Anxiety is a natural human response to threat. The issue now is that we no longer hunt and gather, so our perceptions of threat are a bit different.
We can perceive threat as anything that disrupts the way we feel: social situations, changes in environment, loud noises, or changes in behavior from the people we surround ourselves with.
The trick with anxiety is to make our mind and body feel so safe that these things are no longer perceived as threats.
How do we do this? We find the things in our life that make us feel good. Realistically, we are 'safe' the majority of the time, but our mind and body don't recognize that until our nervous system is calm. Calming our nervous system involves a lot of trial and error.
When I first began my journey into calming my nervous system, I started with a brainstorm of all the things that made me feel happy and calm:
Walking my dog
Listening to music
Making and eating yummy food
This started as a small list, but over time, I began trying new things:
Meditating
Yoga
Journaling
Cold showers/swims
Cleaning my space
Being outside in nature
The more expansive my list became, the more I realized there were also many things in my life that disrupted my nervous system, working against the feeling I was aiming for:
Being on my phone before bed or in the morning
Consuming too much media about conflicts
Having friendships with people who couldn't communicate their needs
Eating a lot of processed foods
Spending too much time indoors
Suddenly, I felt like I was regaining control of my mind. My adult world stopped feeling like an overwhelming environment of "what if things go wrong?" and shifted to "what if things go right?".
Managing your anxiety is like exercising a muscle at the gym. The more you work on it, the stronger it becomes.
It was my birthday on Friday, and the end of my birthday weekend brought some feelings of anxiety. I felt like I had 100 things to do for work but motivation for none of them.
So, I took action on that feeling.
Myself and Nic did a 20-minute clean of the house where we hyper-focused on different areas and reset the space to eliminate clutter. I prioritized sleep, so I went to bed early and slept in. I spent time cooking a yummy dinner with lots of veggies and gut-friendly ingredients. We were too tired for a big walk, so instead, we took Romeo for a swim to ensure we still got some outdoor time. I mapped out my to-do list and schedule for the week.
Today, I woke up feeling better. I'm still a bit sensitive, but I feel confident in my ability to move through my day because yesterday, Cass had done so much prep for it.
Anxiety is all about exercising that muscle, creating a list of things that will help you feel calm, and implementing them.
What can you do to strengthen that muscle this week?
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