Modern life can easily riddle a person with anxiety. Getting bills paid, making a good first impression, meeting a work deadline, and so many other things can make a person feel extra anxious. Fortunately, there are many techniques to help manage anxiety, plus one that many psychologists recommend, which seems a little out there. Their recommendation doesn’t come from a pharmacy but can be easily found at any grocery or convenience store. You just have to be willing to pucker up a little.
“Sour candy is an easy way to use distraction to pull yourself out of an anxiety spiral and interrupt your thoughts,” licensed psychotherapist Ciara Bogdanovic of Sagebrush Psychotherapy tells GOOD. “Additionally, it creates a moment of mindfulness and presence as it anchors you back to the here and now through the strong and hard-to-ignore flavor and sensations that come up when eating sour candy.”
@doctorsood Sour candy can be a helpful grounding tool for anxiety for those who have failed other options. The intense taste shifts focus away from racing thoughts, but its effectiveness depends on personal preference and specific triggers. 🍬 Note: make sure you are consuming in moderation due to added sugar Have you ever tried this? #medical #health #MentalHealth #anxietytips VC: @_legallybrunette1
Bogdanovic isn’t the only expert saying sour candy could help treat anxiety. Doctors, therapists, and the like are recommending sour candy because it has proven to be an effective “grounding technique.” In short, a grounding technique helps a person refocus their thoughts on the here and now. Such techniques help reorient a person when they’re experiencing high stress, overwhelming emotions, and anxiety through helpful distraction.
The sharp, powerful taste of a sour candy can instinctively pull your brain’s focus away from worrying about past events or an uncertain future to the present experience of “Wow, this is very tart.” Since the potent flavor redirects your senses, it makes it easier for a person to examine the scent of the candy, its mouth feel, and all the other sensations you’re experiencing in the moment. It may not resolve the roots of the anxiety, but it does force your brain to have a break from it.
@micheline.maalouf Who knew this helped panic attacks!!? #learnontiktok #panicattacks
Sour candy is just one option. There are several other grounding techniques to help manage anxiety, and their effectiveness depends on your preference and personality. For some people, mental exercises such as imagining a “happy place” or mentally organizing things around you into categories such as colors, shapes, etc. can help. Or, it could be simple such as cuddling a pet, listening to music, or doing something creative like drawing, coloring, or painting.
For some, it’s easier to do something physical to allow the body to lead the mind away from anxiety. This can take the form of stretching or exercising. If there isn’t time for that, there is the “5-4-3-2-1” technique in which you count five things you see, four things you can touch, three things you hear, two things you smell, and one thing you taste.
@anxiety_fitness Interactive 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique for anxiety and panic
If not that, there’s always cold water.
“Another technique that follows the same pattern is dunking your face in ice water, which uses intense physical sensations to calm your body down, interrupt your worrying, and bring you into your body,” says Bogdanovic.
It’s important to note that sour candy and all other grounding techniques are tools to use to help manage anxiety, but they're not a cure-all. On top of that, not everyone’s anxiety is the same. If you find yourself overwhelmed with anxiety and/or depression, it is worth talking with a professional to find out the best ways to address it and develop strategies to combat it. The news may be sour, but easier to swallow.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.