Anxiety a blessing or a curse?
Anxiety is a normal and natural response to threat. Our bodies and our brains are very finely tuned to look after ourselves and to enable us to survive in what can be an alien environment. I am sure you have heard of the flight or fright response, it is what we naturally do when we feel we are under attack. This is an automatic thing, we cannot do anything to change this, it just happens to us, it is part of our autonomous nervous system, which controls our breathing and other bodily functions automatically. We have no control about the initial attack of anxiety which floods our system with adrenaline and cortisol in order to prepare our body for an emergency or life threatening situation. The underlying aim of anxiety is to keep us safe. However, when we live with long term stress or try to live in a way that doesn’t allow us to switch off, our system can be overloaded and we live in an anxious or hyper aroused state constantly. Rather than the anxiety preparing us for a quick and ready response to threat, we live in a state of anxiety which eventually becomes a new normal state of constant preparedness for something that doesn’t happen or we cannot do anything about.
Someone once described it to me as “If a lion came through the door, I would be out of the window and 100 metres down the road before I had even thought about what I was doing.” That is a completely automatic response to a threat. However, if I lived in a jungle with lions all around me I would live in a constant state of fear and become unable to switch off. Many things in our lives these days can be experienced as threats or perceived threats, such as our jobs, worries about money, relationships, health and other events or ongoing problems in our increasingly stressful and busy world. Our inability to switch off from these stressors and the fact that we cannot change some of these things, mean we live in a constant state of anxiety rather than it being a one off response to an event.
So that’s a brief overview of general anxiety from a very simple point of view.
Our present situation is such that anxiety is a normal and natural response to a threat and the threat of corona virus is real and around us. Our anxious response is therefore needed at a time like this. It prepares us for crisis, for learning new ways of doing things, for adapting to our changing circumstances, for front line staff to be able to work long and hard. However, for a lot of us, we feel impotent, it feels like we would like to get out there and fight by helping others or by doing something/anything BUT we are being told to stay at home. Or we would like to take flight, run away to the beach or the mountains and we saw some of that behaviour this weekend. This as we have been saying is our automatic response.
However this inability to take action and for us to have to stay put when all our instincts are telling us to move leaves us with all the feelings and all the adrenaline and cortisol racing round our bodies which leads us into a general state of anxiety and can take us into depression.
So what can we do about it.
“And Breathe” This is a phrase that I have had in my mind for a long time.
I think the “And” is there because whatever I am thinking about or feeling desperate about or mulling over in my mind, I have to then add to that thought “And Breathe” We take our breathing for granted, after all it is one of the automatic reactions of our body but when we really pay attention to our breathing and control it, it can help to calm us down.
The 7/11 breathing
This is a simple way of concentrating on our breathing, breathe in for a count of 7 and breathe out for a count of 11.
The paper bag or straw breathing
Breathe in and out of a paper bag or through a straw for a few minutes.
There are many other things that we can do to calm our anxiety. If we bear in mind that we want to make use of the adrenalin that is running round our system this may help us to think about what would be most useful for us. I will list a few that I have found helpful below.
Exercise
Walking
Cycling
Running
Jumping
Dancing
Practises such as Yoga or Pilates which takes our concentration as well as moving our bodies.
Natural spaces, paying attention to the beauty around us
Apparently cold water is good, although I have never put this one to the test. I prefer a hot shower or bath but just being in water is good
Music
Animals, stroking a dog or cat
Doing something creative especially that requires us to focus on the task in hand
Cooking or baking
Making cards or writing letters to send to people
Arts and crafts
Playing a musical instrument
Playing a game
Mindfulness and other forms of meditation
I have done all of these at one time or another, I used to swim a lot to relieve stress. We are all individuals and although there are some themes in common, we need to find our own way of helping ourselves through this situation.
I hope this gives you some food for thought.