Managing anxiety

ANXIETY IS NATURAL

A degree of anxiety is natural.  We are all human, evolved with a sense of danger.  We are the descendants of people who had a strong bodily reaction against danger – that’s why they survived long enough to give birth to us.

This strong wish to avoid danger finds it expression in a default sense of doom, the feeling that something could go wrong at any time.  Let’s call it watchfulness, although it often becomes anxiety.

This watchfulness is particularly pronounced if we have ever experienced a trauma, something bad coming out of the blue.  It leads us to lose faith in events, to be constantly aware that something might go wrong at any minute.

CONSCIOUS ANXIETY

We can wake up in the morning with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that something bad will happen.  This feeling can last through the day.  It is a message to us from our unconscious.  It tells us that life cannot be relied upon to keep us safe.

The first thing to acknowledge is that this feeling is right, in the sense that our biological life is always threatened.  This body we have will indeed die and decay – there is no avoiding that.

If we can consciously accept the inescapable logic of this, then we have a choice.  We can either spend the rest of our lives fearing death; or we can accept the fact of death and relax about it.  If all things are going that way, then why worry?

Intellectually, this is reasonable, and can reduce conscious worry.  But what about our unconscious worry, our physiological anxiety response?

UNCONSCIOUS ANXIETY

Unconscious anxiety is harder to deal with quickly, as it is not as amenable to conscious thought.  Even so, we can train our two main nervous systems to help us calm down using a couple of methods.

Experts talk about two main nervous systems:

1. the sympathetic nervous system (promotes action, stressy, triggers the fight-or-flight response)
2. the parasympathetic nervous system (promotes inaction, chilled, triggers the rest-and-digest response)

A good way of switching off our sympathetic nervous system is routine. Our sympathetic nervous system switches off when life feels predictable.  We can have a timetable for the day or week with which our body can become familiar.

A good way of switching on our parasympathetic nervous system is to build in the following activities:

1. Regular exercise – to stimulate the relaxed feeling afterwards
2. Regular practice – yoga, meditation, fitness, hobbies – to give us a routine to follow
3. Regular mealtimes – to stimulate the rest-and-digest response
4. Regular communication with friends – to help us feel safe and protected
5. Good bedtime routines – to teach the body to relax at the day’s end

These are all activities which train our unconscious body into peace, and reduce anxiety.

SUMMARY

• A degree of anxiety is natural, as we are descended from ancestors who survived because they were very wary of danger.
• To reduce this anxiety response, we can work on our daily habits, encouraging regular exercise, regular meals, friendly communication, and plenty of sleep.