When we experience feelings of anxiety, our autonomic nervous system is preparing to launch into “fight or flight” AKA sympathetic dominance. We are in hypervigilance; ready to react to incoming danger. When that feeling of anxiety is chronic, we are in a kind of sympathetic lock—seeing threat in every interaction. Chronic anxiety needs intervention. If you have chronic anxiety, interventions done every day, sometimes several times a day, can lower your internal threat levels. Use a simple system to rate your anxiety (3 colors—red, yellow, green) every day on a calendar while you practice shifting your mood in order to see your progress.
Below are several ways to shift the underlying state that supports anxious thoughts and moods. When we shift from anxiety to relaxation, we are downregulating “fight or flight” neurotransmitters (cortisol and norepinephrine), and upregulating “rest and digest” neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins).
TOUCH
Touch is a powerful mood modulator that releases endorphins—the feel-good neurotransmitters. Touch is a mammalian imperative—infants will fail to thrive if not touched lovingly. This is why pets are so powerful; they offer love through touch, a tactile communication loop. Watch the “Deep Pressure Touch” video on this website. These simple touch techniques quickly shift you from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest”. With these techniques you need a partner. Another video on this website “Tapping for Anxiety” is a powerful technique you can easily memorize and utilize many times a day if needed. This tapping technique is done by yourself.
HEAVY WORK
Heavy work as a therapeutic tool comes from Occupational Therapy. It refers to movements and exercises that increase proprioceptive input, i.e. the messages from your body to your brain. Increasing proprioceptive input will increase feelings of relaxation and calmness. The simplest way to get heavy work is to wear a backpack filled with 10/15 pounds of books for 20 minutes every hour. This weight resting on your shoulders as you go through your day will increase proprioceptive input, very much like a weighted blanket. As you increase this input, relaxation is restored.
MUSIC
For highly sensitive people, music is medicine. Music opens the floodgates of emotion, helping release pain and grief. It can distract us during a boring or difficult job. Music is one the most powerful mood modulators. Engaging with music by singing, dancing, or drumming increases the power to shift underlying states of anxiety.
DANCING
Dancing to your favorite’s tunes (when no one is looking) can organize and regulate your nervous system because moving rhythmically to music is integrating—connecting body to brain. Integration helps your nervous system calm.
PLAY
Bouncing a ball or shooting some hoops, laying in the grass and staring at the clouds, twirling on the lawn and getting dizzy: all these activities will upregulate relaxation. Sewing, knitting, embroidering or other fine hand work also increases feelings of relaxation.
ART
Expressing emotion through drawing, sketching, coloring, painting, collage, molding clay, etc. will shift that emotion—as we express it we are often relieved of it. It doesn’t matter if you are a “good artist’ or not.
MOVEMENT
Any kind of sustained movement will increase circulating endorphins, in turn creating feelings of relaxation. We can become so anxious we get frozen: the breath is shallow; the torso and shoulders are contracted. Moving our bodies will break up that freeze. When we are feeling anxious, we should always increase the amount of movement. Visit this link (https://cmbm.org/thetransformation/resources/) for a powerful guided moving meditation that will break up anxiety.
GUIDED IMAGERY FOR ANXIETY
There are countless free audio meditations, apps, and videos on the internet. Guided imagery for anxiety involves listening, usually with headphones, to a short recording that guides you through relaxation techniques (breathing) and visual images. Listening/watching one of these meditations every day for 20 minutes will lower your baseline anxiety. This, in turn, will offer more resilience. Guided imagery can also be used for immediate relief—anytime you are feeling anxious, you can listen to a meditation.
GETTING INTO THE PRESENT
When we are chronically anxious, we are in the future; mentally creating catastrophizing scenes of impending doom. When you notice your anxiety spike, ask yourself: “What was I thinking?” It is likely you were mentally in the future. Bring yourself into the present by taking 2-3 deep belly breaths, and telling yourself something calming “right now, I am OK and I am safe”.
A FEW OTHER SUGGESTIONS
Ways to calm and get present:
- Working in the garden
- Tidying up a place in your house that is chronically messy
- Culling possessions
- Reading or watching something funny, interesting, or scientific (no horror/slasher/thriller stuff)
- Digitally detox (no doom scrolling)
- Writing letters or cards
- Cataloging photos/personal items
- Calling a friend
- Giving a gift or writing a thank you note
- Feeling gratitude/expressing gratitude
- Massaging your feet/hands
- Immersing your feet/hands/face in cold water