Anxiety
What is anxiety and what can we do about it?
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
Anxiety is not about the past but is about the future.
Anxiety can be a little unsettling or can feel terrible depending on circumstances.
It’s impossible to avoid anxiety completely, it wouldn’t be healthy, some amount of worry or anxiety is normal and part of the human experience.
For example if you were heading towards bankruptcy or standing too close to a busy highway feeling anxiety would be normal and helpful. This would show that you care about your life. Ideally this will cause actions to remedy the situation and then dissipate.
Patterns of being anxious more often can be debilitating and sap your energy keep you from being productive and happy in your life.
Imagining the worst can become a habit that we do without noticing and we can come to do this unconsciously.
The kind of hyper vigilance many of us are experiencing during COVID-19 restrictions and health concerns can create these patterns even when we are in a safe environment.
Neurology shows that the brain has an amazing way of saving energy. For example if being vigilant is the answer to seeing safe then the brain will not look for an alternative ways but will run the vigilance/anxiety system even if it’s really not the best for your health at the time. What is happening is that your brain is offering a program that it figures is helpful to you. When you recognize that it is not helpful you can put something more helpful in its place
Repeated patterns of thinking are well noted in studies of neuroscience also thankfully due to Neuroplasticity we can change this for the better.
What about Fear?
It’s important to know the difference between worry and fear. Worry is lower on the scale means you’re activating your cerebral cortex by making scary pictures or imagining scary things happening. Fear is when worry has gone so far downhill course it’s normal to activate your amygdala which is useful in the presence of something you should actually be afraid of. If I get jumped in an alleyway I want my amygdala activated so my bloodstream will be filled with adrenaline and allow me to have the strength and focus to get out of the situation safely. if your amygdala is activated and you’re turning worry into fear that is not helpful!
What benefits can we get from letting go of unnecessary fears and anxieties?
The opposite of anxiety can be noticed as a feeling of empowerment, calmness, serenity or strength.
The more you do to regulate your negative unhelpful feelings, the better and the easier your life becomes.
Neural plasticity allows you to make these changes and keep the changes.
What can we do about it?
The good thing about behaviours and habits are that they can be changed.
Although some of these things may seem strange they have one thing in common. The common thread is that when you use any of these techniques you are spending a little bit of time attending to yourself. All of these methods have been shown to work for many people in many places.
You will learn these techniques and you will have them with you all the time wherever you are and whenever you need them.
Since anxiety is experienced inside of us we use subjective units of distress to determine how upsetting the anxiety is to us.
You can use a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being I am not anxious at all to 10 I am in panic mode etc.
When you notice anxious thoughts use one of the methods that I will teach you to treat it.
Notice and treat, notice and treat. This comes from Dr. Larry Nims.
I am listing the first two breathing exercises here again as they are valuable to regulating our system from stress or anxiety.
Exercise 1
The Diaphragmatic Breath
Simple and effective the diaphragmatic breath
Sit upright in a relaxed posture
take a deep breath but as you do, push your lower abdomen outward gently so that you fill your lungs from the very bottom
continue to expand your chest in the same breath
and finally elevate your shoulders slightly filling the top part of your lungs.
Again make sure you do this carefully without straining when your lungs are filled pause, hold your breath for two or three seconds but don’t go beyond the comfort zone
Then exhale fully through your mouth or nose which ever feels best
As you exhale try to squeeze out the last few gaps of breath and then repeat.
Four or five of these deep breaths with a two or three second pause in between is enough to really reset and relax your system and let go of a lot of stress.
Note the SUDs (Subjective Units of Distress) you feel now.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(Super chill) (twisted mess)
Exercise 2
7-11 Breathing
7-11 breathing
Here I will make a note about the autonomic nervous system as an explanation as to why this technique is helpful.
The autonomic nervous system comprises two parts- the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system activates the fight or flight response during a threat or perceived danger, and the parasympathetic nervous system restores the body to a state of calm. When we breathe in, our sympathetic nervous system is activated
and when we breathe out, our parasympathetic nervous system is activated.
7-11 breathing helps relax your body by staying on the out breath longer than you stay on the in breath.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(I'm feeling good) (feeling bad)
begin the exercise
Using good diaphragmatic breathing you have learned in the previous example
take a good breath in while counting to seven in your head.
Pause for a moment if it’s comfortable for you and then
release your breath to a count of 11 or more pausing again before your next inhalation if it’s comfortable for you.
It may help to gently purse your lips to slow your out breath as its best to relax as much as you can on you’re out breath.
Exercise 3
Jin Shin Jyutsu
Jin Shin Jyutsu
this dates back to around 1900 in Japan
In this model the thumb is connected to the stomach and to worry and overthinking.
Either hand works fine, take your thumb and place it in the palm of the other hand and make a fist around it, don’t squeeze so hard it hurts. Just hard enough to make good contact. After a few seconds or so you’ll feel a pulse in the hand that is gripping, that means it’s working, continue for a few minutes and notice the bad feelings are fading away. Stay relaxed and keep holding on until they’re gone.
If the unpleasant feelings come back do it again.
If it seems to be more of a fear than an anxiety then grip the first finger.
the first finger is tied to fear and can be gripped in the same way.
the next finger represents anger
the next grief and insecurity
the little finger represents confidence
the middle of your palm represents stress.
Below is a link to a quick youtube video for the visual learners.
Excersise 4
6 Step Tapping
Exercise 6
Exercise sixin muscle relaxation
6 step tapping
This is derived from Chinese Energy Work (Qigong) and uses acupuncture meridians.
There are different methods of this that are fairly similar. Sometimes it is called be set free fast or EFT.
Don’t worry you don’t have to believe in it for it to work it just works anyways!
This has been recommended to me by a number of people including nurses and doctors before I finally tried it and found it to be more helpful than I thought it should be.
First you want to name that feeling that you have that you don’t like.
Maybe I’ll call it “This anxious feeling” or “This annoying sensation”
Tap on the top of your head 6-10 times saying to yourself out loud (or in your head) while focusing on the feeling
“This annoying sensation”.
Tapping the middle of your forehead 6-10 times saying once
“this annoying sensation"
Tapping the outer corner of the eye 6-10 times saying once
“this annoying sensation"
Tapping the under the eye 6-10 times saying once
“this annoying sensation can go”
Tapping the edge of the collar bone 6-10 times saying once
“this annoying sensation”
And grasping or tapping the wrist saying once “this annoying sensation can go” "let it all go" "Peace"
Then shake it off take a deep breath and shake it off and notice how much better you feel.
Keep doing this a few times until you have banished the intrusive thoughts or feelings.
You may want to change the words so they continue to connect to the feeling you have at the time.
Exercise 5
Interrupt the pattern of worry
Interrupting the worry pattern
Here is a metaphor to understand a little bit about the neurology supporting this technique.
Just like the first time you walk through a forest you can barely leave a trace the more often you use that path the more engrained it becomes. This is how our neural pathways are formed and how they are maintained.
Just as you begin to wear a new path that serves you better the old pathway that’s out of date can grow over and then you become less likely to take that old outmoded path.
As soon as you notice yourself feeling anxious or having anxious thoughts you can say stop and put your hand out in front of you as if addressing the worry physically. And then put a positive thought in its place for example “I don’t need that worry right now” or “that’s not helpful, thanks anyway” or “my life is good” or remember how much you enjoy being awesome etc.
While saying stop and putting your hand out in front of you could look a little weird depending on the context of where you are and what you’re doing this is just one way of addressing anxious thoughts. It works quite well to just take a moment and imagine it happening.
Our imagination is where our anxious thoughts come from so it makes perfect sense that our imagination can also be the source of replacing it with something better.
There are many other ways to interrupt a worry pattern.
One of my favourite ways is to put my fist over top of my head like something great just happened! It’s as if your brain becomes convinced that this is a time to feel good because it has anchored that physical posture to something good. Some of you will have other physical posture’s that are anchored to positive things.
If you play a sport and you score a goal what do you do with your body, fist pump, jump up and down?
If you were to find some kind of good news what would you do? How would you stand? How would you move?
Dancing can be helpful to change state although these are not always suitable in all situations it can be very powerful.
Exercise 6
Muscle Relaxation
Doing this five minute body scan muscle relaxation exercise can bring deeper relaxation and allow you to let go of unneeded tension being held in your body. Give yourself five minutes and it will give back to you.
Breif summation of stress and anxiety video
Noticing that it is posible to affect our feelings and thoughts is just the beginning.
Use these techniques and see which ones you like the best.
In the next section we get into inner states and begin to uncover ways of making more powerful changes..