Dealing With Constant Anxiety | How To Quiet The Overwhelm

if you are dealing with constant anxiety it is super important to understand that your body is reacting as if you're in danger you're not but that is how your body's reacting and I'm going to tell you why this is super important and what you can do about it it is possible to overcome constant anxiety truly it is now it's not going to be a 10 minute video that's going to cure you of this but I am going to point you in the right direction and give you a framework and an approach to begin to work through this so if you're new to my channel my name is Barbara Heffernan and I was a psychotherapist for 20 years I quit my therapy practice started this channel to begin to bring information about living a more joyful life worldwide okay let's come back to it when you are anxious your body thinks it's in danger so let me elaborate on this for you anxiety is a signal to your body that something dangerous is happening or about to happen and your body and immediately kicks into gear with a ton of adrenaline and then cortisol floods in to bring the adrenaline down but that adrenaline doesn't come down because you remain anxious the cortisol remains elevated your entire body is ready to flea fight or freeze all the time now some people are very very aware with their anxiety of how it feels in their body that would be called somatic anxiety feeling sweaty heart racing stomach upset all of that in the body anxiety that's felt somatically other people are super aware of cognitive anxiety which are the racing thoughts the oh no and the this is going to happen and then that and then that and then the the catastrophizing in one of my videos I talk about it and I get a lot of comments from people who are like yes this is exactly what happens to me my boss criticizes me at work and my mind goes to one problem to the next to the next and all of a sudden I'm homeless well your body is experiencing that internal story as if it's actually happening so if you experience your anxiety cognitively I'd like to encourage you to begin to understand it and feel it somatically if you feel your anxiety somatically I'd like you to begin to be more aware of the cognitions that goes with it but either way we have to help your body understand that it is not in physical danger nothing is happening right now if you're feeling anxious right now you're watching a video nothing is happening you do not need adrenaline coursing through your blood so the physical effects of anxiety are very real but they're not congruent with the situation let's say you're in that situation where your boss is criticizing you and your body begins to feel anxious that's the fight flight freeze which is a survival response but you're not physically in danger so really beginning to separate those two things to be able to separate okay this might be a difficult situation I'm not saying that maybe you have a hypercritical boss maybe you are worried about losing your job okay but it doesn't require the fight flight freeze chemicals one of the best ways to calm that down is slowing and deepening your breathing I know people don't always want to hear about diaphragmatic breathing but it is super important overall figuring out how to let your body relax periodically during the day learning to be in a state where you can be relaxed but alert right those are the kind of things that are going to help your body calm down and if you can calm your body down while your boss is criticizing you you might actually have more access to the creative part of your brain that can come up with a solution to the problem most of the problems we're dealing with in today's world really require like the full brain to be online not just that amygdala which is the fight flight freeze poof run away or attack or freeze right you can begin to have some of these conversations that might in the past have made you feel anxious with way lower anxiety without that kind of extreme anxiety response so one tool diaphragmatic breathing other things that help you calm down walks in nature that sort of thing another tool is to fully understand the cycle between your thoughts your behaviors and your feelings and I do go into quite a bit of detail about this in my video cognitive behavioral exercises but I'll explain it here as well your thoughts impact how you feel and how you behave your behaviors impact your thoughts and how you feel your feelings have two parts they have a somatic part in the body feeling and they have an emotional part so if you experience your anxiety with like stomach cakes you might get that stomachache first as a physical feeling and then you say you identify it as anxious the emotional feeling and then your brain kicks in to give you a reason to have that stomach ache so if you experience things very somatically this entire cycle will start with your stomach or your muscles or your heart rate If you experience your anxiety cognitively it's going to start with the thoughts and then it's going to trigger into the body but understanding this cycle is super important because choosing behaviors that can interrupt either those somatic feelings or those thoughts can be critical so as I already mentioned the behaviors could be taking a walk calling a good friend getting support engaging in those behaviors that let your body experience more of a sense of calm will build over time and will give you breaks right you're saying like I have constant anxiety so let's make it not instant and then eventually we can get it to the point where it's not really an overwhelming emotion for you right like so again if we go to the fact that all of our emotions have information for us we'll always sometimes get anxiety right it's just a little bit like it's a little wake-up signal right so having a little bit of anxiety that's reasonably managed is fine but we want to get you off of this train of constant anxiety and the other key here whenever somebody has a very habitual emotion whenever anybody says I constantly feel this emotion I call that a habitual emotion our habitual emotions almost always cover up something else people who habitually feel anxiety maybe don't want to feel sad so if something sad happens oop I can feel that emotion I'm gonna get anxious or disappointed you're disappointed in a loved one who's not doing well and they could do well you think and you're disappointed but you don't really want to feel this disappointed or sad so you're going to get anxious and begin to like jump in there and anxiously tell them what to do and anxiety also kicks in when we don't want to feel powerless and yet there are some things we're powerless over in this universe the weather good example right but we can protect ourselves we can learn to be like oh it might rain today I will carry my umbrella hurricane might hit I better go take care of what I need to take care of so knowing we're powerless over something does not mean we roll over and become a doormat But anxiety is very often tied if not always I would say extreme anxiety always tied to those things we don't have power over so we get very attached to a particular outcome we want that outcome but we actually can't achieve it so we're going to go into a whole anxious spiral now I also just at the end here want to say because there's many different types of anxiety right so when somebody says constant anxiety the actual solution for somebody who has OCD versus social anxiety versus generalized anxiety can be different but this concept still applies to all of them for example people with OCD very often will feel I have to follow these rituals so nothing bad happens and they know they know in their conscious mind these rituals totally unrelated to whether that thing actually happens or not but that's how they fight their feeling of powerlessness social anxiety I want everybody to like me I never want to make a mistake you know what not everybody's gonna like you and you will make mistakes so these tips will help no matter what your anxiety is so one is to let your body relax understand that your anxiety is creating a fear response calm that fear response down to look into whether you experience your anxiety somatically in the body or cognitively or both and then begin to more deeply understand the cycle of your thoughts behaviors and feelings alright please give this video a like if it was helpful and subscribe if you're not subscribed I'll see you next week foreign

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 15,767

Keywords: barbara heffernan, Dealing With Constant Anxiety, Anxiety management, Coping with anxiety, Anxiety relief, Overcoming anxiety, Anxiety self-help, Anxiety techniques, Anxiety tips, Anxiety strategies, Anxiety exercises, Anxiety support, Stress management, Calming techniques, Mindfulness for anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy exercises, cbt exercises, somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, cbt cycle of anxiety

Id: enkUeaSwhic

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023