Anxiety busting with Emily

Home
Anxiety busting with Emily

This is a space for anyone wishing to reduce the intensity and frequency of anxiety.

17/01/2026

A simple rephrase, can expel anxious thoughts. 👌

16/01/2026

A neuroscience nibble for a Friday.....🐿

🧠 Rewiring your brain after a stressful period

Story:👇

After months of nonstop deadlines, Ana felt on edge all the time, racing heart, broken sleep, every problem a crisis. She started small: 5 minutes of slow breathing, a short walk, and nightly journaling. Weeks later, she could pause before reacting, sleep better, and feel calmer. Her brain was slowly rewiring. 〰️🧠

👇How It Works:👇 (the neuroscience bit)

1️⃣ Calm the body first
Your brain can’t think clearly when your body is in stress mode. Slow breath, gentle movement, or grounding senses send a safety signal to the brain, calming the stress response and letting your rational, thinking brain work.
Effect: ↓ Fear, ↑ focus

2️⃣ Rebuild memory & context🤔
Routine, sleep, and learning new skills help your hippocampus process “I’m safe now.”
Effect: ↑ Context awareness, ↓ overreacting

3️⃣ Strengthen thinking, rational brain
Mindfulness, journaling, naming💡 emotions. These all strengthen the prefrontal cortex.
Effect: ↑ Emotional regulation, ↓ fear hijack

4️⃣ Connect safely⛑️
Talking, co-regulation, supportive groups reduce threat vigilance.
Effect: ↑ Trust & calm, ↓ hypervigilance

5️⃣ Add recovery💤
Micro-rests, saying no, and reducing multitasking help your brain repair.
Effect: ↓ Stress hormones, ↑ neural repair

Here's the magic:, repeated steps, safety, predictability, recovery REWIRE your brain over time.🧠✔️ This is neuroplasticity 🙌

15/01/2026

Black or white.⚫️⚪️

Right or Wrong.✔️❌️

Perfect or Imperfect.👌👎

It hurts to try and fit fully into one extreme or the other.😖

why?❓️

Because life isn't absolute.

Remembering this perspective reduces stress to reach what often isn't possible or always needed. Often referred to as 'walking the middle path' is can support mental health by working with life, not against it.🙏

09/01/2026

Two different routes.✌️

Achieving hard things is of course possible...

However:

➡️One route is destructive, often continues on repeat, leads to illness.😔

➡️The other is hard, yet aware, working with how the brain and body absorbs the 'hard bits' to enable achievement and growth without damage.😊

The key dynamic difference?🤔

✨️Awareness and small micro wellbeing tools or practices to match identified need.✨️

👇Here's the thing:

One offers sustainability and health; the other offers burnout and ill health (mind and body)

Learning how to achieve in a regulated way, that's the sweetspot, this is the higher self realised.👌

07/01/2026

Happy Wednesday👋

🧠 Neuroscience Nibble 3:
Why Scrolling Is So Hard to Stop?

You open your phone “just to check one thing,” and suddenly 15–30 minutes have vanished.🤦‍♀️

This isn’t a lack of discipline , it’s how your brain is wired.

💡 What’s happening in the brain💡

Dopamine systems are highly sensitive to novelty and unpredictability, so variable rewards like new posts and updates reinforce continued engagement.

Experts now describe this pattern as dopamine-scrolling, a behaviour linked to habitual and potentially compulsive use.

❓️ Why it feels so hard❓️

Your brain didn’t evolve for infinite scroll feeds; it evolved to seek new information efficiently. Modern platforms exploit this system, making disengagement hard even when you want to stop.

✔️ How to work with your brain✔️

Instead of relying purely on willpower:
• Set timers and scheduled check-ins
• Use grayscale mode or app limits
• Turn off push notifications
• Plan high-focus blocks with no phone access

🎯 Bottom line
The challenge isn’t a character flaw, it’s a design problem. Change the environment and behaviour follows.

• Sharpe, B. T., & Spooner, R. A. (2025). Dopamine-scrolling: a modern public health challenge. Perspectives in Public Health. (PMC)
• Karila, L. et al. (2025). Understanding problematic smartphone and social media use. JMIR Mental Health. (JMIR Mental Health)

04/01/2026

👇Welcome to the first in a series of neuroscience nibbles. 🧠 Taking everyday situations and considering the neuroscience behind it.🤔

All with the aim of heightening awareness to inform wellbeing🙏

✨️Everyday situation🙌

You plan to exercise, focus, or work on something meaningful, but by the
end of the day, your motivation is gone.

🧠What the brain is doing🧠

Planning, self-control, and goal-directed behaviour rely on the prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain. Prolonged cognitive effort and stress reduce its efficiency, making
it harder to initiate and sustain effort later in the day.

❓️Why it feels this way❓️

Motivation isn’t a personality trait, it’s a changing brain state shaped by
energy, availability and stress hormones. When resources drop, the brain shifts toward conservation. This is often mistaken for laziness but reflects neurobiological fatigue.

💡How to work with your brain💡

* Do demanding tasks earlier when the prefrontal cortex is freshest
* Lower task friction by making the first step easy
* Use small time commitments (5–10 minutes)
* Prioritise recovery - sleep and breaks matter
* Rely on systems, not willpower - Willpower fatigues with prefrontal
load. Habits, routines, and cues automate behaviour, reducing
the need for motivation when energy is low.

✔️ Takeaway: Fading motivation is a biological signal, not a flaw.

References: Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that
impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience.
McEwen, B. S., & Morrison, J. H. (2013). The brain on stress. Nature
Reviews Neuroscience.
Baumeister, R. F. et al. (2007). Self-control relies on a limited resource.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

31/12/2025

Here's to 'going on'..

with your collection of learns✔️
of understandings..🤝
of memories..💭
of self awareness...👁
..weaving a new pathway into this new year in which we get to add more .🙏

Finding the gift in each experience.

Sending love to you all for 2026, you wise ones💗🥂

30/12/2025

Stoking the embers of stress to new flames🔥🔥

OR

Enabling the embers to cool and dissipate?💦

👆This is the difference between adding to a dysregulated nervous system and listening to what it needs.

Listen to what your brain and body needs, honour it. That's it.🙏

24/12/2025

A few ' Ray the Robin' posts from December. 👇

Loved his little tips for anxiety and wellbeing.💗

Sending love this Christmas. Thank you for the support it has been a busy year of wellbeing support, new workshops and tools between my work with The Myton Hospices and my own anxiety coaching practice.

Sending love and if you're not feeling it right now, be kind to yourself, validate how you feel, let it pass through, breathe and find one tiny glimmer.🙏💗

21/12/2025

Moving slowly, is an underrated game changer when things feel frantic.🙏

17/12/2025

Ray's day had been heavy.😔

👉Enter: Music🎵🎵

Ray listened to music that mirrored how he felt to process his emotions.🎧

Ray gradually moved from music that matched his mood to music that represented how he wanted to feel.🙌

Music and mood are closely linked—music can shape, reflect, and even regulate how we feel.

How music affects mood👇

Tempo:

Fast tempos → energizing, motivating

Slow tempos → calming, reflective

Key & harmony:

Major keys → happiness, optimism

Minor keys → sadness, introspection

Rhythm & dynamics:

Strong beats → confidence, excitement

Soft, flowing rhythms → relaxation

Address

Website

http://www.mylifecoaching.co.uk/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Anxiety busting with Emily posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Anxiety busting with Emily:

Shortcuts

Want your practice to be the top-listed Clinic?

Country:

City: