Category: <span>Anxiety</span>

Anxiety Trauma By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

Your hypervigilant brain is not your friend

Your hypervigilant brain is not your friend
Hypervigilant brains are on constant lookout for danger

As thinking beings, we display a natural tendency to believe in our thoughts. We are also eager to confirm our biases and feel reassured when our theories about the world, ourselves and others seem to be true. However, reality – as well as human beings – is extremely complex. In our urge to soothe ourselves with the help of our intellect, we fail to take into consideration several variables that would influence our understanding of reality. We limit our perception to what we already know to feel safe, even when that knowledge does not favour our wellbeing.

That bias is even more pronounced in the traumatised brain. For victims of relational trauma, for instance, approaching relationships with neutrality, without taking things personally is often a challenge. Because their brains are hypervigilant, they are on constant lookout for danger. It is important for individuals on that state of fight or flight to protect themselves against hurt, something they know so well. To feel safe, their brains rush to give them explanations to their anxiety and insecurity. Are you put off by the idea of meeting new people? That is probably because they will reject you and leave you. Such negative and irrational thinking, even when prejudicial to mental and relational health, helps the socially fearful regulate themselves. Once the threat is out of the way (meeting new people), there is nothing to worry about.

Your brain is not, necessarily, your friend. It is at times, but, at others, it might not be. It is not always right – especially when traumatised and hypervigilant – no matter how strongly you feel about your thoughts. When you become mindful of that, your life changes. If you have suffered trauma in the context of a relationship, be very suspicious about what your brain has to say about people. Remind yourself that is trying to protect you, in a very imperfect and rigid way. Approach your thoughts with an open mind and force yourself to consider new perspectives. Resist the urge to be soothed by negative theories to why you should never trust others and tolerate the discomfort that arises from throwing yourself into the unknow, with a blind faith in your competence and the kindness of others. Challenge your brain’s resistance to allow you to learn from experience. You can tolerate the hurt, if it arises, and get over it as with emotional strength and maturity.

Anxiety Depression By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

What I have experienced from meditating for 3 hours a day for 4 weeks

This is what happens when you meditate for 3 hours a day
What would happen if you tried meditating for long hours every day?

When I started meditating back in 2015, it was not easy to incorporate a regular practice into my daily routine. Perseverance finally paid off after long months of stubborn dedication, when sitting for 20 to 40 minutes every day turned essential for my wellbeing. It has been 7 years since my first sitting, and I have learned much about myself through experimentation with different types of meditation. I have found that long sittings – for over 90 minutes – seem to affect my thinking, emotions and behaviour in ways never experienced by me before. That aroused my curiosity. What would happen if I tried meditating for long hours every day? The following are the changes I have experienced from meditating for 3 hours a day for 4 weeks:

Less reactivity: mediating for long hours has allowed me to experience serenity in a natural way. Negative emotions come and go in short waves. Because their intensity has become much lower, they have become more tolerable.

Fewer negative thoughts: there is a time during a long sitting when my mind becomes completely quiet. Thoughts about the future and reassessment of past events are replaced by a sense of being in my mind and body, often felt as one. At times, I also feel that sense of unity with the environment. After a practice is over and in between practices, negative thoughts seem to continue to lose their power. They occur less frequently and seem irrelevant when noticed.

Better concentration: due to decreased emotional reactivity and greater emotional detachment, my brain feels less rigid and more plastic. As if meditation nurtured a cognitive state of flow. I seem to be able to retrieve, analyse, process and organise knowledge faster and with more ease.

More patience: living a slow-paced life makes perfect sense when practicing meditation for long hours. I am able to connect with my environment as if autopilot had been turned off. I drive more slowly and enjoy noticing my surroundings without feeling restless. I also take more time to listen to others without a burning need to say something.

Better sleep: for someone who has battled insomnia for most of her life, I welcome healthy habits that favour sleep. A 3-hour a day meditation practice has not cured my insomnia, but it has considerably improved my relationship with it. I no longer have strong negative reactions if I wake up in the middle of the night, so I go back to sleep a lot quicker.

More confidence: experiencing fewer negative thoughts and greater detachment from negative emotions has allowed me to see things more clearly. A calmer and more balanced approach to life has made me feel unashamedly intelligent, awake, tranquil, tolerant and mature.

Detachment from material goods: I feel no need to buy what I do not need.

Worry about “wasting time”: despite all the above, my inner critic still gives me grief about my 3-hour meditation practice. The more I stick to it, however, and enjoy its benefits, the less I care about the critic’s silly comments.

I do not know how long I will manage to keep this practice up, or if it will ever become a habit, but its effects have been undoubtedly positive.

Anxiety Depression By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

Nutrition psychology: what you eat affects your mental health

Our dietary choices have a direct effect on cognition, as well as on how we feel and behave. Growing research on the exciting new field of Nutrition Psychology has exposed the intrinsic relationship between nutrition and mental illness. Nutrition has been found to be not only a contributing factor to the development of mental illnesses, but also an important aid for its prevention and even management.

Nutrition psychology
Our dietary choices have a direct effect on cognition

In her book “This is your brain on food”, Dr Naidoo, a Nutritional Psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, lists baked goods, candy, soda, or anything sweetened with sugar or high fructose syrup, white bread, white rice, potatoes, pasta and anything made from refined flour, aspartame, French fries, fried chicken, fried seafood or anything else deep-fried in oil, as well as margarine, bacon, salami, sausage and other cured meats, as foods that make us unhappy and anxious. Those who are fighting depression and anxiety should eat high-fibre and aged, fermented, and cultured foods for their positive and calming effects on mood.

What you eat also interferes with the quality of your sleep. While caffeine and alcohol make it worse, foods that contain melatonin, such as eggs, fish, milk, rice, fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables such as asparagus, tomatoes, broccoli, and cucumber are said to help promote better sleep.

To fight fatigue, Dr Naidoo (2020) recommends eating foods rich in omega 3s, magnesium, zinc, vitamins B (1, 6, 9 and 12,), C, D and E, as well as colourful vegetables and spices, such as turmeric and black cumin.

Both Dr Naidoo and the clinical psychologist and researcher Julia Rucklidge (2017) agree that the Western Diet has a damaging effect on mental health. As a diet rich in bad fats, high-GI carbs and gluten, it is strongly connected to the expression of a variety of mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, ADHD and even schizophrenia, as well as weakened memory and decreased libido.

The mind gut connection can no longer be ignored by anyone concerned with their physical and mental/emotional wellbeing. For those who would like to improve their mental health but struggle to change their eating habits, having both psychological and nutritional counselling could help them address their goals from a more holistic and effective approach.

References:

Jacka, F.N., O’Neil, A., Opie, R. et al. A randomised controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial). BMC Med 15, 23 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0791-y

Naidoo, U. (2020). This is your brain on food. Hachette Book Group: NY, New York.

Anxiety Relationships Shame By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

Is it your shame you are carrying?

Is it your shame you are carrying
Emotions like shame are highly contagious

Shame, as the other core negative emotions (sadness, anger, fear, shock and disgust), might become toxic if not identified and dealt with mindfully and proactively. Toxic shame is particularly detrimental to emotional wellbeing because it is experienced cognitively and physically in a great variety of ways, which makes it difficult to identify it. While you might underestimate how low you feel when comparing yourself to others, for instance, and fail to connect the attitude to shame, the feeling feeds off your inadequacy. Like a virus that takes over your body without your awareness, shame finds its way into your system and weakens your self-esteem and healthy sense of self.

Since emotions are highly contagious, they move from one body to another swiftly. When we consider that shame is mainly there to create discomfort when we fail to confirm to social norms and makes us aware of a threat to our group status, it can easily lead to a great fear of rejection and abandonment. As social beings who thrive in groups, feelings of wrongness and exclusion triggered by shame have the potential to stop us from behaving in an authentic fashion. A false sense of self is then created to secure membership, regulate the inadequacy and re-establish an inner sense of safety.

Therefore, catching yourself when affected by shame is key to protect self-esteem and nurture the authentic, autonomous self. You can achieve that by asking yourself “Does this shame belong to me?” when feeling inadequate, less than, unappreciated, criticised, judged or not good enough. Like anger, shame is easily projected as a dysfunctional means to emotional regulation. Despite the harm it causes to those who are directly or indirectly affected by that process, it is repeated in a highly unconscious manner, damaging not only our ability to love and accept ourselves unconditionally but the quality of our relationships. If you find your shame not to be congruent with the beliefs of your free and confident self, give it back to whom it belongs. You can do that by moving your hands as if you were throwing a shame ball back to its owner, or tell yourself, silently, that the shame you feel is not yours to keep. Use your creativity and have fun with it. For challenging negative thinking that leads to shame feelings, I also recommend filling out a Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts during periods of vulnerability.

Anger Anxiety Trauma By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

5 self-soothing techniques for healthy grief processing

5 self-soothing techniques for healthy grief processing
Grief tends to follow a sense of loss

Grief tends to follow a sense of loss. Death of a loved one, sudden increase in awareness of childhood trauma, being fired or made redundant, experiencing relationship breakups of any nature or changes in health and/or living conditions, for instance, are all examples of losses that may trigger the need to grieve. Even though it is a biological and functional process, grief is still highly misunderstood and even neglected. If you believe in the power of grieving as a reliable source of emotional connection, wholeness and wisdom but often feel overwhelmed by it, here are 5 self-soothing techniques for healthy grief processing to help you through it:

1- Self-cuddling: Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing and writer of Waking the Tiger, has taught us how to use our bodies to soothe ourselves. Give yourself a big butterfly cuddle by placing the palm of your right hand on your left armpit, and the palm of your left hand on your right arm. Relax your shoulders and truly hold yourself while you feel the warmth of your body through the palms of your hands (to watch Peter Levine’s demo video, please click here). This technique is recommended to those who find themselves affected by feelings of sadness, loneliness, rejection and/or abandonment and, therefore, struggle to feel safe and loveable.

2- Gentle touch: place the hand you write with on your chest, and the other one on your belly. Breathe deeply (5 seconds for the inbreath and 5 seconds for the outbreath) and truly hold your own body and emotions with love and unconditional self-acceptance. This technique also works well for those who are experiencing great feelings of fear/anxiety, sadness, loneliness, rejection and abandonment.

3- Cigar breathing: make a strong pout and breathe deeply in and out through it (at least 5 seconds for inbreath and outbreath). This exercise allows you to connect with the vagus nerve so to calm down the nervous system and regulate anger and fear/anxiety/panic.

4- Tranquil place: imagine a beautiful and calm place that you associate with relaxation and other pleasant feelings. Transport yourself to your tranquil place mentally. Visualise enjoying your surroundings and savouring everything that makes this place truly especial to you. Moreover, observe how your body gradually relaxes and makes you feel more serene as the connections with the image deepens.

5- Grounding: sit on a chair with a straight back, relaxed shoulders and both feet in parallel touching the floor. Start focusing your attention on your breathing. You do not have to force anything. Then, gradually, start changing the focus to the soles of your feet. Notice the bodily sensations that bring them to your awareness, as well as the sensations between your (bare) feet and the floor. This exercise helps you feel centred and back in the present, where you belong.

Through grieving our losses with our whole self – body and mind – we not only process and overcome them healthily, but also develop emotional wellbeing and maturity, unconditional self-esteem and post-traumatic growth.

Anxiety Mood Improvement By Michele Engelke 0 Comments

2 signs you are behaving in an emotionally dependent way

2 signs you are behaving in an emotionally dependent way
Having no time for anything also indicates an over reliance on intellectualisation, social interaction and movement as defence mechanisms not to connect with emotions

The habit of relying on external factors to regulate negative feelings and emotions is at the core of emotional dependence. People, things, work, food and exercise are all examples of external factors which are commonly used to make one feel balanced or “better”. While a certain level of dependence is healthy to nurture secure attachment, for instance, constantly searching for someone or something outside the self to help one deal with the discomfort that lies within – without consciously connecting with it – often worsens one’s ability to process emotions in a functional way in the long term. To raise your awareness or prevent you from perpetuating such tendency, here are 2 signs you are behaving in an emotionally dependent way:

You do what you can not to spend time alone

Focusing the attention on others distracts us from having it on our own selves. Emotionally dependent people tend to equate being alone to feeling lonely, restless and/or somewhat uncomfortable. That belief feeds a constant need to be surrounded by people in order not to feel that emotional discomfort. Such avoidant behaviour – or emotion phobia – signals a maladaptive tendency of not wanting to connect with the inner world, address and fully process negative emotions.

You do what you can to stay “busy”

Although activities such as studying, socialising, helping others, working, cleaning, talking and even exercising may be productive, they also work as perfect excuses for not thinking or, most importantly, feeling. As being busy is much more socially acceptable than connecting with negative emotions, since we come from a culture of emotional neglect and intolerance, endless to do lists and “no time for anything” might also indicate an over reliance on intellectualisation, social interaction and movement as defence mechanisms not to connect with emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and shame, as well as feelings of abandonment, emptiness and rejection.

Looking outside the self and relying on the external world to gain distance from emotions and, therefore, “deal with them” correspond to emotional dependent attitudes that strongly affect mental health and wellbeing. To embrace an emotionally autonomous stance, learning how to spend time alone and in stillness are essential for anyone who wishes to freely reconnect with the body and feel more centred in an organic, adaptive way which also boosts personal growth and emotional maturity.