5 Ways to Counter your Anxiety without Breaking a Sweat

Let me be blunt about this. A real long-term sustainable anxiety change requires work on our thoughts. A strategic, focused and repetitive approach to wrangling up, challenging and putting problem thoughts out to pasture has to be part of a solid anxiety treatment plan. I don’t want to pretend this isn’t critical. What I do want to convey, however, is that there are many things we can do to support our ability to address our thoughts and overcome our anxiety. Best of all, many of you will agree, they don’t require even breaking a sweat! 

Here are 5 ways we can set up our successful anxiety counterattack:

1. Belly breathe more often. Breathing is a necessity of life that usually occurs without much thought. When you breathe in air, blood cells receive oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a waste product that is carried back through your body and exhaled. Improper breathing can upset the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange and contribute to anxiety, panic attacks, fatigue and other physical and emotional disturbances. Most people often get into the habit of chest breathing, that is breathing in a way that expands the chest and shoulders. Typically, this is a shallow and rapid habit of breathing. In order to make sure we are fully oxygenating our bodies, properly expelling carbon dioxide and soothing our central nervous system, we need to belly breathe more. To do this, inhale slowly and deeply through your nose. Keep your shoulders relaxed. Your abdomen should expand, and your chest should rise very little. Exhale slowly through your nose or mouth as your belly pulls back in toward your spine. Repeat this as often as you think to do so. With time and practice, you’ll slowly shift from your autopilot chest breathing to this healthier way of belly breathing. 

2. Apply pressure on your wrist. Acupressure is an ancient Chinese healing method. It involves putting pressure with your fingers or the hand on certain points of your body to unblock the flow of Qi and release tension to restore inner harmony. I think we all agree, when we’re feeling anxiety we are definitely not experiencing inner harmony! The great thing about acupressure is that it is something you can do on your own so subtly that you can use this technique wherever you are when anxiety strikes. This is just one of many acupressure points to help with anxiety. Apply pressure with your thumb at the point where your wrist forms a crease with your hand. Press on the pinky side of your wrist. Hold the acupressure point for about 2 minutes, applying a generous amount of pressure. 

3. Cut down on caffeine. Okay, full disclosure, I’m writing this sipping on a coffee… But, taking anxiety and other things into account, I’ve begrudgingly figured out my caffeine limit and this coffee is my last one of the day. I’m what one might call a practical health nut. That is, I need pretty convincing and good reasons to limit things I like. Caffeine, and for me that almost entirely means coffee, definitely falls into that category. As a powerful stimulant, caffeine revs up our system and often creates physiological effects similar to anxiety: agitation, restlessness, twitching, dizziness, increased heart rate to name a few. So in order to help your anxiety without lifting a finger, simply acknowledge that caffeine may be increasing your anxiety and experiment with cutting back. 

4. Sing a song (inside your head). I stumbled into this one by accident when I was a kid visiting my cousins. My cousin Katie had a stuffed animal that sang the song “I Whistle a Happy Tune”. For some reason, I loved that song, committed it to memory and sang it (inside my head of course) whenever I felt afraid. It worked like a charm! I expanded that experience from fear of the boogeyman and continue to use that song to disrupt my looping, worrisome thoughts or to switch tracks when I catch myself overanalyzing things I just said to someone. As a little aside, it was almost 40 years later that I found out was from the popular 1950’s musical King and I. 

5. Reach out and make a social connection. One solid way to help us with mental wellbeing that ranks as high as good sleep and eating our veggies is to make and maintain connections with friends and family. Well, assuming family doesn’t totally stress you out. We are social beings and the need for a connection to others is built into our DNA. Unfortunately, and I know from experience, makes social anxiety particularly difficult. But taking time out of your busy day to catch up with a friend, join a book club and prioritize their meetings, or talk to the cashier as you’re checking out will help you with your anxiety. And totally worth turning these little connections into a routine or habit.

These 5 things aren’t the ‘silver bullet’ type of anxiety help. But they are totally in the ‘it takes a village’ type of help.

It’s easy to underestimate or blanketly dismiss this type of help without even trying. For some counterintuitive reason we tend to overvalue big, hard to do things and brush off easier things as not being worth it. If you feel like bucking the system, give these a try! You’ll be pleasantly surprised! 

5 Unusual Questions for Successful Meditation Onboarding

Welcome! I was expecting you. You’ve always struck me as the meditative type. Even so, you’ll probably need a little assistance to get up to speed. It’s not personal. These questions aren’t what people typically associate with being important to a meditation practice. 

You may be thinking, “What possibly do I need to think about in order to totally bliss out?” As it turns out, 5 critical things. Answering these will set you up for a legit long-term meditation practice. So before you even try to convince your hip flexors into that zen-like cross-legged lotus position check out the following. 

1. Know your motivation. This isn’t a riff off of Simon Sinek's, “Know your why.” It’s more basic than that. Are you being told you should do this or are you coming to meditation on your own volition? Have you tried other solutions that didn’t work? Does meditation seem like it’s the easiest thing you can do to get the results you’re looking for? Are you doing it to impress some hot so-and-so at work? Your motivation is what it is. BUT it will be extremely helpful to the success of your practice if you are honestly aware of what is driving your interest to meditate. 

2. Know your level of trust that meditation will actually help with what you’re wanting to see happen. For many, the practice of meditation seems too simple, boring, stupid (or fill in your own blank) to really be helpful. On the other hand, many think meditation is the holy grail to achieve what they’re looking for and trust it wholeheartedly. Both sides of this spectrum have their downfalls. Know your level of trust going into this. It will directly impact what your brain will ‘see’. It will also put a spotlight on where your biases, both pro and con, will influence your experience. 

3. Know your history of sticking with things that don’t show immediate results. Most of us totally stink at persisting with things that are more of a marathon than a sprint. Or we stink at sticking with things that are more subtle and nuanced than overt and plain to see. Unfortunately, meditation falls into both these categories, marathon and subtle. These aren’t problems in and of themselves, just super important to know ahead of time. Recognize your normal operating preferences and where they might be counter to what meditation offers. If needed, calibrate your expectations taking into account where you might have to do things counter to your preferences. 

4. Recall your past attempts at meditation. Dwelling on the past isn’t what we’re talking about. What we are talking about is that knowing your past can help you be more strategic in the future. Think about what your experiences with meditation were like in the past. Frustrated you couldn’t get your brain to turn off? Totally fidgety and bored after 2 minutes? Didn’t feel rested and rejuvenated after sacrificing 20 minutes of your day that you’ll never get back? Again, this beta is critical. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

5. Define specifically what ‘success’ and ‘successful timeline’ looks like for you. You gotta think about this. You may not be in the habit of thinking along these ‘specific’ lines. On the other hand, you may have pretty strong expectations and specific benefits you’re looking for. Knowing what you’re setting yourself up for will help you. Are your signs of success realistic? Is your timeline realistic? Look at your expectations here and tweak where needed. 

Meditation really does offer all the benefits you’ve read about so don’t let these questions deter you. Use the information you’ve uncovered about yourself to offset any meditation surprises that may pop up and set up a practice that will truly last.

Severe Blushing Stinks! One Legit Strategy to Make It Go Away.

Fear of blushing is a prominent complaint by many with social anxiety. We can hide many things with our anxiety, but blushing totally exposes us. Our body seems to betray the fundamental laws of loyalty and self-preservation. It’s embarrassing and all-around miserable.

The physiology of why some of us turn tomato-red at the drop of a hat, and others don’t, isn’t totally understood by researchers and doctors. But one aspect that seems to play a big role is how we respond to that dreaded physiological arousal called blushing.

When we feel that familiar flush and sudden onslaught of warmth fill our cheeks we instantly get self-conscious. Many times we’re filled with some hierarchy of self-hate. If we can escape a situation we will. If we can hide, even better.

All our thoughts get lassoed into one big self-focused bundle and only intensifies the more we think of how red our face is. It creates a vicious cycle. The more we think of how much we’re blushing, the more we blush. The more we blush the more we think of how much we’re blushing. And since it is soooo noticeable to everyone around us, we think about it even more… and want to crawl under the nearest rock.

Needless to say, that’s not the response that’s helpful.

2 Effective Ways to Combat Severe Blushing

In all my research, I’ve found two effective ways to help curb severe blushing. The first is an expensive and sorta crazy sounding surgery. Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy is a surgical procedure where the nerves that cause the facial blood vessels to dilate (widen) are cut. Um. No thanks.

The second is teaching those who experience severe blushing to explicitly focus their attention on to anything else but their blushing.

Seriously. This simple strategy is an extremely effective way to help people decrease their blushing and cope with their blushing at the same time.

Self-focused Attention

Blushing and self-focused attention mutually reinforce each other. It’s cruel. I don’t know the evolutionary explanation as to why some of us “need” this extra ill-timed dilation of our facial and chest blood vessels. We blush and then we turn our attention on ourselves and the fact we’re blushing and so we blush harder and then we focus more of our attention onto the fact that we’re still blushing… Clearly we made it this far so maybe it isn’t all bad. Okay, that’s not how I really think. I personally hate blushing unnecessarily so I found something that works.

It comes down to redirecting your attention outward and away from your blushing. Seriously. Acknowledge that the blushing has commenced and then pivot to Plan A. Plan A is stop thinking about your blushing by turning your attention to whatever you’re doing and your environment. With practice you’ll be able to break through the vicious blushing circle!

Were you hoping there was some secret intervention to stop your blushing in the first place? I know I was years ago when I began my research into this in an effort to help me with my own blushing. But I have to tell you since I’ve been practicing turning my attention away from my ‘self’ and turning it outward onto what I’m doing, it has become the next best thing!

I can definitely vouch for this one. What has helped you?

3 Novel Ways to Change Your Anxiety

We are both complex creatures and waaay too simple for our own good. For the sake of time, I’ll skip the complexity and jump right into the simple stuff. More specifically, the simple stuff around our anxiety. And for that, it all drills down to our mental model. 

Mental Models

A mental model is the framework we use to understand the way things work, make decisions, and conceptualize challenges. We create them as we grow up and they become just “who we are”. 

When life is going great we don’t seem to have reason to explore our mental models or question them. We pretty much just rock. 

However, when life stinks we still don’t explore them…

That’s a problem. Mental models offer the key point of intervention for creating good things in our lives and extinguishing the bad things in our lives. 

Let me show you how to get started exploring your mental model around anxiety. And changing it.

Take a moment to think about these questions.

• What happens when you start to experience that panicky feeling?
• What are the negative thoughts that your mind has when you are feeling anxious?
• What do you remember being your worst time with anxiety and what are you fearing is going to happen next time?
• How much do you hate having that anxious pit in your stomach and racing mind?
• How often do you avoid certain things to try to avoid feeling anxious or get that impulsive feeling to bolt from situations to feel better?

The answers to these questions contribute to your anxiety mental model. They make up how you view your anxiety. Plain and simple, without changing things within your mental model, it’ll continue to fuel your anxiety. 

To create change in your anxiety do these 3 things to start altering your mental model.

1. Question your lynchpin underlying assumptions, the driving forces that perpetuate your anxiety. It’s frustrating, often we can’t figure out why we have anxiety. But frankly I think spending a lot of time trying to uncover the why is a waste of time. Better, start with identifying the main thoughts that perpetuate your anxiety. Do any of these sound familiar? “I’ve always been anxious, that’s just how I’m wired”, “I can’t help it”, “I don’t have time to do anything differently”, “I shouldn’t be like this”, “I’m weak.” Those underlying assumptions that you’ve subconsciously taken in as “facts” and built your anxiety upon, need to be changed and replaced. Manually. As in saying to yourself, “I no longer believe that I’m hard-wired to be an anxious person.” Period. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to support that statement with examples. You will lose that game. In order to change your lynchpin underlying assumptions you just need to declare to yourself that you no longer believe that to be true. And repeat the new assumption when you feel your anxiety rise. 
2. Seek out individuals and information that offer a different interpretation of anxiety. It’s human nature to want to surround ourselves with people who think like us. It’s comfortable and takes little mental energy. Two high priorities for humans! It’s such a natural way for us to operate that we’ll even subconsciously discount or reject opposing opinions in our effort to find others that confirm what we believe. Psychologists call this ‘confirmation bias’. So in order for you to make strides in eliminating your anxiety, it’s important not to fall into the confirmation bias trap. Read from different sources of information than usual, listen to different interpretations about anxiety and it’s treatment than you have in the past. If you find you’re just hearing what you already knew or suspected…look for something that totally contradicts it or suggests something different. Talk to different types of professionals. The point here is if your anxiety isn’t going away on its own or with the strategies you’ve tried, it’s time to figure out a different mental model. The only way to do that is to expose your thinking to new ideas AND notice when you are clinging tightly or looking to confirm your original beliefs. 
3. Pay attention to novel experiences. In order for us to deal with the amount of information and stimuli we are exposed to each day, our brains consolidate things and opt for the most energy-efficient strategies. This is the reason why we have confirmation bias so badly. Our brains don’t want to invite anything that is going to be a drain on its energy. As a result when it comes to our anxiety, we fall into the practice of glomming all of the times we feel anxious into one known quantity. When x happens then y happens then z happens… Our brain’s think “Here we go again!” and don’t have to give it any more thought or energy. In order to change our anxiety we need to disrupt this ‘autopilot’. We need to pay attention to the times and things that are different. We need to be curious about how long our panic attack lasted or the fact that we didn’t get a tight chest like last time. When we pay attention, even though it takes more energy and sometimes more uncomfortable, we get a more accurate and undistorted view of our experience. It is in this place that true opportunities for effective interventions lie!

Our mental models pretty much dictate how we see the world and how we are in the world. The good news, they’re not set in stone. It’s in disrupting these previously held frameworks that new and improved ones can take hold and our anxiety can finally start taking the backseat. 

Do have any mental model busting strategies you’ve tried? I’d love to hear about them. 

If you’re the DIY, super busy, dip-your-toe-in-before-diving type and would like to overcome your anxiety in the comfort, convenience and privacy of your own home, check out my 4 week online mini-course.

5 Ways to Focus When Your To-Do List Has A Million Things On It

Part of the solution to focusing better is letting go of the strongly held “anti-focus” beliefs you may not even realize you have. Here are the top 5 that make us lose valuable time and keep us feeling swamped. And what you can do instead.

5 Focus Beliefs and How to Change Them

1. Belief: If I don’t do something as soon as I think of it, I’ll forget it. Antidote: Write it down on a running list you keep on your phone (or notebook) and do it after you finish what you’re working on. Don’t change tasks each time you remember something and don’t bog your brain down trying to remember this type of information. Write it on something and stay the course.

2. Belief: Working on a few things at once will help me get through my to-do list faster. Antidote: To see for yourself, this may take a leap of faith. You need to actually put the blinders on, ignore the other things needing to be done, and do only one-thing-at-a-time to see for yourself. Go ahead, set your stopwatch. Science is on your side.

3. Belief: Distractions of my choosing are okay, it’s the other ones that eat away at my time. Antidote: Micro-time losses add up over the course of the day regardless of whether we are consciously initiating them or not. Each time we stop what we’re doing to quickly zip off this email, check the notifications on our phone, or look up that one little thing, even if we are choosing to do so, we lose time transitioning back to our original task. Bottom line, fight the urges to interrupt your attention to what you’re doing. Squirrel!

4. Belief: There’s not enough time in the day to do everything but I’ll pretend there is and waste energy on stressing about getting everything done! Antidote: Hate to get all tough love on you but you’ll truly benefit from coming to terms with reality here. Even if you have folks knocking down your door, when it’s literally not possible to get everything done, don’t get pulled into crazytown over it. Stress takes up valuable time and energy so allocate it wisely to things in your control. Take a deep breath and know your sense of what you can do is based on reality. Calmly press on forward.

5. Belief: I don’t know what to do first and since I need to do the absolute first thing first if I don’t know what that is, what do I do? Antidote: Do the hardest thing or the part that you are least looking forward doing first. If a priority order isn’t readily apparent, you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck with this strategy. Your plan B should be doing the thing at the top of your list. Your plan C should be doing them in alphabetical order. Plan D close your eyes and point to one and do it. Plan E…you get the point, just do something. When you continuously work on your list, prioritization becomes more apparent. It’s sorta like magic.

Huge to-do lists and distractions are here to stay. These 5 strategies will help you replace work-overwhelm with work-momentum!

A Whiff of Lavender for Anxiety? C’mon, Really?

(Before you read this, ask yourself if there is anything I can tell you or research I can show you that will make you believe that taking a big whiff of lavender will help ease your anxiety?)

As with many things, we selectively apply our experiences and logic when it comes to helping ourselves feel better.

We’re funny creatures that way.

We believe that the smell of bread baking in the oven can make us feel warm and cozy, even a bit nostalgic, and the smell of pumpkin spice can have us instantly jonesin’ for our favorite fall latte, but we don’t believe something like the smell of lavender can legitimately help us feel calm. Or the smell of lemon and eucalyptus can seriously increase your energy when you’re feeling over it.

Most of us go through life thinking we are in the driver seat carefully architecting our experiences. Yet, often we have huge blind spots when it comes to feeling better emotionally. We somehow don’t connect some of the easiest dots and overlook some of our most accessible sources of help.

Let’s get back to the smell of bread baking in the oven. I want you to feel warm and cozy so you are more open to the idea I’m about to throw on you. And here is the idea: you can use certain smells in the form of essential oils to help you feel better. It’s called aromatherapy and it can help you.

The accurate mechanisms of aromatherapy have not yet been identified. Which basically means that scientists don’t exactly know why or how it works. That’s a bummer because we like to know why and how things work in order to believe in them.

But here’s the catch…scientists don’t know how and why most things work! Some theories, however, gain ‘culturally accepted status’ as valid and others don’t. If a theory fits into your ‘idea’ of how you think a mechanism should work, “Bingo!” it’s believed. While other ideas, for whatever reason, are relegated to a lesser status and are ignored, even with research behind it.

So, forget about lavender or lemon for a minute.

“Feeling better” comes down to doing things differently than what we were doing before. Plain and simple. It requires change of some sort. It requires trying some new things and giving up some old things.

Aromatherapy may not be “your thing” but it just may symbolize how strong resistance to change can be. If it is your thing, you’re in luck! It is a very effective way to help curb anxiety and can safely enhance your current go-to strategies!

Is It Anxiety or 'A Shot in the Dark'?

A couple years ago I got a coffee ‘to-go’ from the neighborhood coffee shop on my way to work. I usually have my own mug with me but didn't that day. No problem.

Not too long after arriving at work, my body started freaking out. I was sweating, my heart was beating out my chest, I was jittery, my mind was racing and I started feeling panicky like never before.

It came out of nowhere and was totally scary. My day was busy and there was a lot on my mind but this was weird.

I started taking some deep breaths to try to calm myself down. That worked marginally, but I could still feel my heart and my mind was still racing. I didn’t know what was happening. Was this a panic attack? I’d never had one before but definitely knew about them.

At some point, I glanced at my paper coffee cup and noticed the barista’s markings for my order. It read “shot in dark”. “What?” I thought to myself, this was supposed to be just a regular coffee.

I then realized that my reaction was a result of accidentally picking up the wrong coffee order at the coffee shop that morning! Instead of my usual coffee, I had drunk one with two extra shots of espresso! No wonder my body and mind were freaking out! I had just bombarded it with a super high jolt of caffeine and it was reacting as I would’ve expected it to.

I felt better instantly. Well, my body was still a jittery mess due to the caffeine coursing through my veins and my mind was still faster than usual but once I realized this logical reason for my reactions, I was at ease. It was a false alarm brought on my a ‘shot in the dark’.

Upon labeling it a false alarm, all of those symptoms that had captured my full attention and had me so worried soon became a fading-into-the-background noise. My symptoms were still happening but they no longer gripped me with their power.

I got back to work and waited it out.

You can do this too with your anxiety. There are so many similarities.

• If you start to feel your body anxiously amping up, check in. If something isn’t immediately requiring your “fight or flight” reaction label it a false alarm.

• Anxiety triggers false alarms. Teach your mind to settle down with the realization that this type of experience can be attributed to ‘anxiety’ just as my type of experience could be attributed to too much caffeine all at once.

• Just like my accidental coffee with a double shot of espresso, your anxiety is something real and once it has been activated it needs to quietly run its course in the background. Important point: In the background! Label it a false alarm and then turn your attention back on to what you were doing or need to do.

• Remind yourself periodically if you need to that you’re experiencing a normal reaction to something that just triggered your anxiety (usually a thought) and that you can let it dissolve.

• Your anxiety is super uncomfortable because it captures your full attention and usually spirals to become even bigger. Check it. Label it. Forget it.

Have you ever had an experience that mimicked anxiety? What happened? How did you deal with it?

5 Easy Ways to Ensure Your Brain Isn’t Pulling One Over On You

You’re sitting there in your yoga pants sipping your favorite hot beverage and reading a Reddit article on your phone. Seems pretty mellow right? For the most part it is. But on a sensory level, your brain isn’t resting. There are still tons of pieces of information your brain is processing and staying on top of. Now picture all the information that your brain takes in as you ride down the busy escalator to the packed subway on your way to work. No doubt your brain is working double-time!

Fortunately, your brain is expertly equipped for both situations, and all situations in between. 

So let’s pause a moment and give your brain the props it deserves. Nice work brain, keep it up!

Thank goodness too, that your brain isn’t the complaining type. From a cognitive perspective, information is costly to take in, store, manipulate and retrieve. The more information it is presented with, like the subway station during rush hour, the more taxing. Don’t be fooled just because your brain makes it look easy. It’s not.

The way your brain is able to function efficiently during even the most stimulation-dense situations is through various short-cut systems it has at its’ disposal. One of the most common is the use of narrative. 

Narrative, or the way you explain things to yourself, fills in the blanks when you don’t have facts, and the stories you tell yourself, creates patterns. Patterns are easier for your brain to recognize and manage than tons of disparate bits of information or things that don’t make sense. 

There are many types of patterns your brain relies on. 

Causality, that is logically progressing from cause to effect, makes for an efficient narrative and is a common ‘go-to’ pattern for our brains. A story that progresses logically in this manner is easier to neatly package than one that takes wild twists and turns and may not wrap up nicely. It’s no surprise that an overworked brain likes causality. And no surprise then, that we quickly come up with answers for everything, explain anything that comes across our paths and try to avoid uncertainty at all cost!

We feel better when we know the why of things and when things ‘make sense’ to us. We even feel better when we totally make things up that fit that bill. We end up telling ourselves a lot of stories that increase our impression of understanding, without needing them to be based on reality. 

Your brain’s ‘Causality Narrative’ pattern building is essential for continuing to function at the high level you do. But in order to make sure this short-cut is helpful and doesn’t lead you astray, it’s important to do these 5 things:

• Become aware of the cause-and-effect stories you tell yourself

• Become aware of the ways you fill-in-the-blanks when you don’t know the facts

• Become aware of the ways your wishful thinking or pessimistic thinking influences that way you explain things

• Become aware of how your stories fail to respect the facts that you actually know

• Increase your comfort level with uncertainty so you don’t automatically explain things you don’t know.

The more you understand how your brain works and practice fine tuning it, the higher performing your brain will become without negatively effecting its’ efficiency.

5 Ways to Stop Bargaining with Your Anxiety and Feel Better

We’re all bargainers. No, not like the world class ones you’ll encounter as you nudge your way through the busy shops of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, or wander through the famous stalls of Jemaa El Fnaa in Marrakech, or get lost in the maze of the ancient markets in Delhi. Few of us ever reach that level of bargaining. Most of us feel utterly uncomfortable in these types of haggling situations. We avoid them at all cost. And if by total accident we ever found ourselves there, we’d be counting the days until we were back in the safety of fixed price tags!

We think we prefer things more concrete and non-negotiable.

The funny thing is, we’re constantly negotiating. If we were to turn up the volume on our awareness, we’d shock ourselves with how often we are wheeling and dealing…with ourselves!

Here are some examples. Have you bargained with the anxiety gods that as long as you keep your anxiety they will protect you from really bad things happening? Or convince yourself that as long as you keep your worry front and center, you’re being responsible and ‘fighting the good fight’ and that it will eventually pay off? Or have you traded your ‘peace of mind’ in exchange for providing for your family?

The problem with this type of internal bargaining and negotiating is that it is a one-way street. The other side might be at the table but they aren’t signing the contract. So, because in our minds so much is at stake, we end up with exceptional follow-through. We live up to our side of the bargain and worry, keep our anxiety, avoid certain things, even throw in a panic attack or two, and the other side? Well, they’re still not signing and there are no guarantees that they’re going to come through for us.

Would you EVER enter into a business deal like this? Even if your job doesn’t require making deals…logically does this make sense to you?

Me either.

So where does that leave us?

5 Ways to Stop Bargaining with Your Anxiety

1. We need to shed some light on the bargains we’ve made with some unreliable counterparts. Constant anxiety in return for life turning out ok. Lack of sleep in order to ensure business success. Chronic worry in order to guarantee my kids stay safe. Being overweight in order for my kids to get to their activities. Panic attacks to stay employed with my demanding but high paying job.

2. We need to ask ourselves if this is the only way that we will get the outcome we are wanting. Do I really need to wake up anxious in order for my life to turn out ok? Is the picture I’ve painted for my life the only picture that will work? Is being afraid of losing what I have or what I want to have the best way to keep it? Ask yourself some real questions along these lines.

3. Think logically even though anxiety isn’t logical. Anxiety is usually based on something that is potentially real and so logically an anxious reaction does make sense, though exaggerated. Once we accept that, we then we can think of other logical ways to deal with whatever we’re struggling with. We keep anxiety as one option and then we add other options to our menu. For example, you’re overwhelmed with responsibilities at work. One option is to wake up each morning before work feeling anxious, another option is to call in sick, or start looking for another job, or talk with your boss, or reframe what’s being asked of you, or take an online class to fill in skill gaps, or talk with a friend, or learn natural ways to help your body calm down, or make sure you exercise, or or or…

4. We need to experiment with other options. We can always return back to an anxious reaction. In a screwed up kinda way, anxiety will actually even feel comfortable because the known is always more comfortable than the unknown. But, we need to try out other reactions to address and deal with what is totally stressing us out because anxiety isn’t effective and makes life complicated and sucky. The key when we’re experimenting is to actually give the new reaction repetition and time to see if it works. Too often we try something once or twice and determine it doesn’t work. Our anxiety has had plenty of time and practice so we owe the same to other strategies!

5. Cut ourselves some slack. I know, that goes against all the hard-a$$ ‘wisdom’ out there. It flies in the face of all the self-critical cheerleading that has become the sacred path to success in our culture. Most likely you’ve been going that way too. It really doesn’t work for the long haul. So, maybe throw this one into your experimenting cycle too. You’re not going to the opposite end of the spectrum, lighting patchouli and telling yourself, “It’s all good.” You’re merely accepting a little bit more of being human, having reactions that make sense, and doing your best to make changes going forward…minus the self-flagellation.

Backing out of a past negotiation with your anxiety is ok. I think your anxiety is expecting it any day now.

Leave a reply and let me know what you just unbargained out of :-)

5 Ways to Strengthen Communication with Your Vagus Nerve for the New, Calmer You!

Want to be able to cut to the front of the line and immediately get the attention of your calming rock star? Want a VIP pass with your nervous system for those times you are about to lose it? It is yours for the taking and it comes in the form of your vagus nerve.

Your vagus nerve is responsible for your ‘rest and digest’ functions of your nervous system (aka calming down). To some degree, you are genetically predisposed to varying levels of vagal tone (receptivity), but this still doesn’t mean that you can’t change it.

Here are 5 ways to increase the receptivity or tone the vagus nerve:

1. Slow, rhythmic, diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing from your diaphragm (you can think of it like breathing from your belly), rather than shallowly from the top of the lungs stimulates and tones the vagus nerve. Make a plan to do this slow, rhythmic belly breathing a few times a day for a couple minutes each. Celebrate! It’s not like we need to run miles each day. Deep, slow breathing is totally doable!

2. Humming and Speaking. Since the vagus nerve is connected to the vocal cords, humming mechanically or talking stimulates it. You can hum a song, talk with your co-worker, or even better repeat the sound ‘OM.’

3. Washing your face with cold water. The mechanism here is not known, but cold water on your face stimulates the vagus nerve. This is totally NOT what you feel like doing when you are getting that ‘ramping up’ anxiety feeling, but next time you do give this a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

4. Meditation. Loving kindness meditation promotes feelings of goodwill towards yourself and others. A 2010 study by Barbara Fredrickson and Bethany Kik found that increasing positive emotions led to increased social closeness and an improvement in vagal tone. Again, the mechanics aren’t quite known but this one is too good and easy to pass up.

5. Balancing the gut microbiome. The presence of healthy bacteria in the gut creates a positive feedback loop through the vagus nerve, increasing its tone. Yes, your gut bacteria are finally getting their fifteen minutes of fame! It may seem like the trendy health topic of the day but more and more research is backing up the mind-body connection theory that has been around for a long time.

Toning your vagus nerve sounds funny, I know. Sorta kinky even. However, the vagus nerve holds one of the most easily accessed keys to creating the calmer new you in 2018. What have you got to lose?

I’d love to hear how they work for you!