Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety is your body’s natural response to stress. It’s a feeling of fear or apprehension about what is to come.
Most people, at some point in their lives, have experienced some feelings of anxiety. After all, we are constantly trying to navigate life’s unknowns and uncertainties, and this leads to feelings of anxiety because you are anticipating and speculating future events. A certain degree of anxious feeling or trepidation is not only normal, but healthy for everyone. Anxiety acts as a nudge that we need to be a little on guard and prompts us to take action.
However, anxiety that is crippling can wreak havoc in your life and hold you back with irrational fears and worries, that affect your mental and physical health.
Anxiety is never about the past. It can be about the present, such as when you’re worried that something undesirable may have happened; but it’s usually about the future, for example when you’re concerned that something terrible may happen. So, where does this come from? Well, Fear is a natural, powerful, and primitive human emotion that alerts us to the presence of a present danger or a threat of harm, regardless of whether that danger is physical or psychological, real or imagined.
Early humans developed the ability to remember past experiences and project them into the future as a way to spot and remember potential danger and not to repeat it. Great idea but, we have also developed higher brain functions and the capacity for complex thinking and that combined with our very effective nervous system has created mechanisms within us that also work against us when we over think situations, ruminate circumstances and create negative thought loops about ‘What if this or that happens’. When anxiety takes hold, our nervous system goes into a state of high alert, perceived danger and threat, whether we need it in that particular situation or not. Even more debilitating if it is unmanaged, our body can remember how that felt last time and creates future anxieties for situations that have not yet happened and might never happen, yet we can still feel the affect that it could happen again.
For the most we tend to think we have control of our lives and are able to cope with whatever life throws at us. However, when we do magnify an expected fear or worry and we feel under threat or believe we do not have the ability to cope with whatever might be coming, that is when the anxiety people tend to feel builds.
Some people find it harder to control anxiety than others and these feelings can be mild or severely impair our daily life. We may have a predisposition to worry excessively or are fearful because of life experiences or possibly past traumatic events experienced by themselves or others. Whatever the reason for feelings of anxiety, it will cause us to worry about possible future events in our lives. We may not even realise why we feel as we do, and in fact most of us do not because it sits in our subconscious and our memory and quietly guides our thoughts, feelings and behaviours to help us avoid risk and danger and then surfaces when triggered. For that reason we don’t necessarily understand what has caused a trigger of these emotions and physical symptoms within us, we just feel the effects.
There are a number of types of anxiety with different symptoms and these can include social anxiety, PTSE (post-traumatic stress disorder), phobias, panic attacks and more generalised anxiety disorder or (GAD).
If you’ve ever felt any of the feelings or experiences below, these can be attributable sign and symptoms of anxiety whether on a mild level or escalating to a damaging level.
However they occur in a person’s life experience it can be very frightening, upsetting and debilitating and learning how to reduce these symptoms and calm yourself so you can take control and function effectively has got to be a positive way forward for anyone.
I work with clients to create awareness of what anxiety is and where it comes from. What makes you anxious and how to overcome that. We look at what’s happening in your body and together work on strategies to calm your system and what is happening in your head and how to alter your thinking about what you are anxious about using techniques for both your mind (neuro) and your body (somatic work). Hence the term ‘Neuro somatic’.
I combine a variety of techniques and strategies to soothe anxiety. And just a few examples might include:
This calms your system by slowing down your breathing to take back control of your body when it enters a stressed state. Such as breathing deeply into your abdomen, rather than from your chest to reduce those triggers the body has when your nervous system is activated under stress. The sympathetic nervous system triggers a stress response using chemical signals in the brain. Conversely when you can more consciously calm your body into a more regulated state, the other part of your nervous system, the parasympathetic system, enables you to relax and recharge your body.
We go through different techniques to suit you so that you can more easily and quickly regulate your breathing and help you feel calmer and less jumpy.
We will help you recognise what you are feeling in your body and where issues are signalling and then enabling a relaxation of muscle groups over your entire body. Working your way up your body, effectively and quickly. This works on your somatic symptoms and reduces the chemical signals that create a stress response in your brain.
When the brain is anxious it sees external triggers as threats. Using techniques and mindfulness we can help comfort and reassure your nervous system. And take the focus away from the perceived threat.
External exercise is also good generally for wellbeing and reduces anxious thoughts. Combing activities and simply being in green space is soothing for anxiety and by using your body outside you feel grounded and connected to nature.
Using other techniques, based on neuro linguistic programming, [NLP] and CBT therapy techniques we can help you to focus your thoughts and responses to your day-to-day busy lives more positively to get back control and focus on more positive behaviours that enable a happier, healthier lifestyle
If you are looking to reduce stress and anxiety in your life using focused and specific techniques and activities designed to suit you. I can help you calm your mind and your body to focus forwards to achieve your desired outcomes and reduce the anxieties of daily life.
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