Why do I feel anxious?
In order to get our anxiety under control, it is helpful to understand what anxiety is and why we can experience it.
The primitive part of our brain, that our ancestors were using to live and survive their day to day lives is always trying to protect us and sometimes it over reacts. This is the flight, flight, freeze area of the brain. When our primitive brain thinks that we are in some kind of danger, whether real or imagined, it will always respond with the primitive reactions of anger ‘fight’, anxiety ‘flight’ and depression ‘freeze’.
When our ancestors were out hunting, this anxiety response was helpful to keep us on high alert and always on the look out for any wild animals that could attack. This response is still helpful to us, if we find ourselves in a dangerous situation to keep us on our toes and give us the adrenalin and cortisol needed to help us prepare for action and make a quick exit if needed. This response can cause our heart rate to increase, stomach churning, getting hot, sweaty and shaky.
What causes chronic anxiety?
Anxiety is a natural reaction that can be helpful to us at times. So what causes it to go from a helpful reaction to something that is unhelpful and can sometimes control our lives, making us feel trapped, stuck and living in fear.
Our cycle of negative thoughts, worrying about the future and ruminating fills up our ‘stress bucket’ and creates anxiety. It is the way we think about situations that causes the anxiety, not the situations themselves. When our stress bucket is full or overflowing from our day to day stressors then we will be working from the primitive part of the brain, in survival mode and anxiety can take over.
A highly stressful or traumatic childhood, or a history of traumatic events can cause us to constantly be on high alert. This is when we need to reconnect with our bodies and learn to self regulate so that our bodies can learn that they are safe.
How can I manage anxiety?
The good news is that over thousands of years, we have evolved and developed the intellectual part of our brain, which enables us to make sensible decisions and rational assessments of situations. If we can engage our intellectual mind, we will find that our anxiety lowers and we will find it easier to deal with day to day life.
Emptying our ‘stress bucket’ is the most important step in lowering anxiety and engaging the intellectual mind. We naturally empty our stress bucket each night while we sleep during REM sleep. When our stress bucket is too full or overflowing, the mind will keep waking us up because of the amount of energy used to process the anxiety in our sleep. This is where hypnotherapy can help. Hypnosis is a contrived state of REM sleep. Listening to a hypnosis recording or having a session helps to process anxiety and empty your stress bucket.
Becoming aware of your negative thoughts will help you to stop filling up your stress bucket so quickly. Everyone has negative thoughts sometimes, but if we can be aware of these unhelpful thoughts, we can stop ourselves attaching to them and spiraling into more negativity. Solution focused hypnotherapy is great at helping you retrain your brain to focus on the positives instead of the negatives.
Learning to accept and even welcome your anxiety is much more helpful that trying to run from it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Remind yourself that this is just your brain trying to protect you. Say hello and thank that part of you for what it is trying to do for you. You can even name it or give it a colour or shape to make it feel less worrying.
If you have been feeling extremely anxious, then moving your body can help to make use of excess stress hormones. This could be going out for a brisk walk, running on the spot or even shaking your body as animals do after a stressful event.
Learning to self regulate is essential in order to tell your body that you are safe. If you practice some calming techniques when you are not feeling anxious, it will be even more effective when you are feeling anxious. EFT tapping, breathwork and mindfulness are a few simple ways that you can calm your mind and engage the intellectual part of the brain.