Managing notorious emotions – Anxiety

The techniques in the previous blogs were intended to help you manage most emotions and explore unhelpful explanations more closely. But sometimes, we need tailor-made techniques to deal with certain emotions more effectively. Periodically, we need to bring out the big guns—and there are many in the arsenal to manage anxiety.

Becoming overly anxious or stressed can be compared to revving your car too high: we need to release the pressure on the gas pedal to reduce the excessive, pent-up energy caused by anxiety. The secret is to focus on relaxing the muscles in your body and slowing your breathing—and consequently, your heart rate—down. When our muscles are relaxed and we are breathing at a rate of approximately 21 breaths per minute, it is nearly impossible to feel anxious.

The second part of managing anxiety is to systematically expose ourselves to anxiety-provoking situations, a little at a time. This way, your body can learn to tolerate the uncomfortable sensations that always accompany anxiety. Gradually, these situations lose their negative impact on your body.

In my book, I discuss specific techniques to help with both of these aims, including

• Deep breathing

• Progressive muscle relaxation

• Guided imagery

• Mindful meditation

• Systematic desensitisation

• Thought stopping

• Worry time

These worksheets and other resources can also be downloaded on my website https://www.drcmorganpsychology.com/worksheets

You’ll notice that you tend to respond with one emotion more often than others when faced with challenging situations. This may be due to your genetic makeup or what you witnessed during childhood. It’s a bit like standing on a balcony and noticing that your feet start to tap when rock and roll music plays—but not so much when heavy metal plays. Or you may find it harder to resist going down to the dancefloor for the tango than for the waltz. In the same way, we all tend to engage more naturally with one emotion than with others. For some of us, anxiety is our default response. Others may be more prone to self-blame and sadness under stress. Likewise, some may be wired to blame others, leading to anger.

Many of the same techniques we use to manage anxiety—aimed at reducing breathing rate and relaxing muscles—are also effective for managing anger. That’s because the fight-or-flight response is essentially the flip side of the same coin. However, if we look more closely at the self-explanations behind anxiety, they tend to be catastrophic in nature. In contrast, the explanations that result in anger are usually based on value judgements. I’ll be talking more about these faulty anger-based thought patterns in upcoming blogs.

In the meantime, I encourage you to experiment with these techniques. Try to use them as often as you can over the next couple of months when you feel anxious, and observe how things shift for you. Then, try them again when you notice feelings of anger, and see what effect they have. I’d love to hear how this goes for you.

Warm regards,

Charlotte