managing anxiety Archives - Amazing Health Advances

The Anti-Anxiety Toolkit

AHA Publisher — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 07:00:20 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #386) and blog, I talk about what anxiety is and ways to manage it and prevent it from taking over your day-to-day life. There is a lot to be anxious and worried about these days. From the uncertainty of a global pandemic, to turbulent elections, worldwide protests, acts of violence and political infighting, it does at times seem like we are living through the Apocalypse! It is easy to feel overwhelmed, stressed out and fearful; indeed, these are normal human reactions to adverse events. However, the good news is that we don’t have to be controlled by these feelings. We can’t always control the circumstances of life, but we can learn to edit what has happened to us — we have the power to determine how these emotions impact us. In fact, everyone experiences a level of anxiety from time to time; this is completely normal. Often, there are times in our life where “stuff” accumulates, and it is okay to be anxious when this happens. However, if left unmanaged, this “stuff” can progress to a point where we feel so overwhelmed with anxiety that our ability to go about daily life is obstructed, especially if it results in debilitating anxiety or panic attacks. The key word here is “managed”. How we manage anxiety is, in large part, based on how we view anxiety. Managing anxiety means reframing those anxious thoughts when they arise. If we just see anxiety as a “disease” or “biochemical medical illness”, it can be pretty scary! It can even make us feel hopeless. The label alone can lock us in, potentially shaping the way we see ourselves and our capacity, or stigmatizing our biology—some people may view themselves as inherently lacking control and potentially unstable or even dangerous to themselves and others. But there is another way to reframe anxiety to mitigate and manage it, one that I believe is more hopeful, kinder and less stigmatizing. Anxiety can be seen as a warning signal—a helpful messenger. It is telling us there is something going on in our lives that needs attention; something is threatening our peace and survival. This framing points to the narrative that is related to our anxiety, or what has happened to make us feel this way, rather than just focusing on a biological root as the cause of our anxiety. Yes, this may sound great, but what happens when you are suddenly faced with some really bad news or you read something on social media that starts making you panic? In these moments, I have found that it is useful to have a worry-reducing toolbox with simple, everyday things you can do to help you control your fears and anxiety. Having these practical techniques at hand can really help you in the moment, especially when you can’t think clearly or don’t know what to do with yourself: 1. See your anxiety as a learning experience. When you’re experiencing intense, anxious feelings, it can be hard to feel in control and work through these emotions. One thing I always recommend (it’s not easy but so effective and gets better with practice!) is to ask yourself: “what can I learn from this?” or “What is this situation telling me about myself?” Simple questions like these can make the biggest difference when it comes to your mental health and resilience. This technique works really well if you use it along with another technique I call the multiple perspective advantage (MPA), where you objectively stand back and observe your own thinking as you ask, answer and discuss these two questions. This creates a strong, integrated energy flow throughout the brain that literally helps you see multiple ways of viewing a situation. 2. Distract yourself, temporarily! Yes, temporary distractions can be a good thing. They can give you the space you need to let your emotions calm down, which is especially necessary when you feel overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. In fact, it takes about 60-90 seconds for intense emotions to die down, so a distraction (like going for a run, doing yoga or reading a good novel) when you are feeling very anxious can be a good thing. But be careful! Distractions can become an issue when you find yourself turning to them a lot and using them to suppress what you feel and avoid dealing with the issue that drove you to the distraction. So, take a good look at the diversions in your life and ask yourself, “How am I using these distractions? Am I trying to avoid an issue? How can I better use distractions in my life?”. Commit to dealing with the issue once you are in a better mental space. 3. Don’t go to bed anxious. If you often feel very anxious at night, try writing down your thoughts and feelings before going to sleep. You don’t have to analyze or “fix” them—just get them down on paper! The simple act of writing things down often brings balance back in the brain and helps produce feel good chemicals like serotonin. Writing also makes things seem a little less scary and overwhelming. Indeed, one of the best things about writing is that it weakens the impact and hold that anxious thought have over you, in both your mind and brain! Some statements that can help you release this anxiety at night are: I did my best today and that is good enough. My level of productivity or checklist does not determine my self-worth. Tomorrow is another day for me to use my skills and talents to help others. Today I learned … and I am grateful for …. I am proud of myself for doing … today. My thoughts and feelings are temporary and will pass. 4. Have a game plan when you start getting WORRIED about the future. Worrying about the future tricks us into believing we can control the future. Worry is an understandable attempt to reduce uncertainty, but it can often cause more problems. For a healthier approach to uncertainty, step out of destructive worry and into constructive worry by doing the following: Identify which uncertainty is causing you the most fear. Create a game plan for the best and worse outcomes. Set a 5-minute timer to allow yourself to worry about something, so you don’t suppress it. Talk to someone you trust, such as a loved one or therapist. Remember, there is no shame in asking for help! 5. Surround yourself with people who help, not hurt, your mental wellbeing. Who you hang out with can hinder or help your emotional wellbeing. Remind yourself that it’s okay to surround yourself with people who are good for your mental health. Take note of how certain people make you feel, and take note of the people you are around when you are your happiest and truest self—these are the people who you need to be around more, especially when you feel very anxious or fearful! Remember, it’s not only okay to put up boundaries, it’s essential. It’s okay to say no to certain engagements. It’s okay to end a relationship that makes you anxious or upset all the time. It’s okay to move on. It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to take breaks from certain people. It’s okay to make yourself a priority! 6. Respond, don’t react. Learn to respond, not just react, to your anxious thoughts and feelings. What’s the difference between responding and reacting? Responding means pausing between the stimulus and the action. It enables you to use that pause to evaluate what a beneficial or harmful response will look like. Reacting, on the other hand, is impulsive. Just reacting to what you are thinking or feeling in the moment gives more energy to the anxious structures and neurons in the brain. A great way to make responding, not reacting, a habit is to stop and breathe for 60-90 seconds before responding to something (especially an anxious thought!), which will give your emotions time to calm down so you can self-regulate your thinking and ask yourself what your thoughts and feelings are trying to tell you. If you make this a conscious and deliberate practice, it will become easier over time, improving relationships and mental health! 7. Shift your attention. Although it is important that you acknowledge your anxiety, don’t dwell on it. For every anxious thought you have, try to think about three positive things. These positive thoughts should not be something vague like “just be happy.” They should include specific things that make you joyful, like things you are grateful for in your life, what you appreciate, what makes you laugh, and what makes you feel content. What is great about this 3:1 ratio is that you don’t have to suppress your worry or try to have an unrealistic, “happy-all-the-time” life. You don’t have to feel guilt or shame when you think anxious thoughts. Indeed, you need to allow room for negative thoughts in your life, as they can help you prepare for worst-case scenarios, deal with the past and keep you grounded. However, these negative thoughts need to be balanced with the good, so that they don’t become the dominant structure in your brain. Remember: what you think about the most will grow! These are just a few great tips you can use in the moment to help you control and deal with your anxiety. You can write them down, set them as a reminder on your phone, post them around the house or on your fridge, or create a “worry box” that you can pull out when you are feeling very anxious or fearful. Most importantly, remember that your worry or anxiety does not define you. We demonstrated in our most recent clinical trial that you can become empowered to feel in control of your mind, which can increase your feelings of control over your anxiety by up to 81%. See worry and anxiety as signals telling you something is going on around you or in your life that needs attention, not as something to fear or suppress. These techniques can help you get to a place where you can address the roots of your fear and anxiety, so that it no longer has power over you or your thinking! To read the original article click here.

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Social Media Break Improves Mental Health – New Study

AHA Publisher — Wed, 11 May 2022 07:00:19 +0000

University of Bath via Newswise – Asking people to stop using social media for just one week could lead to significant improvements in their wellbeing, depression and anxiety and could, in the future, be recommended as a way to help people manage their mental health say the authors of a new study. The study, carried out by a team of researchers at the University of Bath (UK), studied the mental health effects of a week-long social media break. For some participants in the study, this meant freeing-up around nine hours of their week which would otherwise have been spent scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Their results – published today (Friday 6 May 2022) in the US journal ‘Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking’ – suggest that just one week off social media improved individuals’ overall level of well-being, as well as reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. For the study, the researchers randomly allocated 154 individuals aged 18 to 72 who used social media every day into either an intervention group, where they were asked to stop using all social media for one-week or a control group, where they could continue scrolling as normal. At the beginning of the study, baseline scores for anxiety, depression and wellbeing were taken. Participants reported spending an average of 8 hours per week on social media at the start of the study. One week later, the participants who were asked to take the one-week break had significant improvements in wellbeing, depression, and anxiety than those who continued to use social media, suggesting a short-term benefit. Participants asked to take a one-week break reported using social media for an average of 21 minutes compared to an average of seven hours for those in the control group. Screen usage stats were provided to check that individuals had adhered to the break. Lead researcher from Bath’s Department for Health, Dr Jeff Lambert explains: “Scrolling social media is so ubiquitous that many of us do it almost without thinking from the moment we wake up to when we close our eyes at night. “We know that social media usage is huge and that there are increasing concerns about its mental health effects, so with this study, we wanted to see whether simply asking people to take a week’s break could yield mental health benefits. “Many of our participants reported positive effects from being off social media with improved mood and less anxiety overall. This suggests that even just a small break can have an impact. “Of course, social media is a part of life and for many people, it’s an indispensable part of who they are and how they interact with others. But if you are spending hours each week scrolling and you feel it is negatively impacting you, it could be worth cutting down on your usage to see if it helps.” The team now want to build on the study to see whether taking a short break can help different populations (e.g., younger people or people with physical and mental health conditions). The team also want to follow people up for longer than one week, to see if the benefits last over time. If so, in the future, they speculate that this could form part of the suite of clinical options used to help manage mental health. Over the past 15 years, social media has revolutionised how we communicate, underscored by the huge growth the main platforms have observed. In the UK the number of adults using social media increased from 45% in 2011 to 71% in 2021. Among 16 to 44-year-olds, as many as 97% of us use social media and scrolling is the most frequent online activity we perform. Feeling ‘low’ and losing pleasure are core characteristics of depression, whereas anxiety is characterised by excessive and out of control worry. Wellbeing refers to an individual’s level of positive affect, life satisfaction and sense of purpose. According to the Mind, one in six of us experience a common mental health problem like anxiety and depression in any given week. To read the original article click here.

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Surprising Reasons You May Be Anxious + How to Use the Neurocycle to Manage & Reduce Anxiety

AHA Publisher — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 07:00:33 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #286) and blog, I am going to talk about anxiety. I get asked so many questions about anxiety, what it is, and how to manage it that I decided to dedicate a whole podcast to this topic. Here are some examples of the questions I have received: Why do I feel anxious in certain situations and not others? Why does my whole body react (to the point where I feel sick) when I am anxious? Why do some situations result in more anxiety than others? What do I do when I feel constantly anxious around a loved one or work colleague? What do you tell your mind to ward off PTSD-related anxiety when emotionally triggered? Can you give insight into how to control anxiety or being panicked when left alone and how to keep your mind at peace? Is anxiety genetic? Can it be wired in relation to a specific fear? What is hypervigilance? Everyone experiences a level of anxiety from time to time; this is completely normal. Often, there are times in our life where “stuff” really accumulates, and it is okay to be anxious occasionally. However, if left unmanaged, this “stuff” can progress to a point where we feel so overwhelmed with anxiety that our ability to go about daily life is obstructed, especially if it results in debilitating anxiety or a panic attacks. The key word here is “managed”. How we manage anxiety will be based on how we view anxiety. If we just see anxiety as a “disease” or “biochemical medical illness”, it can be pretty scary! This label can lock us in, potentially shaping the way we see ourselves and our capacity, or stigmatizing our biology—some people may view us as inherently lacking control and potentially unstable or even dangerous to ourselves and others. But there is another way to look at anxiety, one that I believe is more hopeful, kinder and less stigmatizing. Anxiety can be seen as a warning signal—a helpful messenger. It is telling us there is something going on in our lives that needs attention because it’s threatening our peace and survival. It’s pointing to the narrative that is related to our anxiety, that is what has happened to make us feel this way, rather than just focusing on a biological root as the cause of the anxiety. Indeed, what we think and experience affects our biology, so of course we will experience anxiety as physical symptoms. The cause isn’t necessarily in the brain, although, of course, physical brain damage or ill-health can affect how we feel and make us anxious. However, if we think the anxiety we are feeling and experiencing is just because we have a damaged brain or body, we can lose hope and a sense of agency, which may make our anxiety worse. We need to remember that the brain is not a preprogrammed body of grey matter. We do not just “dance to our DNA”, as the popular saying goes. Anxiety isn’t just a broken brain or illness waiting to manifest. Anxiety means that we, as thinking beings, are responding intelligently to threats to our existence. When there is a foreboding change in our environment, we experience this change through our mind. The mind is the power mechanism by which we experience life, but it is experimental because it’s always hypothesizing and working things out. This means things can get messy, but that’s okay—the point is to look at the messiness of life and learn how to manage, repair and grow through it. This is mind-management in action, which I discuss in detail in my latest book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. The experiences we have are then wired into the brain by the mind. Subsequently, the brain sends signals to all the cells of the body that there is a change in the mind and brain, and, in the case of a negative experience, that change is a threat to our survival. This generates an immune system response, and the entire body responds, including the release of cortisol, homocysteine, prolactin, as well as a biological impact on our telomeres and a change in brainwaves. These responses are communicated back to us through our emotions (anxiety), body (heart palpitations, stomach aches and so on), behaviors (such as panic attacks, withdrawal, or hasty decisions), and perspective, which is a warning signal of this imbalance as a threat to or survival and the desire to restore balance in the brain and body. This is why it is so important to embrace, not suppress, anxiety. We need to acknowledge the abovementioned signals, process what they mean and reconceptualize them – make them work for us instead of against us. When we learn how to do this, we can start to manage, although not necessarily solve, our anxiety. Indeed, sometimes it’s the pure acceptance of the uncertainty of life and the reality of anxiety as a normal part of being human that becomes our reconceptualized understanding—our way of moving forward! Anxiety is a feeling that needs to be understood, not just eradicated. Why? We cannot ignore the connection between our perceptions and our understanding of our experiences to our biology. This link, otherwise known as the mind-brain-body connection, helps us to predict what we need as individual organisms to cope, or to modulate our biochemistry, physiology and our behavior to make sure our body has just enough resources to deal with both acute and chronic life challenges. For example, when we find ourselves in an anxiety-inducing situation, the brain signals the kidneys, telling them that we are going to need a healthy blood supply for the acute situation we find ourselves in. Consequently, the kidneys start pumping in salt water, which constricts the blood vessels and raises our blood pressure. However, if we are on alert every second of the day, especially during a chronic situation, this experience will be wired into the brain repeatedly, which can become a habit if this occurs over 9 weeks (for more on this my book Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess). Essentially, during this time the mind is continually sending a response to the brain and body that something scary is going to happen, which can result in hypervigilance if left unmanaged, putting the brain and body into an emergency state. To cope with these feelings, our level of alertness and various bodily activities must respond to this state of being. Using the same example above, this means the brain is continually telling our kidneys that we need more blood supply, so the kidneys are continually pumping in salt water to constrict the blood vessels, which can have negative repercussions, such as high blood pressure, if we do not learn how to manage this response. If we’re constantly living in a high-alert state, the natural mechanisms of the brain and body stay in high alert, which can have all sorts of mental, emotional and physical consequences. Of course, many people suffer from anxiety, and there are manifold reasons why someone may experience anxiety, such as divorce, poverty, racial inequality, bullying, and war. Getting to the root of these reasons is essential when learning how to manage anxiety. There are also a few surprising reasons why we may be experiencing anxiety, such as: 1. Bad digestion: The gut microbiome, which is the world of bacteria living in our digestive system, doesn’t just exist to help us break down food. There is a constant conversation going on between the brain and gut, which also has its own amazing neurons, just like the spinal cord! This relationship is incredibly important when it comes to our mental health, which is both directly and indirectly affected by what we eat. In fact, a growing body of research shows that certain gut bacteria not only influence thought processes and the physical structure of the brain, but also that our thought processes and physical structure of the brain affect our gut bacteria. As I told all my patients in my clinical practice (and anyone who asks me today), what we eat affects how we think, and how we think affects what we eat and how we digest food! So, watch what you eat—try to avoid too much processed food, eating too fast, eating on the go and eating too much, all of which can contribute to increased anxiety levels! 2. Multitasking: When we multitask, we end up with what I call “milkshake thinking”, which is the opposite of mindfulness. Every rapid, incomplete, and poor quality shift of thought makes a “milkshake” with our brain cells and neurochemicals, which is the opposite of how the brain is designed to function. When we consciously try to jump rapidly from one task to another, we essentially cloud our ability to concentrate and think deeply, which impacts our ability to do a task well, leading to unnecessary levels of anxiety in our life. This is why I always recommend choosing to focus on one thing. Where you direct your mind is a choice, one that can affect you in either a positive or negative direction. This is especially the case with multitasking. You can reduce the anxiety that comes from decision fatigue—the feeling of being overwhelmed by the plethora of “would” or “could” choices we all face daily—by choosing, in the moment, to stay focused on a task and disregard less urgent demands. When you do this, you actually build up your mental strength and resilience, which will help you better deal with disappointment, failure and the daily anxieties of life! 3. The search and reward circuit: There is a special circuit in the brain that helps us search for food, comfort, love, relationships, friendships, peace, and so on, called the search and reward circuit. (Much of the research in this area of neuroscience has been done by Peter Sterling.) When we experience these positive experiences, dopamine is released and we can relax until we start the next search. Essentially, we are built to seek out a way of life that rewards us with a dopamine rush—the little searches and little dopamine rushes drive us to seek these rewards, which has a cumulative effect. Often, we are driven by these frequent, small surprises, and if we don’t find them, we can get agitated or anxious. This is especially true if we are in a chronic, unmanaged stress state—we don’t experience this rush as much as we need to, which can make us anxious. 4. Not daydreaming enough: When we don’t give our minds a break and let them just wander and daydream, we can end up feeling really anxious and stressed out. This kind of thinking is not just “nonsense” or “distracted” thinking. When we daydream, we essentially reboot our mind, as talked about in Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. These moments give your brain a rest and allow it to heal, which increases your clarity of thought and organizes the networks of your brain by balancing alpha activity, helping create an optimal state of relaxation and alertness and bridging the divide between the conscious and nonconscious mind. This, in turn, puts you in a state of peacefulness, readiness, meditation, and beta activity, which is important for processing information, being alert, working through something challenging, focusing, and developing sustained attention. This balanced energy, in turn, increases blood flow to the brain, which helps it function better and helps you deal with mental challenges and manage anxiety. The opposite happens if you don’t take regular thinker moments. Not giving the mind a rest and letting it daydream can reduce blood flow by up to 80 percent in the front of the brain, which can dramatically affect cognitive fluency and the efficient, associative thinking required at home, school or in the workplace. Cumulatively, this can lead to unprocessed thoughts and nightmares, affecting your overall quality of sleep, performance and mental health. To do a thinker moment, simply close your eyes and let your mind wander. Daydream, listen to some music, take a walk outside,...

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