3 steps to find relief from chronic anxiety
Anxiety can be a normal part of life. In the short term, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol can be helpful. For example, you may have felt anxiety before a deadline or in a job interview. Anxiety can help you to overcome fears and obstacles between you and your goal(s) by increasing your heart rate, focus and concentration. These stress hormones are designed to be in the body for a short time to keep us safe. Not to be in our body for a long time.
However, when anxiety become too intense, or lasts too long, persistent exposure of these stress hormones can have a devastating effect on our physical and mental health.
Enter Anxiety the Bad.
Below are some of the bad effects persistent anxiety has on the body:
· Sense of doom – difficulty concentrating
· Panic attacks
· Depression – helplessness, loss of interest, social withdraw
· Headaches from constant worry
· Irritability
· Pounding heart-
· Breathing problems rapid shallow breathing
· Loss of libido
· Upset stomach nausea and diarrhea
· Extreme fatigue – sleep issues- I love this one, being so tired from anxiety and yet cannot sleep.
· Increase in blood pressure
· Muscle aches and joint pain
Anxiety the Ugly
When the body is exposed to chronic anxiety and the persistent long exposure to stress hormones, enter Anxiety the Ugly. This persistent and chronic exposure to these stress hormones can increase the frequency of symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and depression and lead to serious health problems with our immunity, heart, and digestive systems of your body.
Our immunity and our body’s ability to heal are reduced when there is a high and long exposure of stress hormones in the body. It behooves us to remain relaxed and calm as much as possible. This increases our feel good hormones like serotonin and dopamine thus increasing our body’s power to heal
Heart issues and high blood pressure are serious issues with chronic anxiety as well as digestive problems and IBS. Chronic anxiety and the stress hormones place a tremendous amount of stress on the heart and digestive systems of our body.
Enough of the ugly already!
Here are 3 steps I use to stop these bad and ugly states of anxiety
1st– Develop body awareness
2nd Take deep slow breaths Start immediately at onset of bad anxiety and continue
3rd Walk away, talking it out, take a walk and/or use mindfulness
Allow me to explain these one by one.
1st Step: Develop body awareness means to learn when our body is under stress. This may take some practice and may require practicing meditation or mindfulness to learn what relaxation feels like. How do you know your body is under persistence stress if you are always in stress? By practicing some relaxation techniques like meditation or mindfulness you teach your body what ‘calm’ feels like. Then when it is assaulted by stress, you will know it. So you know your body is under stress or you are experiencing some or all of the symptoms from the Anxiety the Bad above. What to do?
Step two: Breathe. Take a slow deep breath in and release it slowly. Repeat a few times more if required. You should notice an instant relief from the anxiety state after the breaths. This is an important and extremely effective step in changing the body’s anxiety state. Now your mind and body are prepared for the next step.
Step three: You have several options based on the type of anxiety and stress you are experiencing. Perhaps walking away and going somewhere safe and calm is the best recourse or taking a walk to clear the mind and gain perspective. Another form of stress may require talking it out. For example: what is the source of this anxiety? What about this is in my control? Or other questions that come to mind. The important part of step 3 is to face the source. Anxiety is often another side of fear and when fear is faced it often dissipates.
Practice these steps and let me know how they work for you.
I have other blogs with more tips. You might like:
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Who is Art?
Art is a certified hypnotherapist and Reiki master teacher. He received his hypnotherapy certification from Hypnosis Motivational Institute, an accredited hypnotherapy college
Art’s passion is to empower others to find and unlock their own healer and personal power. Once this power is unleashed, a life of intention and balance in mind /body/spirit can unfold. He uses Reiki infused hypnosis during his session work to enable clients to connect intuitively and heal holistically.
He holds additional certifications in PTSD, Smoking Cessation, Inner Child Healing and Spiritual Hypnosis and Counseling.