Anxiety help

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People have always had to deal with anxiety, but when it grows out of control it can feel like walking around with a wet electric blanket over us covering us with a sick blend of agony and terror. It combines feelings of fear, pain and helplessness accompanied by physical symptoms: racing heart, sweating, tension, a sense of agitation or confusion. In its extreme form anxiety can bring severe distress and pain; left unchecked the extreme form can cause a breakdown. 

There are times when a little anxiousness is necessary and productive. But when the feelings of anxiety appear too often, are too intense and are triggered by non-threatening things, that is when a person has an  anxiety problem. 

Those stuck in anxious thinking patterns see everything as a threat. That’s because the brain has been wired to worry by negative life experience  and habit. It can be re-wired with effort. 

Just like anger and depression, anxiety clouds thinking and is a huge burden  on our bodies. We suffer both mental and physical harm when we are in  the grip of it. The most common form of anxiety is worrying or rumination - an obsessive focus on problems.

Repeating positive affirmations is how to use neuroplasticity to change the brain's automatic responses.  

If you are an abuse survivor or had a "difficult" childhood, you may be suffering from childhood trauma - a condition that the medical community is just now waking up to and recognizing. Childhood trauma requires special attention but the great news is that we can heal from it and greatly improve our health and happiness without talking about our past. See Part III if you think you have childhood trauma.  

The Emotional Car Crash:

If you are in an extreme anxiety spiral, please start the 3-4-5 process today. This form of anxiety can cause a nervous breakdown if left unchecked. Going through a stressful life process like a divorce, serious illness, financial or legal  difficulties can push a person down a spiral that feels like a "nervous  breakdown". That breakdown may require an emotional emergency response. It may require time in a kind of emotional "intensive care" when you just begin to handle the painful emotions of whatever it is you have to go through. There is also a long "rehabilitation" process as a person regains emotional strength, learns new skills and emotional  intelligences. That process clearly has nothing to do with "illness,"  yet it can take a heavy toll on a person's life and has to be addressed as a serious health issue.

The good news is that great relief can come even though few outside  circumstances change. Learning different thinking patterns and letting  go of the thoughts that keep us unhappy is the only authentic way to  achieve mental balance and emotional mastery that is built to last while retaining the physical integrity of your brain and not risking other health problems.

Research shows that extreme anxiety mostly effects those who’ve had traumatic life experience. Those experiences stay in the emotional memory in the  central nervous system and can be triggered without our even knowing  they’re there. That is the same process for every person – even those  who have not had trauma: memories and feelings live on in the mind/body.  For those who have experienced violence as children, the developing brain changes in response to that stress and fear. Several things can  happen: the fear and anger response gets activated too easily, one stays  in a state of semi-agitation; forgetfulness and irritability add to the  problem. 

Emotions are a vital part of human consciousness and intelligence. We can’t just  ‘cut out’ emotions as some would like to do. Mastering them is the key to a more successful and happy existence.

The fight or flight or freeze response is vital for human survival. It is the chemical reaction to a perceived threat that occurs in the brain.  Our brains take in stimuli that our nervous system responds to BEFORE we are consciously aware that we are already reacting to it. This is hard  to believe but has been proven in psychological and physiological  studies. 

Unfortunately for people with high anxiety it gets triggered by random moments, disconnected stimuli, emotional memories that reside in the unconscious mind. Learning how to recognize the very beginning of the on-set of anxiety is key to shutting it down quickly.

Often we’re going about our regular day and some random thing suddenly makes us start sweating, unexplainably fearful or irritable. That is a sudden anxiety feeling. There are usually patterns that people can detect. That is what the journaling and metacognition processes will help figure out. Then it’s about reframing and mastering what it is that is triggering it. Most of the time it’s just life in general that has us anxious – but even then, if your well-being is suffering, then something  has to change. (The relationship? The job? Your body? Life goals? Has habit wired your brain to ‘worry’?)

The next vital step is to ‘re-train’ the brain to not go into fight or flight mode so quickly at inappropriate things. Once we know ourselves better and we know what generates the feelings, we can learn how to stop it.

Negative thinking and worrying are addictive and anxious people usually are addicted to thinking in these ways. Worrying is a strong habit that has  to be consciously changed to be overcome. 

Some confuse destructive worrying and ruminating  for ‘reflection’ when those processes are qualitatively different.  Rumination leads to no change. Conscious inner reflection leads to change (or acceptance which is a kind of change).

How to stop anxiety:

Cognitive reframing is the single most effective method to cure extreme anxiety and mild depression. That is a process where a person learns how to see a situation from a different angle with a different meaning.  With effort, emotional intelligence can be strengthened and improved. It is emotional intelligence that enables us to recognize how we feel, why we feel it, how to change it and how to tell if our efforts are working. 

Repeating positive affirmations is how to use neuroplasticity to change the brain's automatic  responses.  

Worrying and ruminating on things is a way to stay upset – changing those thinking patterns  is the way to get calm and happy. Each human being has to decide for themselves what they’re willing to let go of to get happy and healthy. That requires an inventory or a process of deep reflection for each person to decide what may be holding them back. Is it unrealistic  desires? A bad relationship you think you can never get out of? A  well-paid job that you think you can’t leave but makes you sick every day? These are things only you can face; strengthening your inner resolve, calm and clarity will enable you to make the EXTERNAL changes you may need to make.

This is one of the most difficult and intense things we have to do when dealing with serious anxiety: recognizing and eliminating the physical sensations and symptoms that keep us that much more 'on edge'. Anxiety shows itself mostly in physiological symptoms and that one piece of knowledge can save you a lot of additional worry and fear. Learning to recognize when a bodily sensation is bothering you and learning how to slow it and stop it in the moment is a key skill.

After a while of monitoring your bodily sensations and learning which ones are just stress reactions, you will learn how to stop them before they 'take off' and get out of control, causing that much more anxiety. That is the key skill you are teaching yourself during the 3-4-5 process.

All the daily practices (meditation, deep-breathing, mild exercise, better eating, better sleeping, better thinking), will gradually help the body re-adjust to a calmer routine. As the body responds to being taken care of more closely, it will gradually calm down.

It may feel as if anxiety is a substance draining from your body as you gain more calm and confidence.  Once you notice it starting to ease  up, double down on your efforts and progress will accelerate.

First begin calming down the various physical aspects. Start by eliminating anything that is obviously a source of anxiety, if it is possible. Then experiment with combinations of the following until your system starts to calm down: 

Deep-breathing 

exercise 

relaxation time

recreation

meditation/prayer 

hum a tune

creative visualization of positive events 

healthier diet 

listen to all new music 

stop going on social media 

stop listening to news

tell a friend you're depressed or anxious

talk to a crisis hotline or therapist  

ask someone to help you line up professional help

attend religious service 

go out in nature and see natural beauty 

go to an art gallery to see artistic beauty 

re-connect with things that make you feel safe from your life history

begin preparing yourself for real change and some hard work.

Repeating positive affirmations is how to use neuroplasticity to change the brain's automatic  responses.  

HOW TO EASE ANXIETY:

These are not ‘steps’, they're life long tools. The purpose is to find out why you are anxious or depressed and start to find ways to change whatever it is that is causing it or find a way to accept it. This process is also beneficial for mind/body growth even for those without major anxiety issues or genuinely traumatic experiences. If you are an abuse survivor or had a "difficult" childhood, you may be suffering from childhood trauma - a condition that the medical community is just now waking up to and recognizing. Childhood trauma requires special attention but the great news is that we can heal from it and greatly improve our health and happiness without having to talk about it. 

It is recommended that you try to do at least 6 of these activities at some point and keep them up for several months. The first 4 are imperative to begin soon if you have anxiety that’s disrupting your life and sense of well-being. You will do each of them every day - but they're easy. The first one is just breathing.  All of the 3-4-5 beginning activities are done in the program "loop" as you go through your first three months of anxiety fighting.  

Start the first 3 today. Do calming deep-breathing every day as often as possible for a few seconds. Also, begin to take five minutes a couple times a day to clear your mind completely. That is the beginning of the ability to meditate. Meditation is the most important of these if you do nothing else. Then get a notebook or use your computer or other place to write your personal thoughts and start the journaling process. Make sure it is secure and safe from being read so there is no stress about being honest with yourself. (If you can't write it down, try to do it verbally in your mind and remember the main things you discover.) 

When we think through a lot of things freely, often a  word will pop out that is a surprise to us and that word is a hint from our unconscious about what it is that is truly bothering us. Those  "hints" happen a lot when you use a lot of words freely in the course of investigating your own inner reality. Use as much language as you can.

Start making a note of when you feel stressed or have a negative emotion or an emotion that just makes you uncomfortable. 

Many people already know what their deep-seated issues are, they simply can't say them until they are discovered in a step by step process.

When something makes you uncomfortable or have an agitated feeling or sense of anxiety, write down what it was. You will start to see patterns after doing this for a few days or weeks. 

Once you start to get an idea of the patterns of things that really bother you, you know what to start working on with your first set of affirmations that you will think or say to yourself every day.  

Deep breathing, meditation, journaling and affirmations are usually the first 4 activities in this program.