How To Regulate Anxiety And Stress
The purpose of this section is to teach you ways of better regulating your stress and anxiety to increase your well-being and gain a more positive attitude of mind.
Stress and anxiety are related but distinct experiences. Both involve the body’s response to a perceived challenge or threat, but they differ in terms of their causes, duration, and manifestations. Stress is a response to an external situation or demand, often referred to as a stressor. It can be either positive (eustress) or negative (distress), depending on the situation and the individual’s perception of it.
Stress typically arises when there is a specific event or circumstance that creates a sense of pressure or challenge, such as an impending deadline or an important presentation. Once the event is over, stress levels usually subside. Stress can have both psychological and physiological effects on the body, including increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and feelings of frustration or anger.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is a more generalized feeling of unease, worry, or fear that often persists even in the absence of a specific external threat. Anxiety is typically more internal and pervasive than stress, and it may not have a clear or identifiable cause. People with anxiety may feel constantly on edge, have difficulty concentrating, or experience physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat, chest pain, or difficulty breathing. While some anxiety is a normal part of life, chronic or excessive anxiety can interfere with daily functioning and may indicate an anxiety disorder. In summary, stress is typically a response to a specific external situation, while anxiety is a more generalized, internal feeling of unease or worry that may not be directly tied to a specific event or circumstance.
Stress and anxiety management techniques are often similar because both experiences involve the body’s response to perceived challenges or threats, and both can create psychological and physiological symptoms that negatively impact well-being. Many of the techniques used to manage stress and anxiety focus on promoting relaxation, enhancing self-awareness, and developing healthy coping strategies.
Managing stress and anxiety is important because a moderate level of stress is ideal for therapeutic change (i.e., neuroplasticity). ability also helps to manage distress when exploring uncomfortable automatic thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, etc. It is important to learn how to manage stress before delving into uncomfortable thoughts and emotions. This isn’t because you’re not tough or strong – it’s because the mind and brain need a certain physiological balance of stress that is unique for each individual to allow for optimally identifying and changing the subtle unconscious beliefs that one has.
One must also be adept at countering the brain’s negativity bias and generalization tendency originating from subcortical (i.e., unconscious) brain networks prior to repairing maladaptive beliefs. This is because the turmoil from the powerful systems of the lower brain regions can get in the way of the effectiveness of the interventions. One’s background mood must also be enhanced to a tolerable degree before delving into deeper issues because a strong and healthy inner psychological environment is needed to do so.
If you are too stressed or anxious to do the techniques, or it would not feel enjoyable to do these, it may be because of the tendency to persevere during stress and anxiety as a result of the physiological effects of stress and anxiety that keep you alert and wanting to continue trying to overcome the adversity you are perceiving. One way to deal with this is to “tap the brakes” of the nervous system to gradually wind the stress response down. This is done by making the duration of the tool that you use short but frequently. You can slowly increase the duration when you are ready, as needed. For example, you might try taking mini 5 second breaks using the stress regulation tools to gradually wind the stress response down.
It is important to understand that staying in a responsive mode, which neurochemically fosters empathy and prosociality, should be the goal, and in order to do this one’s stress and anxiety needs to be managed effectively. Each person will have different degrees of how much self-soothing they need. Give allowance for the degree to which you and others need positive self-soothing. This should not be used as a means of avoidance, though. Once in a responsive mode you can begin to gradually venture into greater self-actualization and realization for anxiety self-help.
You may also notice that reducing stress can sometimes make the world and reality feel flat and boring, at least initially. The reason for this is because stress creates alertness, focus, and drive, as well as stimulation. The manner in which to overcome this challenge is to also come off your ‘stress bender’ gradually. Think of it like acclimatizing your body to a new environment. It takes time for this to happen, and it is on the body’s terms. It will take as long as it takes, and you need to foster the conditions for it to change. This idea contrasts with many people’s tendency to try to force change. A paradigm shift needs to take place in you such that the conditions need to be fostered, which is an indirect approach. This is in contrast trying to directly or mechanically change.
Breathe
Slowly and comfortably breathe in at a pace that is enjoyable for you. Make it rhythmic because this calms the brainstem, which is the first step in therapeutic repair as all else depends on the regulation of this region of the brain. If it helps to, count out the length of your breaths. Breathe in one-two-three-four, hold for two seconds. Breathe out, one-two-three-four, and hold for two seconds. Continue this for however long it is enjoyable. Notice any enjoyable sensations or effects in your body from doing this. This helps to reinforce the desire and habit to engage in this exercise.
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Slow
This tool involves slowing your breathing and movement down to provide an anchor for setting the pace of, and regulating, your mind. During your daily life when you are experiencing maladaptive stress, slow down your movement, shifting of attention, and what you consciously think about.
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Relax
There has been much research on the benefits of relaxation exercises on mental and physical health. There are a myriad of ways to approach this, and core exercises are provided at the end of this chapter.
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Eye Movement
Eye movement has been found to both aid in eliciting a relaxation response, process thought and emotion, and problem-solve. For the purpose of this section we will focus on fostering greater relaxation.
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Directed Associations
If you find certain thoughts or events stressful you can use the features of the present thought or experience to your advantage. The core of cognition seems to be analogy. That is, any feature of our reality (mental or physical) either is or has a reference point for another feature in our mind (reflected in our neural network). These are, in turn, connected with additional features and cues, and so on. Here are a couple ways of directing associations.
The first way is simply becoming aware of the opposite of the distressing feature. The second way is by looking for features that in some way can be connected with your wants, goals, and values. For the first way, this involves becoming aware of one of the features – the first is most often helpful. Then become aware of what this feature reminds you of when you think of it. Pretend for a moment that you have a thought about someone you don’t like. What is the first thought or feeling that comes to mind about them? Maybe you felt that they were inconsiderate. Now, think of the opposite of that quality and who exhibits consideration to you. This uses the natural rhythms of your associative thinking to think more positively by looking at the opposite of that feature.
For the second method involving considering your wants, values, and goals we can use a very mundane example. For example, you are not a fan of the vegetable cauliflower. If you just continue dwelling on this you remain stuck and in an unpleasant state of mind. When you use directed associative thinking, you can become aware of what the cauliflower reminds you of. For me, I think of cheese (probably from the commercials when I was younger). Then I think of what cheese reminds me of that is further and more significantly connected with my wants, values, and goals. I think of cows, then a farm, and then the countryside, and finally how I would like to retire in the countryside.
You can think of this method as piggybacking on the associative waves of your neural network’s pattern of energy and activity. In other words, it is essentially harnessing the natural direction and rhythm of your brain’s neural activity.
Try to do all of this lightly because focusing and narrowing in on the thought too much activates the left hemisphere and blocks out the pattern recognition power of the right hemisphere. However, we also need some of the focusing power of the left hemisphere to guide the right’s associative elicitations.
Mini-Breaks
It can be sometimes difficult to manage stress and anxiety with self-help because when we feel too stressed or angry to want to relax. This is because during stress we tend to get perseverative, more alert, and so managing stress is more about learning how to gradually wind down. This practice can be done often and give momentary relief. Done frequently, the relaxation and relief accumulates.
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Massage
Massage – even providing it to oneself – can be a terrific way to help provide regulation and sensory integration to fundamental levels of the architecture of your brain. Massage is often underestimated because of its perceived simplicity and accessibility, but in terms of regulation, it is fantastic.
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Emotional Boundaries
Being aware of one’s emotional boundaries of what is uncomfortable and overwhelming and creating distance or time from the stressor to process and contextualize fears can be a useful way to achieve greater regulation. If you are not aware of when this happens it may be especially helpful to learn how to identify your emotional boundaries so that you can begin this practice.
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Physical Distance from Stressor
This is also an underestimated tactic to increase regulation. There are many instances when this is indeed possible, yet we either downplay the significance of it, or have an erroneous notion that we should be able to use a technique to instantly regulate our distress. Regulation does not seem to work instantaneously. It requires a little bit of time, distance, and other interventions to get the wheels turning for regulation to begin to set-in. Getting some physical distance can assist with beginning the process of regulation
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Constructive Exploration & Engagement of Impulses
Sometimes exploring and enacting impulses in a safe and controlled manner can provide some regulation. Do this in a controlled exploratory manner in the safety of isolation so as to not potentially scare or harm someone.
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Positive Influencers
It can be adaptive to direct your attention to positive things if it provides a break from stress. Not all stress is bad, of course, but we seem to have too much. Too much can be bad for health as levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids can depress virtually every system of the body and increase the risk for illness and wear and tear on the body. There is definitely a time and place for investigating and dealing with unpleasant fears and worries, but a break from these is also essential for regulating your energy and maintaining your mental health.
You can do this exercise for a quick buffer for stress that lasts a few seconds, if you don’t have a longer period. Or, you can do a more lengthy exercise if you have the time or desire. Sometimes it can be challenging to do an exercise like this for an extended period because it feels like work. This is why it is important to try it for a short time and notice, experience, and savour any enjoyable sensations in your body for several seconds. This acts as a reinforcer to increase the desire for more of it.
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Exercise: Make a list of your favourite calming memories, images, smells, sounds, feelings, fantasies, movies, books, people, qualities, and characteristics both as a child and adult. These will be buffers against negative things you perceive that cause too much stress. Here is a list of categories to aid you:
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Daily Routine
There are some core regulation exercises you can use as daily practices which are provided below. You can begin by doing one per day, and gradually increasing the number. You can also make these an integrated exercise as a daily routine. The more frequently these are done the greater that this builds the stress regulation circuits in the brain which provide a buffer to stressors, and the easier it is to get into a more relaxed state of mind.
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Breathing & Embodied Awareness
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Progressive Muscle Relaxation
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Calm Place
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Sensory Mindfulness
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