6 Tips For Anxiety and 3 For A Crisis

There are many reasons that we are stressed and what may stress one person may be completely ‘unstressable’ to another. You may be stressed about day to day stuff and the juggling of time, or a meeting and a deadline. Maybe a football match about to be played or picking the kids up from school. Even picking what to wear for the day!

This is normal. Sometimes a bit of stress is good for us as it is motivating. And motivation happens in order to get you something (I want that!) or maybe to avoid something (I sure don’t want that to happen to me!) Stress involves the release of hormones and chemicals that allow us, back in the day of the sabre tooth tiger, to run away in order to save our lives. (This is why we have an Autonomic Nervous System.) The problems with stress start when it is constantly there, humming away in the background.  And by the way, the sabre tooth tiger is not chasing us. In fact it is not very often that we are in a life threatening situation, yet we are responding to everyday events as if they were. The head and body don’t get a break from it. So the level of the baseline for ‘normal’ goes up and up. At this point, as our base line rises, our long term health is affected, our relationships suffer, we make decisions that are not always useful, and functioning is difficult. And we blow our tops.

When Stress Turns to Anxiety

After a while, stress, if not allowed to rest, becomes a behaviour of anxiety. Most people have felt it – the churning nerves in your stomach, sweaty hands, fidgety and agitated. And the thoughts swirling through your head. Not stopping. Maybe internal politics debating full time. What triggers this is individual to each person. A work deadline, drama within the relationship, money, family, the boss, or the staff, health challenges, fear – anything.

One thing is for sure – this is normal. Stress is normal but it is not good for you or healthy to have that worry all of the time, or to have the feeling that anxiety is taking over your life and you aren’t getting a break from it.

What you may experience:

While everybody has a different experience of what anxiety is, it may involve…

• A faster heartbeat that you really seem to notice – a pounding in your chest for no apparent reason, or a jumpy heartbeat

• It is tough to concentrate

• Butterflies or knots in your stomach

• Sweating and maybe clammy hands.

• Dizzy

• Breathing patterns that don’t seem very relaxed. Maybe high in your chest, like it is only getting as far as your throat

• A need to escape for a cigarette or a drink

• Eating too much or not enough. Weight gain or loss 

• Inability to slow down – rushing around and fidgeting. Unable to actually sit still

• Health challenges

• Thinking, thinking, thinking. Random thoughts that don’t really make sense with what you are trying to think about but pop into your thinking anyway

• Tired, but hyped

• Worried about what might happen

• Not sleeping very well

• Overwhelmed or panicked

• Trouble making and sticking to a decision

• Making a mountain out of a molehill

• Etc etc!

Great News. There Is Something You Can Do About It!

Anxiety is actually something you do. I know you don't mean to, but because it is a behaviour means you are able to work with it and transform that behaviour BUT it will take the commitment of yourself to change. You are the one to do the work. 

1. Get an mBIT coach. Notice how doing anxiety involves the whole body? It is not just a head issue!  An mBIT coach is somebody to help you transform how your whole body behaves during stress and anxiety. An impartial, objective person, a coach is someone who you will let you explore how you do the stress. Then that coach will help you find your voice, or overcome the fear, or whatever it is that is resulting in the anxious behaviour. The mBIT coach will find the strength in your gut, the value in your heart and the wisdom in your head. It is a hand up. Reach out for it.

2. Breathe. Now I know you have been breathing all of your life, however in the practice of stress and anxiety, you have altered that lovely belly breathing that you had when you were a little baby, to slowly become high and shallow. There is a balanced way to breathe that will relax you at a physiological level, allowing your head to have a rest, and resetting your body to a balance – not too stressed and not too depressed. An mBIT coach is skilled in teaching this balanced way of breathing. I’d say that nearly everybody comments how wonderful they feel when they achieve the balance. Often how incredible it is for their heads to have a rest.

3. Exercise. In moderation, exercise is wonderful for stress as it allows the physiological cycle of tension to be released. You may have noticed that after a stressful event you are shaking – let that shaking happen until it stops naturally. This is completely allowing those chemicals and hormones of stress to finish their job and go. There is an exercise called the Trauma Release Exercise that helps the built up muscle tension. Otherwise a program of steady and gently exercise is really beneficial to your body and frame of mind. However always smashing it out at the gym is actually putting you under physiological stress and this is what you are not needing on a relentless scale. It feeds that body/mind loop and creates further stress.

4. Diet. A good diet makes you feel good! Not only the nutritional aspect of what you eat, but the benefits of better immunity – 90% of which is made in the gut. A healthy gut – a healthy immunity as well. Watch out for overeating, undereating, drinking and smoking – it all goes in the gut and if you want to imagine that you have a family of immunity producers in there, how would they appreciate rubbish being pushed on top of them, while they were doing their job of trying to protect you?

5. Change your posture. Talking yourself out of being stressed is a good start as it indicates you realise you are! But you need to change your bodily physiology too. It is only partially doing the job, of thinking positively, while you are slouched over, looking at the ground, breathing shallowly. Stand up, put your head strong upon your shoulders, look up, put your hands on your hips and breath strongly and evenly. It's the power pose. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

6. Sorry, but the fags don’t help your anxiety. The only benefit could be that they make you breathe - and I am really only guessing at that! But you can do the breathing without the health killing part can’t you? And smoking weed might make you feel relaxed but your head will still be able to partake in it's rampant thinking - although at this point paranoia may result - which gives you more to worry about.

It's OK to have butterflies in your stomach. You just want them flying in the same direction. An Olympic Coach

In a Crisis

If you find yourself overcome by the anxiety (and even overcome by sadness) that you are doing, do these:

1.  If you are really stressed out: Stop. Hold your head still and raise only your eyes to the sky or ceiling. Move them from side to side – right to the extremities of your vision, with your head still. Repeat a couple of times until you feel better.

2. Stop. Look for 3 things you can see, 3 things you feel and 3 things you can hear. Maybe you see the clouds, the footpath, and your feet. Maybe how your feet feel in your shoes, how your clothes feel on your shoulders, the sunshine or the wind. Maybe you hear the birds, the wind or cars.  Repeat. Find another 3 things you see. Find 3 different things you feel. Find 3 different sounds you can hear.  Repeat. 

3. If you are able to realise you are stressed in the moment, pull your attention to your chest space and count how fast you are breathing in and how fast you are breathing out. Now make the count even. Now slow it down. For example: You notice that you are breathing in and out for 2 or 3. Try to make that space out to a count of 4 on the in breath and 4 on the out breath. Then make it to a 5 count. And if you are an ace at that, make it a count to 6 in and 6 out. Keep that going for a few minutes.

You are not broken

If you are want it enough, you can be free from anxiety. Stress is a part of life, yet you don't have to let it define you or control how you live your life. You don't have to let it make you sick. So take action. Find an mBIT coach. If not now, then when? It is time to overcome obstacles, gain courage, push through fear, stop playing small and really start achieving your full potential.