Dealing with Anxiety - part 1

Would everyone who has never in their life been anxious please stop reading this immediately! So far I have eliminated no one! Anxiety is a painfully universal experience. The degree and intensity of what we experience may vary, but we all go through it. How do we effectively minimize the frequency and lessen the intensity of anxiety? Some simple basics can help. Some are common sense, others may be counter intuitive.

The first step is awareness. Learn to be sanely sensitive to your feelings. Common “Red Flags” for anxiety are feeling tightness in your muscles, breathing more shallow and quickly, sweating, thinking doom or catastrophe are about to hit, queasiness in your stomach.

Second, realize that in anxiety your “fight or flight” reflex is working against you. Your brain says “Danger, Will Robinson” and the message is sent for adrenalin to pour into your system. Your muscles tense, breathing gets shallow and fast. Your information loop shifts from your good reasoning center (the pre-frontal cortex) to the fight or flight center (the amygdala). The physical reactions tell your brain, “We are in trouble!” So the brain keeps the shift into fight or flight going in high gear.

This understanding leads to an effective strategy for reversing that negative biofeedback loop – choose to take control of your breathing! For a time, focus on your breathing. Take control and choose to breathe slowly and deeply. Pay attention to your rate of breathing and tell yourself to breathe in very, very slowly. Hold it a second. Then breathe out very controlled and very slow. Choose to continue breathing like this. Keep as much of your focus on your breathing as the situation allows.

This works for you in several ways. Number one it begins to reverse that biofeedback loop. As you slow your breathing your body begins to tell your brain, “Chill, there is no real danger here.” The subconscious parts of your brain respond by shut down the adrenalin. The shutdown of the adrenalin express begins to eliminate the muscle tension, sweating, and stomach distress. Some of this may not be immediate, but it begins as you choose to take control of your breathing. Secondly, the act of focusing on your breathing distracts you from the thoughts that contributed to your anxiety in the first place. (More on this in my next blog.)

So far we have seen that God has created us in such a way that there is a physical component to anxiety. He also created us so that we can choose to take control of that physical component by controlling our breathing. This simple step by itself is not a cure all, but is an extremely powerful part of dealing with anxiety. In my next blog we’ll look at other basics in dealing with anxiety.