Anxiety is a “common ailment” of modern society, and if this emotion isn't managed well, it can significantly affect our quality of life.
The development of anxiety can be considered an emotional disorder with various origins, and as it develops, symptoms like excessive sweating, trembling, fatigue or a sense of impending danger become more common and less controllable. However,
there are three strategies that can help reduce its effects, contributing to better physical and mental well-being.
- Accept the anxiety
Anxiety affects all the daily habits in the personal lives of those who have been diagnosed with the disorder, or who at least know that their symptoms are related to it. Just like with addiction, the first step is acceptance — accepting that you have a problem with anxiety and that you're dealing with it.
When there's acceptance, it's easier to recognize that the events, situations or things that happen are simply part of life, and that things that happen can't always be controlled — but when you accept that you have anxiety and that things happen, the disorder and the situations that trigger it become easier to cope with, and events lose so much of their weight. - Take care of physical balance
Taking care of physical balance is of primary importance, not only for treating anxiety, but it's also useful for other disorders like stress and depression — exercise itself helps regulate emotional states, since it releases tension and lets the energy that's been dammed up by the effects of anxiety flow.
It's important to note that, when we talk about physical balance, it's also about developing a physical activity or hobbies that bring both mental and bodily movement and that are an enjoyable complement. This chosen activity should be paired with good sleep hygiene and a healthy, balanced diet.
Anxious patients tend to adopt a caretaking personality, which is why exercise greatly contributes to building habits in which priorities shift — so, by taking up a sport as a goal for overcoming a disorder, the person will focus on taking care of themself, and only then offer their help to whoever they feel needs it. - Get to know your thought patterns better
Getting to know yourself contributes to better coping with anxiety attacks that come with disproportionate thoughts, which in themselves create a partial imbalance of emotions. We have to understand that anxiety is related to the brain and thought patterns — during a crisis, a person may experience guilt, a need to be accepted, or a need to seek approval. What matters most in these crises is being able to change your thinking in the moment the event is being experienced, because if you can't change the way you think, you also won't change the way you act.
A person with anxiety's thinking always carries an emotion with it — whether anger, rage, fear, or paralysis — and the stronger the emotion, the greater the amounts of proteins the brain produces, such as neuropeptides (small molecules that act on the nervous system), and the greater their production, the stronger the link to the anxiety disorder.
Carlos Jaramillo, a functional medicine physician, notes that “when those neuropeptides increase, they end up producing cortisol, adrenaline, an increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and a state of alertness and flight — something I built through my own thinking.”
What this tells us is that the emotions that “I,” as a person, generate day by day, mature within the nervous system and are in constant interaction with the brain and the rest of the organs. A single anxiety-related thought keeps the sympathetic state on constant alert and adrenaline.
The constant relationship with thoughts of flight and fear keeps the parasympathetic system — responsible for keeping the body calm — on vacation. These thoughts make the sympathetic system work much harder, leaving no room for repair, rest, and care for the mind, which ultimately ends in an imbalance of emotions, losing the ability to respond to a state of anxiety, and causing physical, mental and emotional pain. - Using flower essences as an extra strategy
The strategies mentioned here are aimed at the personal work each person must do. However, we can keep contributing to improving anxious states with the help of flower essences, an alternative and natural therapy that helps regulate altered states.
As a recommendation, we find the Siuansia essence, which helps regulate the emotional response, taking control and reducing the frequency and intensity of altered anxiety states.
Siuansia flower essence is recommended in doses of 4 drops 3 to 6 times a day for 6 weeks up to 6 months.
Anxiety is just an emotional state that, if it turns into a disorder, will affect quality of life, but it's up to us to get out of that emotional state through inner and alternative practices that reduce its effects in the short and long term.
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