Archive for month: March, 2022

how can anxiety be managed

Managing anxiety for a happier life

How can anxiety be managed?

What is anxiety?

Anxiety affects about 10% of the population for periods of their life or in some cases for all of it.

It can also affect any of us in response to specific life events – we have a test, we have a serious argument, parents split up, uncertainty over money, someone dies.

It is a normal response to a perceived threat, and everyone experiences anxiety at some point, and possibly regularly.

What we’re going to talk about in this blog are ways to help you manage anxiety so it doesn’t get unmanageable and feel like it’s taking over your daily life.

How can you recognise anxiety?

You can have either or both physical and psychological symptoms.

In your body, you might experience things like – sweating more, hot flushes, pins and needles, panic attacks or nausea.

In your head, you might experience dread, constant worrying, racing thoughts, a feeling of being on edge.

There are lots of other ways you can feel anxiety too, so it’s best to talk to someone if you’re unsure.

What can you do about anxiety?

We have lots of lifestyle and self-help options that improve anxiety which we’ll focus on today. When it feels like anxiety is affecting your daily life and is getting out of hand, we can use therapies like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and other talking therapies to help, and in some cases where it is becoming more severe, your doctor may look at medication too.

My specialism is the things we can do to help ourselves.

In the following, I’d like you to look out for the thing that feels like it will fit YOU. Not everything I say will be relevant for you, but in what I say, I think you will be able to walk away with something that will help you change your MIND in order to give you a better experience of life!

It sounds big, but it’s what I spend my time teaching because changing my own mind, and how I think, has completely changed my life.

What is resilience?

Resilience is often defined as our bounce-back ability. I define it as our ability to bounce back AND our realisation that we are the only one responsible for getting ourselves back up.

Now that can sound a bit harsh or isolating; that is not the intention. What accepting that ultimately we are the only one who can actually do the hard work of getting back up does is it keeps our agency – or to put it another way, it stops us giving our power away.

We can ask for help and take that help, and I want you to do that. It takes a village to get through this life, and I can promise you that you will want and need your friends many times over.

Nevertheless, your friends, your family, your coworkers can never actually live your life FOR you – they can be there, they can help with specific parts, and YOU will still have to do all the things in the end. You take your exams, you take your driving test, you go for the job interview, you ask someone to for a favour etc.

Whatever it is it takes resilience – living life creates vulnerability because LIVING your life means risking people saying no, I don’t want that, I don’t like the way you’ve done that, I don’t like you or want you. It’s built-in.

How can you manage vulnerability?

Understanding that life involves taking risks and that involves being willing to be vulnerable will put you in the driver’s seat of your life and give you freedom in a way that people who always look to someone else to solve their problems won’t experience.

Think about it – when have you taken a risk and had it work out, how did it make you feel? And when did you take a risk and have it not work out, and how did that make you feel?

Generally, the risk paying off leaves us feeling exhilarated. The risk of not paying off can feel crushing, but it can also feel like you tried and it can build your self-respect.

It’s managing this part of the reaction that I want to help with through these two tools.

The emotional bank account

What is it? It works exactly like any other bank account – you have to put in money to be able to withdraw it. With our resilience (our ability to get back up from life’s knocks), we have to put in good feelings in order to be able to fund difficult ones.

How do we use it?

  • Notice what feels good
  • Feel that feeling deliberately
  • Bank that feeling

Big and small deposits are both valuable. How YOU choose to bank the feeling is up to you. You might write them down, you might have a Pinterest or Instagram account where you collect the good stuff, you might create voice notes for yourself.

I pin things to a board where I can see them from my desk, and I pin thank you notes to my fridge so that I can see them all the time. What could you and what do you already do? How can you CREATE more good feelings?

Holistic self-care

We need to take care of all aspects of who we are:

  • Body
  • Emotions
  • Mind
  • Social
  • Environmental

We create good feelings by doing things that look after and inspire us at each of these levels. So start asking questions.

HOW do I like to move my body? I like to box and do yoga.

WHAT feels good? Time with my friends, time just NOT being traditionally purposeful, so reading a book, watching films, and creating art for example.

WHO am I with when I feel at my best? Get really good at realising which people lift you up and in exactly what way.

WHERE do I like to be and what do I need in my environment to be happy?

To conclude

Feeling good is the key to resilience. Become a joy-hunter. It will become a superpower because your joy will help you through the really tough bits of life.

Finally, the more we can understand that what we think creates what we feel the easier life will be.

This is your invitation to feel better, in the way that feels just right for you – whether that’s through Reiki Healing, Life Coaching, Bach Flower Essences, Retreats, Meditation or Yoga classes. Learn to love the life you have and build the life you want. Book a free call with me, Joanne, to discover what would best suit you.

How nature benefits your mental health

How nature benefits your mental health

We know we feel good when we are outside with the fresh air and sunshine on our face… ⁠but why? 

Let’s look at how nature benefits our mental health. Research shows that spending time in nature improves our wellbeing and eases anxiety and depression. There are many reasons why this is the case, for example:⁠

  • Plants and trees emit soothing compounds called phytoncides
  • Being in nature presents an opportunity to step away from our home or work environment⁠
  • When spending time outdoors, our senses are heightened due to new sounds, smells and sights

Walking in nature is even a prescribed therapy in Japan. Known as ‘shinrin-yoku’, forest bathing provides a calm oasis, an opportunity for presence away from technology.⁠

The benefits of nature and specifically forest bathing are backed by scientific studies which show it reduces pain and diminishes stress. Being outside can make us feel better inside.

There are other ways we can use nature to improve our wellbeing, aside from what you’d normally think of, which I’ll share in this blog.

Deep presence

You can use a basic meditation practice outside in a way that really uses that connection to nature. It deepens a connection to nature which is good for our mental health as well as our immune system. This meditation practice or tool is one that’s technically called Pratyahara. 

Pratyahara is the process of becoming deeply present by paying attention to our senses one at a time. You go into a strong, deep connection with each of your senses in turn, and then having dwelt there for some time, let go and go right beyond the senses. And that’s the point at which the meditation magic really happens. So how can we do this in nature? 

My recommendation is the next time you take a walk, give yourself five minutes where you can just sit down and then pick one sense that you’re going to focus on. Maybe pick a sound and listen to the rustling of the leaves or the tweeting of the birds, and just start with those sounds that are closest to you and then expand out the sounds farthest away. All you’re doing is listening. There’s no need to identify what the sounds are.

Simply allow them to be a part of your energy field. Do that for five minutes and then notice how you feel afterwards. 

The importance of beauty

Those who know me well know that beauty is actually one of my highest held values in life. I honestly believe that beauty is a human requirement, a basic human need to be surrounded by things that uplift our soul, because that’s what beauty does for us. 

Beauty reminds us of who we really are and the part that we play in the wider universe. We have our nose to the grindstone and we’re obsessing about all the details of our lives and the lives of our children, our parents, our friends, our clients, our partners. And when beauty happens upon us or happens to us, we burst out of that little bubble. It happened to me just this week.

I went to a gallery at the weekend, and we were just walking in a little town that was new to us and saw a gallery. I liked some of the sculptures in the window, so we went in and it was a really good collection. And I forgot myself in that moment, just finding joy in these playful little statues and these beautiful, depthful paintings. I was remade in that moment in a way that beauty seems so uniquely able to do for us.

The next time beauty happens to you, take the time to take it on board and bank that experience in your emotional bank account, your resilience bank account, which is something I’ve talked about before. When we’re having to expand our resilience, we have to be putting deposits in too, and beauty is uniquely able to help us top back up.

Nature’s cycles

When you’re out in the natural world regularly, you can’t help but notice the way in which things move from being born to growing to flourishing to fruiting to beginning to decay, to dying away, to making space for something new. That’s the life cycle of a plant. That’s the life cycle of other beings too. And it’s our life cycle. 

It’s the life cycle of our ideas, our jobs, even of us as human beings and our loved ones. And so when you feel something is dying away, it can help to remember that that’s how it works in nature. That one year of growth dies away and makes room, and something beautiful arises the following year. So while we might mourn the loss of whatever is dying away, we can simultaneously hold the space of hope, the curiosity to see what will get born in its place.

It’s hard sometimes when something that we’ve loved comes to an end. Of course it is. So we give ourselves the space to feel the hard bits. Looking to nature reminds us that it is actually a cycle, a natural cycle for things to be born, to grow, to flourish, to create their legacy perhaps. And then to die away.

And we are part of nature, and hope is always born again. 

To conclude

I hope this blog has helped to explain how nature benefits your mental health, and I encourage you to give one or all of these three methods a try and see what resonates with you.

 

This is your invitation to feel better, in the way that feels just right for you – whether that’s through Reiki Healing, Life Coaching, Bach Flower Essences, Retreats, Meditation or Yoga. Learn to love the life you have and build the life you want. Book a free call to discover what would best suit you.

0
    0
    Your Basket
    Your basket is empty#
    Continue Shopping