My individual tension management approach has got to be quite effective, whatever it is. Doesn’t seem that there is any let up in anxiety these days, does there?
Nonetheless, once I give some thought to exactly where tension exists, or is skilled, and the sequence of events leading to the physiology of tension, a body full of hormones and neurotransmitters a lot more suitable to combating an attack than the board room or the living room, I can recognize that there are some interventions I can work on to change the chemistry inside my body.
I can change my thoughts, which will change my feelings, which will give me a lot more time to make choices about my behavior.
And according to Dr. Daniel Amen, relaxation actually activates the higher perceptual centers of my brain for better decision creating.
That is a great payoff for learning a stress management approach.
Possibly the most crucial stress management technique to understand is that my thoughts, my interpretations of sensory data, are what brings the chemistry of anxiety into my body.
And that procedure happens very fast, about twice as quick as I can blink my eyes.
And 1 stressful thought can bring on one more and another, and prior to a second has elapsed, (that is appropriate, 1 second) I could have generated a sequence of thoughts that leave me filled with enough adrenalin and cortisol to move me into distress rather than eustress, and then I can keep myself there long sufficient to begin to impact my brain fitness, my heart fitness, and the rest of my body too.
My very first genuinely effective anxiety management strategy was to say the phrase “Gratitude is the attitude” to myself, and that worked, because a person usually has it worse off than I do, but the relief I felt when saying that phrase to myself was brief lived.
Somewhere I had picked up the notion that I was supposed to have lengthy periods of contentment, sort of like a drug experience, and that is not how your body usually works.
In other words, I will need to practice gratitude frequently, beginning with thoughts (and/or breathing) and my body will eventually follow along and find out that the physiology of contentment is what I want it to discover, and remain near.
In my early days of seeking a seeking a tension management method, I looked at numerous various tools, and there are a lot of great meditative and cognitive tools out there, which includes Open Focus, Transcendental Meditation, working out, but for my money, I want a tool that does not demand me to quit what I am doing and sit quietly meditating.
In other words it has to be usable while I am going about my everyday enterprise, and of all the tools I have tried, the 1 that has worked best for me is learning how to do the heart rate variability biofeedback.
I can feel the alter using heart rate variability biofeedback, and because I learned the skill on a computer, I know that my physiology modifications when I do the Speedy Coherence Strategy.
So when I feel myself finding essential or judgemental or snappy, (and I still use gratitude thoughts by the way) I can switch my thoughts to the area about my heart, place my children’s faces there, and really feel my heart become a lot more coherent, and since I have some experience with Heartmath heart rate variability biofeedback, my body switches back to a cooperative and affiliative physiology inside a heart beat.
Not quite the speed of thought but close, and that tool has saved me a lot of regrets over the years. I have been able to operate from a heartfelt cooperation and affiliation more and far more usually.
In fact, the practice of heart rate variability has given me a felt expertise of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy concept that you do not have to accept thoughts as truths. You can dispute them. In other words, I can fill myself with enjoy and then feel one distressing thought and fill myself with the feeling of pressure or despair, and then believe the loving thought, and feel the enjoy come appropriate back into my body. You can even dispute the thoughts that make you feel excellent, if you want.
So we have managed to move ourselves from the realm of the external producing me feel stressed, due to the fact it is my thought about the external that brings on the adrenalin and cortisol inside my body, and making use of and some mindfulness coupled with some practice, I can steer my physiology like I steer my auto with thousands of modest adjustments.
In truth, I could get so very good at heart rate variability biofeedback that it runs in the background of my brain, popping into the foreground for a heart beat’s worth of attention on an as-required basis.
It is crucial to recognize for some folks that heart rate variability biofeedback is a learned skill and does not override any simple biological process. In other words, I can still activate my fight or flight chemistry if needed for a genuine attack.
If you want to check out the rewards of having your own personal tension management method for your neurogenesis, or the growth of new brain cells, then read Brainfit for Life by Simon Evans,Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt,Ph.D.
Hope you take pleasure in your coherence!