

Firstly congrats on making it to your final placement, means your nearly at the finish line!

I can relate to this but from different circumstances. Starting anything new can be really anxiety provoking, I think its more normal than not to be nervous! For me its the sweaty palms, beating heart, and suppressed appitite, sore belly stuff (yuck).

Considering your last placement was horrible it's really understandable that your feeling more anxiety this time around. Did you experienced this sense of panic before this experience? Talking to your teacher sounds like a really smart thing to do, I would have done the exact same and have in the past. Getting out then in. let us know how this conversation goes and if it helped at all 🙂

Over my time in starting new things and feeling anxiety I have developed a few strategies that work for me. I want to first say that although I have these now they do not always work and remove the anxiety completely (Wouldnt that be great!) but it is helpful to have something in the moment, and if it helps just a little then I'm down for that!

Grounding: For me, the “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique” has proved to be especially helpful to bring me back to the present. It pretty much asks you to focus on the things around you, which gets me out of my head! Have a google of this term to see how to do it, seems like something that could be doable in your situation.

Self-Compassion: Being honest to myself about my feelings, reminding myself that its normal to feel certain things and showing myself kindness can actually be really soothing. When big assessments are coming up now I try to acknowledge the stress when it occurs saying "oh this is a really stressful time for me leesy_lou, its unpleasant but its normal for you to feel this way. trying your best is all you can do". It's technically called a "self-compassion break" if you wanted to look into it further.

What do you find helpful at the moment, or what have you tried in the past?