5 foundations to return to when anxiety hits
When it comes to connecting your mind and body, these basic body-based things can have a big impact on how you feel. Just paying attention to these foundations can already shift your whole state.
Stay tuned for the fifth one, as you probably didn’t expect this one.
5 foundations to return to when anxiety hits
Wear clothes which are not too tight.
Wearing tight clothes often means that your chest or waist are compressed, make breathing slightly harder, which the brain can interpret as “danger”
When dealing with anxiety, wearing looser jeans and tops is one of the first things to keep in mind.
2. Exploring your relationship to caffeine
Caffeine increases adrenaline and can push you into a mild fight-or-flight state. It also mimics physical sensations which feel like anxiety and can distrurb sleep, which increases anxiety the next day.
Everybody has a different response to caffeine, but when anxiety appears, I highly recommend really exploring your relationship with coffee.
I dealt with anxiety for years and years and replacing my daily coffee with a decaf version in the morning honestly changed my life.
Sometimes it seems you don’t have an instant response to coffee, but the baseline of your nervous system might still be affected, meaning that your system becomes more reactive.
3. Eat properly and regularly
Low blood sugar triggers stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which mimic anxiety symptoms. Your emotional reactivity increases — which means that small triggers suddenly feel bigger and Focus and self-regulation drop, making worry and rumination worse, due to the affect low blood sugar has on the prefrontal cortex function, which is the area responsible for decision-making and self-regulation.
4. Drinking enough
Dehydration activates stress responses, your cognitive clarity drops, making it harder to regulate emotions and increasing irritability.
Dehydration sensations mimic anxiety — dry mouth, racing heart, dizziness.
5. & Lastly, Are you warm enough?
Feeling cold can activates your fight or flight state, the sympathetic nervous system. Blood vessels constrict to preserve heat, heart rate increases slightly and muscles tense to generate warmt. These physical reactions are very similar to how anxiety feels in the body, so the brain can interpret cold as a stressor and trigger anxious thoughts.
It increases cortisol and adrenaline in the short term, which can heighten alertness, racing thoughts, or the feeling of being “on edge,” which can intensify anxiety.
So make sure to dress properly (espeally torso, hands, feet, shoulders and neck and head),
Wear clothes that are not constricting your waist and chest.
Make sure to eat consistently and properly, keeping nutritious snacks around, quit coffee for a while and make sure to drink enough throughout the day.
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