Mindful Emotional Self-Care
Techniques and Tools for Managing Anxious Feelings and Stress |
You feel overwhelmed a good portion of your waking hours and its not uncommon for you to have your sleep disturbed by your non-stop thinking about things.
The thinking and anxious feelings you experience affect your life so much that its hard to tell if your life is anything but these feelings. Whenever something happens that brings you peace of mind, it seems to go away so quickly and its right back to those anxious feelings again.
You are not alone in feeling this way.
In fact I know this because I have worked with so many clients over the years who were in this same cycle of anxiousness about their life.
However, I want to tell you the secret of how to get out of that state whenever you need to and even better, an opportunity to shift things on such a deep level that you will likely never have to manage those kinds of feelings again.
First, I’d like to give you some perspective so you know that you are already doing something that so many aren’t able to do. You are consciously taking action to feel better.
Just by reading this, you are aware that you don’t feel your best and you are seeking out tools to feel better. If you weren’t you would be lost in a deep emotional hole and unaware of the fact that life could even be better.
That’s not you though. You know that things should be better than they are and here you are actively trying to get there, so be proud of yourself.
Now that you know you want to feel better and you believe that it is possible, you can take small and simple actions to quickly change your state from anxious, nervous, overwhelmed or panicked to one of calm and ease. You can do this through self-regulation.
Self-regulation simply put, is the act of consciously noticing those moments when you feel out of balance and using a tool from your toolbox to change your state.
Before I give you 2 simple tools for your toolbox though, if you want to master self-regulation you’ll need to understand a few critical points…
The thinking and anxious feelings you experience affect your life so much that its hard to tell if your life is anything but these feelings. Whenever something happens that brings you peace of mind, it seems to go away so quickly and its right back to those anxious feelings again.
You are not alone in feeling this way.
In fact I know this because I have worked with so many clients over the years who were in this same cycle of anxiousness about their life.
However, I want to tell you the secret of how to get out of that state whenever you need to and even better, an opportunity to shift things on such a deep level that you will likely never have to manage those kinds of feelings again.
First, I’d like to give you some perspective so you know that you are already doing something that so many aren’t able to do. You are consciously taking action to feel better.
Just by reading this, you are aware that you don’t feel your best and you are seeking out tools to feel better. If you weren’t you would be lost in a deep emotional hole and unaware of the fact that life could even be better.
That’s not you though. You know that things should be better than they are and here you are actively trying to get there, so be proud of yourself.
Now that you know you want to feel better and you believe that it is possible, you can take small and simple actions to quickly change your state from anxious, nervous, overwhelmed or panicked to one of calm and ease. You can do this through self-regulation.
Self-regulation simply put, is the act of consciously noticing those moments when you feel out of balance and using a tool from your toolbox to change your state.
Before I give you 2 simple tools for your toolbox though, if you want to master self-regulation you’ll need to understand a few critical points…
What Makes a State
Your current state is the combination of your Body Sensations, Focus and Thoughts, Images, and Emotions.
For example, you might call it ‘Anxiety’ (not necessarily the diagnosed kind) and to you it is a combination of stomach tightness, focus on images of the future and thoughts of doom. For someone else it may be throat choking, focus on a specific person and fearful emotions.
Whatever your state may be it’s some constellation of these types of sensory information.
We go through different states throughout or days, weeks and years, although most have some ‘go-to' states that seem to be present most of the time.
At some other point we’ll talk about how these ‘go-to’ states are actually inner parts that came about from our earlier years, although for now just know that we all have these states.
For example, you might call it ‘Anxiety’ (not necessarily the diagnosed kind) and to you it is a combination of stomach tightness, focus on images of the future and thoughts of doom. For someone else it may be throat choking, focus on a specific person and fearful emotions.
Whatever your state may be it’s some constellation of these types of sensory information.
We go through different states throughout or days, weeks and years, although most have some ‘go-to' states that seem to be present most of the time.
At some other point we’ll talk about how these ‘go-to’ states are actually inner parts that came about from our earlier years, although for now just know that we all have these states.
The good news is that we can change these states quite quickly when we are aware of them!
Change The Channel
If you think of that collection of sensory information as a channel that you’ve unknowingly switched to then you can easily see how changing the channel is just a click away so to speak.
Who hasn’t found themselves lost in trance while watching a captivating program on the tv?
Well, that’s what is happening when you are feeling stuck in a state, you are in a trance.
The good news is that simply by noticing one of the pieces of sensory information (body, focus, thoughts, images and emotions) and then choosing something different you can tune into a different way of being in that moment.
Now of course changing from fearful to courageous is a bit of a leap…although I do have a tool to do that quickly...
However it will be far easier for now to simply change your focus or change your body sensations. When you do that you effectively break the trance that you are in, you change your state.
Who hasn’t found themselves lost in trance while watching a captivating program on the tv?
Well, that’s what is happening when you are feeling stuck in a state, you are in a trance.
The good news is that simply by noticing one of the pieces of sensory information (body, focus, thoughts, images and emotions) and then choosing something different you can tune into a different way of being in that moment.
Now of course changing from fearful to courageous is a bit of a leap…although I do have a tool to do that quickly...
However it will be far easier for now to simply change your focus or change your body sensations. When you do that you effectively break the trance that you are in, you change your state.
Tool #1 : Changing Your Body
Your body is reacting to your thoughts, images and beliefs that are present when you are experiencing a certain state. So when you are experiencing anxious feelings, you can change your state by changing your body.
This isn’t a new concept of course as you’ve probably heard the idea of getting up and exercising if you are feeling depressed.
Now, there are lots of tools that I’ll share with you over time, however to begin with one of the best ways to change your channel through your body is by regulating your nervous system with your breath.
When you are in an over-excited, anxious or overwhelmed state your inhale is often deeper and more pronounced than your exhale. In fact, the inhale of your breath actually instantaneously causes a sympathetic (fight/flight) shift in your body which is then immediately followed by your exhale that causes a parasympathetic (relax/repair) shift in your body.
To change your channel or state you simply need to emphasize the exhale over the inhale. So use this breathing technique to shift yourself into that relaxed body state:
4-4-7 Breath: bring your awareness to your breath and intentionally breathe in for a 4 second count. Then hold your breath for 4 seconds. Then exhale for 7 seconds. Then go right back to a 4 second inhale and repeat the cycle for about 2 minutes.
The result should shift your state pretty quickly and bring down the intensity of your previous emotions fairly significantly. If you need to do it longer than 2 minutes then listen to your intuition and spend some more time with the breath. You’ll notice that you are actually both using your body and your focus to change the channel with this approach.
This isn’t a new concept of course as you’ve probably heard the idea of getting up and exercising if you are feeling depressed.
Now, there are lots of tools that I’ll share with you over time, however to begin with one of the best ways to change your channel through your body is by regulating your nervous system with your breath.
When you are in an over-excited, anxious or overwhelmed state your inhale is often deeper and more pronounced than your exhale. In fact, the inhale of your breath actually instantaneously causes a sympathetic (fight/flight) shift in your body which is then immediately followed by your exhale that causes a parasympathetic (relax/repair) shift in your body.
To change your channel or state you simply need to emphasize the exhale over the inhale. So use this breathing technique to shift yourself into that relaxed body state:
4-4-7 Breath: bring your awareness to your breath and intentionally breathe in for a 4 second count. Then hold your breath for 4 seconds. Then exhale for 7 seconds. Then go right back to a 4 second inhale and repeat the cycle for about 2 minutes.
The result should shift your state pretty quickly and bring down the intensity of your previous emotions fairly significantly. If you need to do it longer than 2 minutes then listen to your intuition and spend some more time with the breath. You’ll notice that you are actually both using your body and your focus to change the channel with this approach.
Tool #2 : Changing Your Focus
Every single time that you are experiencing anxious feelings, overwhelm or panic you are not in the present moment.
So to quickly bring yourself back to the present moment you need to utilizing your body in a different way by engaging with the space you are in.
In other words you are going to change your focus.
As soon as you start to become conscious of these feelings give yourself a quick rating on how intense the feelings are on a scale of 0-10 and then connect to one or more of your 5 senses
Eyes: look around the room you are in and describe objects in the space. If you can, try not to even name the object, simply describe it…. “It’s plastic and white, it has two screws in it, there’s a knobby thing that sticks out and it's pointed kind of up”. And then move right on to another object in the room and continue for 4-5 objects.
Ears: listen closely to all of the sounds around you…the air conditioner, the humming of your computer, your own breathing, the rustling of your clothes as you move, perhaps the sounds of others nearby.
Touch: grab a hold of something that has some texture to it and begin to feel it without even describing it but focus purely on the sensations in your fingers as you feel this object.
Smell: if you have different essential oils or a garden with flowers you can begin to smell different scents and just let it move through you.
Taste: I wouldn’t recommend taste as a way to change the channel because so many of us already negatively use food as a tool to shift our state.
Once you have used one of your senses to change your channel, check back in with your body where you used to have that bodily sensation. It has most likely disappeared or at least decreased in intensity. If you’d like it to decrease even more you can spend more time with your senses or return to your breath.
So to quickly bring yourself back to the present moment you need to utilizing your body in a different way by engaging with the space you are in.
In other words you are going to change your focus.
As soon as you start to become conscious of these feelings give yourself a quick rating on how intense the feelings are on a scale of 0-10 and then connect to one or more of your 5 senses
Eyes: look around the room you are in and describe objects in the space. If you can, try not to even name the object, simply describe it…. “It’s plastic and white, it has two screws in it, there’s a knobby thing that sticks out and it's pointed kind of up”. And then move right on to another object in the room and continue for 4-5 objects.
Ears: listen closely to all of the sounds around you…the air conditioner, the humming of your computer, your own breathing, the rustling of your clothes as you move, perhaps the sounds of others nearby.
Touch: grab a hold of something that has some texture to it and begin to feel it without even describing it but focus purely on the sensations in your fingers as you feel this object.
Smell: if you have different essential oils or a garden with flowers you can begin to smell different scents and just let it move through you.
Taste: I wouldn’t recommend taste as a way to change the channel because so many of us already negatively use food as a tool to shift our state.
Once you have used one of your senses to change your channel, check back in with your body where you used to have that bodily sensation. It has most likely disappeared or at least decreased in intensity. If you’d like it to decrease even more you can spend more time with your senses or return to your breath.
Experience More Easy-To-Use Tools
If you’re like me you had a bit of an aha moment when you realized that you were in a trance when you are feeling overwhelmed or anxious. As a hypnotherapist what it means is that in a sense I work with people to break their trance and de-hypnotize them from their patterns.
I’d love to share more of the simple to use self-regulation tools that will help you feel:
Keep an eye on your inbox because I'll be sending you another technique that I'll guide you through to shift your emotions!
I’d love to share more of the simple to use self-regulation tools that will help you feel:
- More control
- More ease
- More peace of mind
- More groundedness
- And so many other benefits
Keep an eye on your inbox because I'll be sending you another technique that I'll guide you through to shift your emotions!