Three Methods To Survive If You Are Anxiety Ridden
Research published in Y 2013 works to explain the neurobiology of this “psychological allergy” to uncertainty, anxiety.
Higher levels of “intolerance of uncertainty” (IU) are predictive of an increased risk of anxiety disorders, and to a lesser degree eating disorders and depression. Higher IU has also been shown to be linked to higher levels of worry and indecisiveness.
Uncertainty is a necessary ingredient for anxiety of any kind to manifest, whether acutely or chronically.
According to recent research, anxiety (characterized by constant and overwhelming worry and fear) is becoming increasingly prevalent in the US, now eclipsing all forms of cancer by 800%.
Nearly 13-M adults have struggled with anxiety in the past year, the study found; including 4.3-M people who were employed full time, and 5.9-M unemployed.
In all, nearly 6% of adults over the age of 18 report having anxiety.
There are many treatment options available, and some of the most effective treatments are also among the safest and least expensive, and do not involve drugs.
In light of the rising numbers of people struggling with anxiety, employers are urged to be sensitive to employees with anxiety, and are advised that simple accommodations can make a big difference.
A number of different brain processes are involved, including emotional regulation, along with threat and safety detection. When uncertainty arises, the human brain looks for environmental clues that it, through experience, associates with threat or safety. When a person in an ambiguous situation where the brain cannot detect any clear safety or threat cues, it decides that everything is a threat.
This response can have a strong impact on a person’s health as anxiety evokes the same “fight or flight or freeze” response as stress, meaning it triggers a flood of stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol that help you respond in an emergency.
“Threat and safety detection has been linked to the amygdala, and emotion regulation seems to be the domain of the prefrontal cortex,” The Atlantic notes.
The experts think the insula could play a role in processing information about the body and its environment to help create internal, subjective feelings. Once the level of uncertainty rises and becomes unbearable, the anxiety-prone person will typically respond in 1 of 2 ways: approach, or avoidance.
People in avoidance mode usually want others to tell them what to do, no matter how inappropriate that might be.
There really is a 3rd option, it is this, as follows;
If an aversion to uncertainty starts to negatively affect someone’s life…it can help to actively practice a 3rd strategy: living with it. A type of cognitive behavioral therapy based on this concept has proved to be very effective for patients with GAD (generalize anxiety disorder). Some people are more prone to the approach strategy, some to avoidance, some are a bit of both in different situations…
For a businessperson who cannot stop checking the stock market, change to checking just once a day, then every other day, and so on. For parents who worry over the uncertainty of their kids’ grades, have them back off double-checking homework. The goal is always the same, to get them to experience uncertainty and learn it is not fun, but tolerable.
While we cannot eliminate anxiety from life entirely, energy psychology tools such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), can help you address anxiety and panic attacks by correcting the bioelectrical short-circuiting that can happen when anxiety becomes chronic It’s normal to feel anxiety with a stressful event, such as before public speaking or in anticipation of a job interview, but normally anxiety will fade once the event passes. If you experience anxiety for long enough, your brain may become “wired” for it, such that any potentially undesirable situation sounds a biological alarm. Chronic anxiety might cause you to constantly look out for potential threats when none exist.
EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture for more than 5,000 yrs to treat physical and emotional ailments, but without the invasiveness of needles.
You can think of EFT as a tool for “reprogramming” your circuitry, and it works on both realand imagined stressors.
Recent research has shown that EFT significantly increases positive emotions, such as hope and enjoyment, and decreases negative emotional states, including anxiety. Following a 2012 review in the American Psychological Association’s journal Review of General Psychology, EFT is moving closer to meeting the criteria for an “evidence-based treatment.”
EFT is particularly powerful for treating stress and anxiety because it specifically targets your amygdala and hippocampus, which are the parts of your brain that help you decide whether or not something is a threat.
EFT has also been shown to lower cortisol levels.
While people can easily learn the basics of EFT on their own, if you have a serious anxiety disorder, it is recommend to consult a qualified EFT practitioner, as it typically takes years of training to develop the skill to tap on and relieve deep-seated, significant issues. That said, the more one does it the more skilled. EFT is a great tool to teach to children to help them diffuse their everyday stresses, thus preventing them from festering or evolving into chronic anxiety.
The Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is another option to combat anxiety in the long-term. One style of meditation is mindfulness, a directed-attention, waking state practice in which you keep bringing your attention back to the now. Living in the eternal moment I call it.
It is a practice of single-tasking, originally developed for monks, who remain focused on the present moment in all activities. Besides improving focus and boosting mental cognition, mindfulness training helps relieve feelings of stress and anxiety.
Think about it, nothing is uncertain in the now. And we have enough information in our cerebral cortex to deal with anything that come to our path.
In the now we know exactly where we are and what we doing in the moment, so by focusing on the direct experience in the present, uncertainty-driven anxiety can be reduced. With practice, a person can likely lower the “intolerance of uncertainty” score.
It’s now becoming more well-known that meditation actually changes your brain.
The increased calm and quiet you feel is not an imaginary effect. Neuroscientist Sara Lazar has used brain scans to look at the meditating brain, which shows that long-term meditators have an increased amount of gray matter in the insula and sensory regions. They also have more gray matter in the frontal cortex, an area associated with memory and executive decision making.
After only 8 wks, people who took part in a mindfulness meditation study, meditating 40 mins per day, were able to shrink their amygdala, the part of your brain that governs your fight or flight response, and plays a significant role in anxiety, fear, and general stress. A smaller amygdala correlates to reduced stress and anxiety.
Breathe, and eliminate the Monkey Thoughts from your brain, Live in the Now.
If you want to live a long and happy life, live every day without regrets. Everyone has problems, so love and cherish what you have.
Have a terrific week.
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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