Many of us wonder what causes anxiety. Why does one person get it and the other does not? The cause of anxiety is both nature and nurture. Some of us are naturally wired to be more anxious than others, while others of us grew up in a more “anxiety provoked” environment.
Sometimes we learn it from a parent. Sometimes it is the lack of structure and routine that make us feel unsafe. Sometimes it is being ignored or told we “Should be stronger” that makes us not trust ourselves. And not learning how to manage our emotions effectively when growing up plays a profound role with anxiety.
Lack of sleep, over-working, over-exercising, and negative relationships contribute to neurotransmitter imbalances. Neurotransmitters are the signaling chemicals in our brains that are responsible for things like our mood, motivation, and energy level. When our neurotransmitters become unbalanced, we experience things like depression and anxiety, lack of motivation, stress, burnout, and memory problems.
Anxiety is compounded by the use of social media. These platforms at their core are designed to be addictive, making us “need” to come back for more, constantly checking in, measuring up, comparing ourselves to others, seeing what other people are doing and counting how many people like or respond to our posts.
If you think of it this way, social media, just like food or sex, activates the brain’s reward centre by releasing the chemical dopamine, the “feel-good chemical,” when things are good. Social media also has the ability to negatively affect our mood, self-esteem and feeling of worthiness, by being judged and not being included, all heightening our state of anxiety.
Sounding the A.L.A.R.M.
A.L.A.R.M. is the acronym to “kick into action” whenever you start to feel anxious: Activate, Label, Acknowledge, Remember, and Move Forward. Whenever you START to feel anxious, sound the A.L.A.R.M. immediately: 1.Activate your parasympathetic nervous system. 2.Label your emotion. 3.Acknowledge emotions are temporary. 4.Remember to avoid adding on extra thoughts and emotions to your original, true emotion. 5.Move forward, problem solve and take action.
1# Activate Your Parasympathetic Nervous System
Many people make the mistake of trying to problem solve when anxiety hits, but it is absolutely impossible to do. As a rule, you cannot think until your body is calmed down, until you have “activated” your parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS), the calming part of your nervous system.
If you think of it this way, the sympathetic nervous system acts like the “gas pedal” in the car, speeding the car up to high speeds to get you out of danger, like “putting the peddle to the metal.” The parasympathetic nervous system on the other hand, does the complete opposite, it acts to “slow you down” and calm your body and mind, like putting the “breaks on.” Many people have an underactive parasympathetic nervous system and overactive sympathetic nervous system. To take control of anxiety, we must learn to activate our parasympathetic nervous system on demand.
Temperature Change
Cold exposure is a great way to quickly activate your parasympathetic nervous system and “cool” the body AND mind down when you are experiencing high anxiety. The cold tricks the body to slow down physiologically and mentally distracts the mind from the stress of anxiety.
Intense Exercise
When you are feeling really wound up, intense exercise can be helpful to immediately calm your body down. When your body is in a highly triggered SNS state, doing exercise to exhaustion, will kick the PSNS in. “Intense” exercise SHOCKS the body by drastically increasing oxygen in the body and dramatically decreasing your stress level. It also quickly distracts the mind by having to be 100 percent focused on the activity you’re doing and away from the stress.
Humming or Singing
The vagal nerve surrounds our voice box, or larynx, and when stimulated, activates your PSNS. Humming, Om-ing and singing are excellent ways to activate your vagal nerve and calm you down when you are feeling stressed or anxious. Humming, Om-ing and singing provide vibrations that massage the section of your vagal nerve near your vocal cords to activate the PSNS and tell your body you are safe. Put the volume up and sing loud and proud. You do not have to be a professional singer to reap the rewards of singing on the nervous system.
The Power of a Good Scream
If you feel your tension building and could benefit from “getting it out” and releasing your pent-up emotions, do it. A good scream is an excellent cathartic release—often releasing endorphins afterwards like with a runner’s high. If you don’t want to scream freely, you can try screaming in a pillow. A silent scream even does the trick. Give it a try, you just may feel better afterwards!
2# Label “What” You Are Feeling
The first step in learning to take charge of your anxiety is to put a label or name to your emotion. As soon as you can IDENTIFY what you are feeling, you will have a much better chance of solving your problem and decreasing your emotional intensity.
Labeling your emotion is being AWARE of what you are feeling. You do not need to know WHY you feel a certain way, just acknowledge WHAT you feel, so that you can begin to move on. Emotions are different from thoughts in that they take the form of one word. If I say, for example, “I feel like you don’t care,” that is a thought. If I say, “I feel sad,” the sadness is the emotion.
The more attention we give to our bodies, the better it is. The more self-aware we become, the better we are able to manage our lives and stay on top of our stress and anxiety. The more we work on noticing how our bodies are feeling, the better we’ll be able to operate in the world and increase our resilience.
Helping to improve our sensory and bodily awareness will help reduce stress, improve emotional regulation, and help us feel healthier. It is a good idea to check in daily with how you are feeling.
3# Acknowledge That Emotions Are Temporary
Going through our emotions, not around them, is a very helpful concept. Many of us try to numb, medicate, avoid, or distract ourselves from feeling our emotions. Some use drugs, alcohol, and/or food to “numb” ourselves from feeling. Others use distraction to avoid feeling. Some emotions feel incredibly painful and it is natural to try to do anything to not feel them. The problem is that when we try to avoid, or go around our emotions, the emotion gets bigger and grows in intensity.
The ONLY way to take charge of your anxiety and decrease its intensity is to face your emotion by pushing through it. But what does it mean to go through your emotion? Going through your emotion means “feeling it” and not being scared of it. It means dealing with it, looking it in the eye and facing it, acknowledging it and understanding it. When a sad event happens, let the sad feeling come up, feel it. Let the tears flow, feel it. And then you will notice the pain isn’t so bad and the sadness doesn’t have as much control over you. Whenever you feel that sad feeling come back up, let the emotion flow, don’t stop it. If you feel like crying, cry.
The more time you spend trying to avoid your emotion, the bigger the problem gets. The more you go around the emotion, the more it stays there. Although it feels easier in the moment, it will only make the problem bigger and the emotion more intense. You can only avoid emotions for so long before they begin to bubble up and start to interfere in your life. When you avoid feeling, your world becomes smaller and more restrictive.
4# Cultivate an Anti-Anxiety Mindset
The rational mindset is the “thinking” brain where they make decisions based 100 percent on facts. Decisions are made ONLY based on fact, logic, and statistics. There is no regard for emotions or empathy at all. The problem with operating this way is the person does not factor emotions into their decision making. This leaves them cut off from people feelings, so at times it makes interpersonal relations difficult when they only operate on facts. It also exposes them to making poor decisions as they’re not looking at the “whole picture” when they only look at facts.
The impulsive mindset is the “feeling” brain where the person acts 100 percent out of emotion, impulse and “gut feeling.” No attention is given to facts, logic or reason. There is no logic or long-term thinking factor in their decision-making process, it is all based on a feeling. It’s all emotion, intuition, gut feeling, and impulse. Acting emotionally can be beneficial at times, but it can also be damaging because they act impulsively, in the heat of the moment with no proof, reason or rationality. For example, if someone’s having a bad day, they might quit work or break up with their partner, because that’s how they felt that day.
The balanced mindset is the combination of both the rational and impulsive. The person synergizes information using logic and emotion, and formulates an opinion based on all information. The Balanced Mind is the best way to operate as it considers all information. The balanced individual can think, act and solve problems with a combination of intuition AND facts. They are neither too emotional nor too logical.
It is a good idea to strive to be in the balanced mindset the majority of the time acting with intention, facts, and confidence.
5# Move Forward and Take Action
At times when we are feeling anxious, we blow things out of proportion. We imagine the worst possible outcome of an action or an event. For example, if you have one bad night sleep, you will never be able to sleep again. You have one fight with your spouse, and you are getting a divorce.
Unfortunately, when we “blow things out of proportion” or “catastrophize” things, we only make our anxiety worse. We fill our minds with emotions and thoughts that take time and energy away from the reality of the situation and add a great deal of unnecessary stress.
Another very important part of moving forward is learning to tolerate uncertainty. If you’re having a tough time, this is a great time to practice your calming exercises to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Focus on doing calming exercises for your 6 senses. Have a warm bath, hug your pet, dance around the house, get a pedicure, or put on a heated blanket.
Although dealing with uncertainty is an unavoidable part of life, anxious people have a very hard time NOT knowing what’s going to happen. The uncertainty of not knowing what is going to happen, causes a lot of stress.
Anxious people might do things like ask a lot of questions, make lists, double check, procrastinate, avoid or seek excessive reassurance. Although these behaviours help people cope in the moment, they consume a lot of time and energy and are unproductive in helping you overcome anxiety. By becoming more tolerant of uncertainty and change, you will realize that you can deal with things even when they do not go as expected.
Accepting the situation is truly accepting the present moment 100 percent. It is not about changing the present or changing the past, it is accepting the situation for what it is. It is important to understand that you do NOT have to agree with the problem, like it, or approve of it, but it’s important to accept the problem for what it is.
When we do not accept reality, we fight against it, wishing things were different or fixating on how they “should” or “could” be. The more we complain and push against acceptance, the more the suffering will increase. On the other hand, once we accept the situation, we can let go of the suffering and move on. Only then can we change.