Blog – September 2022

Hello Anxiety, my old Friend!

The dark cloud begins to creep up into your space.  The cloud of Anxiety, as it begins to scramble your energy and play havoc. It creeps up unseen, most times predictable as it has its pattern. Your body reacts to the change in energy, you begin to think something about that and the old familiar meaning begins to attach to that feeling in your body.   The threat feels imminent. You literally feel your body beginning to spin out of your control.

Everyone has their own picture of anxiety formed by what they have been exposed to.  If no one had spoken about anxiety or put a label on it you would have nothing to attach that anxious feeling to.  It would have no meaning. Your thoughts around this would be basic.  Along the lines of “this feels uncomfortable…….let me have a cup of tea, or let me take a nap,  or let me take a deep breath and a sip of water”  Today,  with so much information at our fingertips, often very subjective in relation to the person communicating their understanding, we gather numerous meanings to the various experiences we are having and the numerous signals our body is giving us constantly.  However, we have tended to narrow out focus in on one aspect and build around this. 

Often the body signals something and this is misunderstood by your thoughts, but before looking at what else it could be we attach the thought of anxiety and transform that feeling in the body into an anxious state together with the well-formed thoughts about it. Your old pattern of thinking and information you have collected disconnects logic and options immediately, allowing the panic to settle in. 

You need an interrupter to scramble the thoughts before they gain momentum. An interrupter can be in the form of another thought, a physical pattern like clicking your fingers in a certain way with a sequence.  A sequence of anything will support this process.

What happens when this pattern gets hold of you and you find yourself too far down the road into the pattern?  It has gained too much momentum. Your best option is to run a physical sequence to scramble the thoughts, take a breath and rate your level, repeat if necessary.

When you have success with any options, bank those in your tool box as tried and tested remedies to pull out on your future path.  Remember, what works one day may not work another day.

Practice the 5,4,3,2,1, rule to initiate an interruption so that your brain acknowledges earlier that it needs to disengage an unhelpful pattern and engage a tool.

Learn to regulate your breathing and body often during your day to help it reset and stay in the resourceful zone.

Create empowering affirmations to repeat before you go to bed at night,  tap them in if you can. What you fall asleep with will often set the tone of your day.  Also be aware that your first thoughts in the morning when you wake up are often a habit.  Create new thoughts to think first thing in the morning that will be helpful and turn it into a habit strong enough to override the old unhelpful habit.  Always remember, these tools are not fail proof so sometimes they will work and sometimes they will not..

Repetitive worries need to be broken down into segments for example

1.  Identify what part of this is in your control
2. Identify where you need more information (often anxiety is stimulated because there are pieces missing to the information you currently have, causing you to initiate fight or flight)
3. Identify where you are going to look for this information
4. Practice interruption between each step to down regulate your response.
5. Get the information you need
6. Plan appropriate action
7. If you cannot find the information you need, keep interrupting the pattern with the intention of your RAS* honing in on the resources and information required.
8. Interrupt the pattern while you wait for this example,  go for a run, do yoga, jumping jacks, skipping, squats etc,  GET into your body
9. Once you have the information, decide what action you need to take and break this into steps if need be.

Once you have run through these steps and down regulated your response, take a moment to sit in gratitude for the work you have done.  As you practice this more and more you find the process going quicker and your confidence getting stronger.

It’s important to acknowledge that anxiety is showing up with a positive intention, it’s what we do with it once it shows up, that determines your level of pain or progress.

By Lara Park (Healing Naturally)

28 August 2022

*RAS is your Reticular Activation System responsible for sorting through unnecessary information and placing focus on the important information.  When it identifies something as important,  it will notice and bring your attention to anything in alignment with this importance.  This is a function of the unconscious brain and we all have it. This is why when you decide to buy a certain make of car you suddenly start to see this car everywhere.