Anxiety Part 3
If you find yourself feeling some anxiety there are a few things you want to do for yourself:
1st- Develop emotion regulation, it is so important to begin helping yourself calm down. Like I mentioned in my first post, once your brain starts to perceive an anxious situation and begins the anxious script it is flooded with adrenaline etc. which spikes our heart rate, and increase our breathing. After we start getting all amped up, our brain starts taking cues from our heart rate and breath and decides that we are STILL not cool with the top we wore to the blind date, so it continues to release those chemicals thinking they are needed- causing a feedback loop that can be hard to get out of. Why am I telling ya’all this, you know what it feels like to be trapped by anxious thoughts. This is WHY- try starting a daily regime which is relaxing and can give your brain and body some space away from anxiety. Mindfulness is great, so is emotional freedom tapping. Walking or going to the gym is awesome too. Although if your brain is already anxious, do high paced exercises may not decrease your anxious feelings as your body may release more adrenaline during the workout.
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2nd- If mindfulness or tapping does not seem to work for you, you may find yourself getting more anxious as you try to be calm, Stoicism can be very helpful, and suggests journaling about your anxieties. (Weird suggestion, I know)
3rd- Starting looking at where/when/how your anxious thoughts/feelings begin, try a thought chain and begin to kindly questions where these feelings of not being good enough/safe enough stem from. Often they stem back to small moments when we were young, but could have snowballed into our anxiety now.
4th- Share your anxiety, talk about it with your trusted friends, find yourself a good therapist, and maybe join a support group! Loads of people have anxiety, and it may help to know you aren’t alone!
***Originally Posted May 30th 2018 on LVLHolistic’s Instagram page as a collaborative presentation regarding mental health and nutrition***