Diane Laird Cognitive Hypnotherapy

07/12/2022

An advent for your mind: your daily no pressure Christmas toolkit.

Day 7: routes off the anxiety roundabout.

We’ve been living through anxious times recently-and then add in Christmas, and all that entails. That’s why it’s more important than ever to find ways off your anxiety roundabout.

When you get on the anxiety roundabout your body’s sympathetic nervous system escalates.... adrenaline and cortisol are released to get your body ready to run, hide or fight. This sets off a huge range of physiological sensations... tightened muscles, rapid breathing, shaky extremities, sweaty skin, redness rising, bowels constricting and many more. It doesn’t feel nice, but it’s just physiology... it’s your body using energy to meet its predicted needs and directing this energy in an attempt to be helpful. Noticing and understanding your signs can help you recognise you are on the anxiety rounding.

What you do at this point can push you further along anxiety roundabout, or it can help you find a route off. To get off the anxiety roundabout you need to find ways to deescalate the arousing sympathetic body system and try to engage the parasympathetic system instead, which helps calm things down.

It’s about doing something that changes your physiology.... exercise is great for this as it uses up that extra energy and triggers different chemicals that helps calm your body down, but there are lots of other ways to do this too. Usually these involve a shift in what you are doing, moving, shifting your attention, moving context or doing something to calm your body. What works for you will be unique to you... these are the ways you told me you got of the anxiety roundabout and some of the most common ways people find they can de-escalate their anxiety response and tap into their parasympathetic system to help change the physiological responses that are creating anxiety.

We can’t always stop being anxious (it’s human) and we need to recognise how we are feelings (and not shame ourselves for this). But we can also do lots of things to respond helpfully to our anxiety and find routes off the anxiety roundabout instead of circling further and further around it.

03/08/2022

Self-Compassion can be a helpful way to build your own internal resources, a helpful introduction if you want to know more-

Science shows that self-compassion isn’t about letting yourself off the hook — in fact, it’s the opposite.

29/04/2022

13/12/2021

Are you too critical of your loved ones?

01/12/2021

Every act of kindness makes a difference. Let's help create a happier world this December with our Kindness Calendar. Please use & share 💕🌎🎄

https://www.actionforhappiness.org/december

22/11/2021

I think this will speak to many:

‘She sat at the back and they said she was shy,
She led from the front and they hated her pride,
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they'd listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she'd been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped...and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe`

~ Becky Hemsley ~