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TIP OF THE WEEK
By putting good energy into your home, you will breathe in this good energy every day and it will help you to heal. 

Stress

Anxiety and Worry

Our mind and body interact.  There is a continuous flow of information between them, with the result that they are continually affecting and influencing each other. 

Every physical action we take affects our mood and thinking.  If we walk around dragging our feet, with our spine slumped forward and our head hanging down, we can notice how this drags us down emotionally.  Similarly, our thinking affects our physical state.  If we inwardly tell ourselves that we can't cope or that we are a failure, this will cause us to feel tense, demoralised and tired.

Anxiety is something we all experience from time to time.  Most people can relate to feeling tense, uncertain or fearful at the thought of attending an interview, taking an exam or starting a new job.  We may worry about feeling uncomfortable or foolish or whether we will be successful.  These thoughts and worries can temporarily affect our sleep, appetite and concentration. 

Short-term anxiety can be useful.  It triggers our fight or flight response which is our survival response.  It can enhance our performance, make us feel alert and full of energy, and if all goes well, the anxiety will disappear and our body will recover from the uncomfortable experience.  

It is when our feelings of anxiety begin to get out of control and overwhelm us, that our health and ability to concentrate and do well may suffer.  It can prevent us from getting on with our life.

Anxiety becomes a real problem for us when our mind begins to anticipate a stressful situation, which once caused us discomfort or threat, such as having been involved in a car crash, or talking in front of an audience.  We experience, in advance, the feelings that we associated with the situation, even though the situation may never arise again, and we may feel anxious when driving or when mixing with a crowd of people.

Even though people tend not to talk about it much, anxiety is considered to be one of the most common mental health problems, with one in four people having an anxiety problem at some time in their life.

Anxiety problems are so personal, that it is hard for one person to understand another person's anxiety reaction to something which doesn't worry him.  It is all to do with that particular person's own thoughts and feelings, and how he perceives the world around him.  Anxiety can arise from whatever a person perceives as stressful, from  visiting the dentist, talking to a neighbour or waking up in the middle of the night in a panic.   Knowing that the anxiety is personal to him can make the anxious person feel isolated and lonely which can lead to a downward spiral in confidence, morale and health, and endless worrying about what may or may not happen.

When we are on the anxiety treadmill, we need the key to stop it, so that we can get off and get our life back in balance.  The key is our mind.  Our mind can play an important part in reducing and eliminating our anxiety.

There are many steps that we can take to reduce our anxiety to a more manageable level.  Facing up to anxiety and how it makes us feel, can be the first step in breaking the cycle of fear and insecurity.  Assertiveness training will help us to handle difficult situations and to stand up for ourselves, making us feel more confident and therefore more relaxed.  Symptoms can be controlled by breathing and relaxation techniques, meditation, and complementary therapies such as aromatherapy, massage, Bach flower remedies, yoga, healthy eating and exercise. 

To eliminate anxiety completely and stop it from arising again, we need to challenge our automatic negative thoughts.  We first need to realise that by using our mind, we do have the ability to change the distressing, negative thoughts which bring forth our anxious feelings, and replace them with positive, peaceful thoughts.    There are a number of ways in which we can use our mind to relieve our anxiety by changing our thoughts.

We can practise on an on-going basis, as many times a day as possible, catching our thoughts and analysing them.  We can then try to understand where they are coming from and why we have them.  With this knowledge, we can stop being scared of our thoughts, stop allowing them to control us and start to think more logically and rationally about the situation, so that, instead of our usual response of anxiety, we have a helpful and positive response.  We literally change our thoughts from negative to positive, and our feelings and emotions follow suit.  Then our anxiety disappears, or rather, it never arises.

Worry management is a useful technique in which we use our mind to classify our worries into categories.  We can eliminate the major part of our worries by eliminating the unimportant, the unlikely and the unresolved.  Our remaining persistent worries can be dealt with by our learning how to look at them face-on, and then how to let them go.

courses in managing stress

Our courses provide numerous tools and techniques for relieving the effects of stress.  Each one targets different stress symptoms and provides effective ways of reducing and eliminating stress. 

The tools and techniques we teach will always be with you, whenever you need them.  Not only will they help you to deal with many different stress symptoms, such as tension, anxiety, depression, insomnia, grief, worry, lack of confidence, lack of self-esteem, but they will also improve your overall health and well-being, and give you the energy and motivation you need to tackle the problems and challenges of daily life. 

They will also keep you motivated to continue to overcome stress in a constructive manner.  In doing so, your stress will reduce and no longer hold you back.  You will feel healthier, happier, more energetic, more positive and confident, your self-esteem will improve, and you will move forward in life. 

Home-Study Course: Worry Management
How to deal with worry in a constructive and practical way, while improving your overall health, well-being and quality of life.

Home-Study Course: Positive Thinking
Practical and constructive steps on how to change from negative thinking to positive thinking and move forward in life.

Have a look at our other stress management courses.