What in Your Home Could Be Causing You Anxiety?

About 20% of the US population suffers from anxiety in one form or another. For some people, they only feel anxious once in a great while. Others feel anxious almost every day, for at least a few minutes a day.

What is it that causes anxiety? The triggers are not going to be the same for everyone, and many people do not even know what their triggers are. There may be some of those triggers in your home, creating anxiety for you. What can you do about it? First of all, it may help to understand your triggers, and then you can take measures to eliminate or reduce those from your life.

Clocks

Anxiety can often be caused by continuous noises in your home. Your home is a confined space, so noises can sound louder and more annoyed than they would outdoors. If you have a ticking watch or clock in your home, the noise can raise your anxiety levels.

That simple ticking sound may not have a huge impact on your anxiety, but if your levels are already high, it may simply take a ticking clock to set you off and make you feel extremely anxious. You could also suffer from a low level of anxiety caused by the perpetual ticking noise the clock makes.

Leaking Faucets

Similar to a ticking clock, a dripping faucet can make a continuous noise that can get on your nerves after a while. But with the faucet drip comes another anxiety-causing factor. If there is a drip, that means you have a plumbing problem that needs to be fixed. Your anxiety may increase when you hear this noise, because you know some work needs to be done and you may have trouble paying for a plumber.

It’s often better simply to fix the problem than to hope it goes away or hope that you can ignore it and not feel anxious. You can do a temporary fix that is as simple as cutting off the water to that faucet so that you no longer hear the dripping for a while.

Items Belonging to an Ex

Are there clothes or other items in your home that belong to an ex? Simply seeing these can cause you anxiety. They can trigger unpleasant feelings, painful memories, and other emotions that increase your anxiety levels.

If possible, you should give these items back to your ex, even if you have to use someone else as a middleman. You can also store the items away until they can be taken away, or toss them or give them to someone, in extreme cases. If you continue to see items that cause you stress, you need to do something about them. Simply getting them out of your normal line of sight can help, but removing them from your home entirely will be much more effective.

Untidiness

Having a messy home may not trigger every person to feel anxious, but someone who already suffers from anxiety is going to have issues in dealing with an untidy home. Imagine a good curtain cleaning and what that can do for making your home dust free and clean. Imagine having your home organized so that everything is in the right place and there’s no garbage lying around and nothing out of order.

If your home is untidy, you can do a little work on it each day to keep it organized. You can also hire professionals to do the cleaning every so often to help you catch up. Having a disorganized home can increase your anxiety levels from day to day until you do something about it. If you stay on top of the mess, though, and do regular cleaning, you’re less likely to feel anxious. Besides, physical labor is a great stress reliever.

Bills

Do you feel anxious every time you walk by a stack of bills in your home? That’s how a lot of us feel when we see unpaid water bills, electric bills, rent, and more. You may not always be able to pay them on time, but at least you can put them out of sight and out of mind for a little while. It may be better for your mental health to store the bills away in a place where you won’t neglect them but where they will be visible to you all the time.

If you’re concerned and anxious that you will forget to pay the bills on time, you can simply set a reminder on your phone for the day before they are due. That could be a lot better for your stress levels than leaving the stack of bills in a highly visible area to keep you from forgetting about them.

Notifications

Your home should be a place of safety and solace. You shouldn’t have to feel stressed out while being at home. If you’re concerned about your stress levels that tend to rise when you’re at home, consider the kinds of notifications you put on your phone.

You may not be able to use your phone much at work, but when you get home, it seems like a free-for-all for your notifications. Instead of relaxing and not having to worry about what’s going on in the outside world when you get home, you are bombarded with notifications from your e-mail, messenger apps, social media, and move. With news notifications, chain letters, and other unnecessary pop-ups, there are a lot of notifications you could get rid of. You can simply turn off notifications for various apps and platforms and even turn off your phone completely for hours at a time to give yourself some peace and quiet.

Your time at home should be your own as much as possible and should not be intruded upon by work or constant bombardment of messages. So, if you can cut down on the notifications from your phone, you may feel less stressed and anxious during your time away from work.