Notes from Anxiety Super Conference 2022
Anxiety is the feeling of your amygdala siring the fire alarm in your brain. It can be the over-active nervous system or hyper-aroused state of feeling unsafe. When anxiety feels stuck, it has likely settled into a freeze, parasympathetic nervous system state of not knowing what to do with the uncertainty.
The Three Types of Anxiety
Mental Anxiety can be experienced as:
- Overactive, racing mind
- Replaying events and conversations
- Running through future scenarios in your mind
- Feeling tired and your wired mind keeps you up at night
- Difficulty focusing on the task at hand, because your wired mind keeps racing through other scenarios of what is still left undone
Working with Mental Anxiety:
- Training the mind to stop trying to think itself out of thinking too much
- Calming the mind and getting into the body with meditation, mindfulness, yoga, Qigong, Tai Chi
- Identifying and breaking through patterns of thinking
- “Where attention goes, energy flows.”
Emotional Anxiety can be experienced as:
- Feeling unsafe
- Feeling sensitive
- Feeling emotionally shutdown/numb
- Easily triggered
- Confused about how you feel
Working with Emotional Anxiety:
- Identify, express, and maintain necessary boundaries
- Slow down your inner world
- Take time and space to digest and feel your emotions
- Practice self-compassion in relating to how you are feeling
- Validate your anxiety with “this makes sense (to feel this way considering the circumstance)”
- Reach out to safe individuals (friends, family, therapist) when you need help processing and metabolizing emotion
Physical Anxiety can be experienced as:
- Racing heart, shallow breathing, tight muscles
- Agitated, on edge
- Can’t settle down to enjoy a quiet, peaceful moment
- Potentially as other physical symptoms that continue to be undiagnosed or untreated by doctors including insomnia and chronic pain
Working with Physical Anxiety:
- Movement, allow the energy to move through and out of you
- Check-in with yourself to identify if you need to have high-intensity movement to match the level of anxious movement inside your body (ie. biking, running, boxing, high-intensity workouts ), or if your body is wanting to feel soothed and grounded through movement (ie. Tai Chi, Qigong, weight lifting/resistance training, stretching, yoga, and other low-intensity workouts)
- Check your blood sugar and stimulant levels
- Reduce your sugar intake (candy, soda, processed foods, potentially even fruit) and use of stimulants (coffee, caffeinated tea, energy drinks, sodas)
- Investigate your hormone levels
- Check your quality of sleep and explore sleep hygiene adjustments
