Exercises To Calm Your Anxious Thoughts
Exercises for Anxiety.
We all experience anxiety at several points in our lives. Whether its a big test you are about to take, a new job you might be starting, or a new school, anxiety can be a normal experience. Anxiety is the body’s normal response to stress. The main thing you want to remember is if it is interfering with your functioning, for example, your relationships, going places, school, or work, that is when you will need to work on bringing that anxiety down.
Focusing on exercises to reduce your anxiety can help relieve the body’s reactions to stress. The way we experience anxiety in our bodies, for example how we cope with this current pandemic, can be the same as how we experience very distinct fears, such as fears of dogs, spiders, or flying.
The amygdala is a primary structure in our limbic system, and it is the emotional center of the brain. You may have heard the amygdala called our brain’s watchdog. Once the brain has encountered a threat in the amygdala, whether actual or perceived, it releases a surge of chemicals, like cortisol and norepinephrine. These chemicals give us a natural boost in reflex time, perception, and speed, which activates our sympathetic nervous system. This causes our hearts to pump faster in order to get more blood and oxygen circulating through our bodies; we essentially go into “survival mode.” Some other physical symptoms include sweaty palms, shallow breathing, feeling like we need to urinate, our pupils dilate, mouth gets dry, blood pressure rises, digestion slows, and blood flows outward towards our major muscle groups. When we start to breathe more quickly and shallow it causes us to experience hyperventilation, which can cause strong chest pain and might be interpreted as a heart attack, but it’s just how our body is reacting to the fight flight or freeze response.
This is where our bodies then go into fight flight or freeze mode, which our body does as a response to a perceived threat. We either run away, freeze, or fight. However, with this current pandemic, the stress and anxiety might be consistent within our bodies due to all of the news and media constantly around us.
The best way, however, to protect your brain and body from the effects of chronic stress and anxiety is to find a way to manage it before it begins to affect your health.
One major thing to consider and try, would be to take a break from social media, including watching television. Even if you allow yourself 1-2 hours a day of social media, it helps.
Try to relax by breathing. In order to calm that racing heart, shaking, and other symptoms, try focusing on what you can control, and take deep mindful breaths. Make sure to sit in a quiet and comfortable place, place one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach. Make sure your stomach is moving more than your chest. Take slow and regular breath in through your nose. Breathe out through your mouth slowly. Repeat until you notice your anxiety lessens.
Relax by staying present. Mindfulness is the practice of being present in your current environment. To help make sure you can bring your focus to your surroundings instead of keeping your thoughts in the past or future. Follow these tips:
Find a quiet and comfortable place to sit and close your eyes.
Notice how your breathing and body feel.
Now shift your awareness to the sensations you observe in your surroundings. Ask yourself What’s happening outside of my body? Notice what you hear, smell, and feel in your environment.
Change your awareness several times from your body to your environment and back again until your anxiety starts to fade.
Another major thing you can do, is right before you go to sleep, journal your experience. This will give you something to look back on later in life and see how you got through this. If you journal before you go to sleep, this can help with some of the anxiety you might be experiencing that is keeping you up at night.
Other than that, if you are going to be online, why not try out some of the free virtual tours on google? There are tours of museums, wildlife, including ocean life. Feel free to visit my Virtual Calm Room.
Alright, for now, you can also try or suggest these tools that have been discussed in order to get your body back to utilizing the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system controls homeostasis and the body being in a balanced state where everything is working at its optimal efficiency.
People are often hard on themselves for how they’re coping with a our life stressors. We tend to downplay our own intense emotions and tell ourselves that it’s not ok to have them. Do the opposite. Be kind to yourself and accept that it’s ok to have these emotions. Your emotions are valid. Doing so will decrease the likelihood that these emotions will affect you in a negative way.
-Dr. Sarmiento
