You can choose your friends, but not your family, and this often leads to stress and anxiety. Three obsessive behaviours that you, your partner and your children might be doing cause stress can be easily identified and remedied so you can enjoy a stress-free family life. Sometimes your anxiety and stress can go beyond what can be remedied by an activity like <a target='_blank' href="http://competition-fishing.com/sport-fishing/uncover-the-beauty-of-canadian-fishing-expeditions/ or playing golf (or any other activity you find relaxing).
The first is obsessive negativity. Obsessive negativity means that you tend to be "negative" about places, people and situations in your life. Teenagers can wallow in this behavior and it can lead to depression.
If you find yourself saying things like Everything always goes wrong or I never do anything right you might be suffering from obsessed negativity. This might be unconscious, but you may be able to trace its roots back to one or more events in your life. This attitude will hold you back and can lead to a spiraling down of your personality as you will see less and less the positive things around you. For your children, this kind of negativity can lead to depression, which can also lead to self-harm and suicide, so it pays to be vigilant.
Obsessive perfectionism is the second challenge, and can be a deep source of anxiety, especially if you are the one forcing high standards on your teenager. Ensure you give praise and constructive criticism, not destructive criticism. When you engage in obsessive perfectionism, everything must be done “right” – your way, to either your standards, or some standards that you perceive have been set for you. Internal statements such as, “I have to do this right, or I’ll be a failure!” or “If I am not precise, people will be mad at me!” set a person up for failure. This behavior might be totally under the threshold of your awareness, but it interferes greatly with the ability to enjoy things without feeling stress.
Finally there is obsessive analysis. When you are obsessed about analyzing things you find yourself wanting to re-hash a task or an issue over and over again. For instance, you might find yourself making statements such as, “I need to know this like the back of my hand or things might go wrong” or “If I relax and let things go without looking them over repeatedly, things go wrong”.
Child and teenage brains need to have rest as well as stimulation. If you notice your child over-analysing or micro-analysing a situation, and always wanting control, this is not good for them. They need to be made to feel safe, and that it’s OK to relax.
Don’t go rushing off to find a psychologist for you or your kids. If you have already identified blocking behaviours, the first step is to consult your friends and family to get any feedback from them. It will help them if you explain what the blocking behaviour types are so that they can give you a critique based specifically on those things as opposed to trivialities such as your dress sense or whether you can sing! Incidentally, singing song lyrics to songs you like can be a great stress reliever.
You will need to approach this with an open mind because the truth can hurt, but this is the quickest way of finding out whether others see you differently to how you expect them to see you. The insights you gain can be used to actively change how you deal with life.
Secondly, keep a diary to write down and establish patterns of when blocking behaviors are used. Even if you are not thrilled with the idea of writing, you can make little entries into a note book or journal each day. The great part is that you’ll begin to see patterns in behavior that reveal exactly what is happening to foster anxiety.
Other relaxing hobbies you could take up to take your mind off anxiety and involve your family include reading a car magazine. Your teenagers would appreciate watching great movies.
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