Is it Really All in My Head? - Part IV

When you have anxious thoughts, they trigger symptoms of anxiety that also can be managed. What is anxiety, and how can I manage the symptoms I experience as I manage my thoughts or ANTs?

Anxiety – is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, restlessness, etc.

Your Sympathetic nervous system is activated - sympathetic activation causes an increased heart rate, the force of contraction, and the rate of conduction, allowing for increased cardiac output to supply the body with oxygenated blood. People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or concerns.

Which of the following experiences occur when you’re feeling anxious? Read through the list and check any that apply to you:

• Pounding heart
• Rapid breathing
• Stomach distress
• Diarrhea Muscle tension
• Desire to flee or withdraw
• Perspiration Difficulty focusing
• Immobilization
• Trembling

You may wonder why it’s important that you recognize these symptoms as being connected to the fight, flight, or freeze response. A key reason is that they can be involved in a feedback loop in which they heighten anxiety.

Many people who struggle with anxiety misinterpret these reactions as an indication that something negative
is happening or going to happen. These symptoms occur because the sympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing adrenaline and causing the symptoms, which can be frightening. The sympathetic nervous system functions like a gas pedal in a car. It triggers the fight-or-flight response, providing the body with a burst of energy so that it can respond to perceived dangers. There are some techniques you can implement to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system acts like a brake. It promotes the "rest and digest" response that calms the body down after the danger has passed. There are coping mechanisms we can implement to counteract
FIGHT/FLIGHT or FREEZE!

When the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) is activated, it slows our heart and breathing rates, lowers blood pressure, and promotes digestion. Our body enters a state of relaxation, and this relaxation breeds recovery. We will finally share these activators to help counteract the anxious symptoms.

5 TECHNIQUES TO ACTIVATE THE PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM

1. Breathing – squared breathing
• Relax and focus on your breath as best you can.
• Breath into your stomach for 4 seconds.
• Hold your breath for 4 seconds
• Exhale evenly for 4 seconds
• Hold your empty lungs for 4 seconds
• Repeat until you feel content

2. Exercise- for 15-20 minutes; this completes the anxiety cycle.

3. Temperature - Tip the temperature of your face with cold water to calm down fast.
• Splash your face with ice water
• Zip-lock bag of cool water held over eyes and cheekbone
• Hold an ice pack on your face or the back of your neck.

4. Soft Eyes – Let your eyes physically relax. Instead of focusing on one thing, you allow that thing to be at the center of your gaze, while simultaneously taking in the largest possible expanse within your full field of vision.

• This includes peripheral vision both to the left and right, as well as above and below. By using soft eyes, you increase your awareness of everything going on around you.

This calms you down, returns your mind and body to balance, and boosts the immune system. In this relaxed state, adrenaline and other stress chemicals cannot endure.

• Other benefits of soft eyes include feeling relaxed; improved focus; relaxed facial, shoulder, and chest muscles; slow respiratory and heart rate; still mind; and reduced self-talk.

• Additionally, soft eyes contribute toward reducing the following: stress, tension/muscle tension, anxiety, panic attacks, eye strain, and tension headaches.

5. Yawning - Activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which attenuates the sympathetic nervous system, reduces stress, and lowers the risk for high blood pressure because yawning disturbs your current sympathetic tone and forces the parasympathetic nervous system to act in order to restore your body to a resting state.

Practice these techniques while learning to exterminate the ANTs (discussed in previous blogs)! While, yes, “it is all in your head,” you can manage the thoughts and anxiety symptoms.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Is it Really All in My Head? - Part III

Our thoughts are often based on our personal opinion and experiences and not necessarily grounded in fact. There is also a negative bias to our thoughts when we are low or anxious. This can lead to us jumping to conclusions or thinking the worst about situations without any evidence of these thoughts being true.

When challenging negative thoughts, we need to practice collecting evidence to see how accurate the thoughts really are. Factual evidence is much stronger than opinion, as there isn’t any element of doubt.

There are 3 Steps in Exterminating ANTs:

STEP 1: Catching ANTs (Thoughts)

Start by identifying a situation that has caused you to experience a strong negative emotion.

First, write details about that situation. It might not be the situation that caused the negative thoughts or emotions, but writing down details will help you remember better what was going on.

Then write down all the different emotions and thoughts you were experiencing. For each emotion, rate how strongly you felt it, 0 (barely felt it) to 100% (very strongly experienced it). For each thought rate how much you believe it, 0 (don’t believe it at all) to 100% (very strongly believe it).

Next, try and identify the “hot thought” in the situation. This thought is often rated the highest and most likely to be the cause of the negative emotion. It will have a rating of 60% or higher and match the negative emotion.

STEP 2: Looking for the Evidence

After catching your ANTs, the next stage is to challenge the ‘Hot Thought.’

Write down the evidence for and against the hot thought. You are looking just for facts, not opinions.

Think of this a little like being a prosecution and defense counsel in a court hearing. Evidence will be given from both sides to find the truth.

HERE ARE SOME CHALLENGING QUESTIONS YOU COULD ASK:

·      What’s the evidence against this thought?

·      If my friend or someone else was having this type of thought, what would I say to them?

·      If I wasn’t anxious or low, how would I look at the situation?

·      Is there any other way of looking at the situation?

·      What is certain about this situation?

·      Am I overgeneralizing?

·      Is this situation really in my control?

·      What advice would a therapist give me regarding this situation?

·      If I believe this thought to be 80% true, what is the 20% that suggests I don’t believe the thought to be completely true?

STEP 3: Finding an Evidence-Based Alternative Thought

Finally, you need to create a new alternative thought, based on the evidence created in Stage 2. This is not about creating a positive thought, rather, it is about creating a more balanced thought which takes into consideration both sides of the evidence.

To create an evidence-based thought, write a sentence to summarize the “evidence for” and another sentence to summarize the “evidence against” the hot thought. You can use words such as ‘or,’ ‘and’ or ‘but’ to link the evidence together to create the revised (balanced) thought. i.e., I failed this one job interview but I have got several jobs in the past I have gone for.

·      Rate belief in the new revised (balanced) thought.

·      Re-rate the original emotions in light of revised (balanced) thought.

How will thought-challenging help me?  To recognize and put into perspective our negative automatic thoughts (ANTs) in order to modify/RESTRUCTURE our thinking and reduce the intensity of our emotions.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Is it Really All in my Head? - Part II

Many people have recurring negative and/or intrusive thoughts which get stuck in their heads. These thoughts can contribute to promoting anxiety. When we have positive thoughts, they cause a positive response, but negative thoughts cause a negative response. These thoughts can be automatic, and unless you think about your thoughts, they; “they just happen.” But even if your thoughts just happen, they are not necessarily correct or true.

You don’t have to believe every thought that goes through your head. It’s important to think about your thoughts to see if they help you or hurt you. Unfortunately, if you never challenge your thoughts, then you just “believe them” as if they were true. Think of these negative thoughts that invade your mind like ants that bother you at a picnic. One negative thought, like one ant at a picnic, is not a big problem. Two or three negative thoughts become more irritating, like two or three ants at a picnic. Ten or twenty negative thoughts, like ten or twenty ants at a picnic, may cause you to pick up and leave. Whenever you notice these automatic negative thoughts or ANTs, you need to crush them or they’ll ruin your relationships, and your self-esteem, and be a cause for anxiety. Learning how to manage negative thoughts can help to manage your anxiety and low mood. When people feel low/anxious, their thoughts can often be extreme or unrealistic. ANTs! This type of unhelpful thinking can continue to maintain our low mood or anxiety. These are Cognitive Distortions and they can be...

Involuntary/automatic – you don’t decide to think these thoughts, but they’ve become hardwired over time and lurk and linger, controlling your moods and behavior, controlling the quality of your life. Without
deliberate awareness, you may not even realize you have them.

Irrational – the ANTs are the messengers of unhelpful thinking habits like emotional reasoning and fortune telling, and mind reading – they’re generally illogical – we aim to ask of each unhelpful thought and belief we uncover ‘where is the evidence for this?’, ‘Is there evidence against this?’, ‘Is there another way of looking at this?’ .... Until we develop new realistic evidence-based thinking in their place.

Enemies – ANTs appear to protect you from discomfort by persuading you to practice self-sabotaging behaviors ‐ for instance, avoidant behavior, avoiding something you believe is a ‘hazard or danger’ that will cause you upset and be ‘pointless’ anyway (trying new things, being proactive, a new career, opportunities, new relationships, making new friends... take your pick...), and so on . . .. They keep you hardwired for fear.
You can take control of your thinking and moods, and behaviors if you put in the work, it’s proven. Try it. Free yourself! Look at your thoughts in a more balanced and realistic way. More balanced thoughts will improve your mood and enable you to function better, which will result in enjoying your life
again.

Our next blog will discuss three steps to exterminating the ANTs.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Is it Really All in My Head? - Part I

The English phrase “it is all in your head” is used quite a bit in the English language for anything that may be only in someone’s mind, or imagined. It’s one of many “body idioms” that relate abstract ideas to the physical parts of the body. When one is encountering anxiety-inducing thoughts or symptoms of anxiety, they may wonder or be told, “it’s all in your head.”  So, is it really all in your head? We will address the question later in this posting.

So many people today have negative thoughts or ways of thinking, which in the counselor’s office, we refer to them as cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are thought patterns that cause people to view reality in inaccurate — usually negative ways. In short, they’re habitual errors in thinking. When you’re experiencing a cognitive distortion, the way you interpret events is usually negatively biased.

Most people experience cognitive distortions from time to time. But if they’re reinforced often enough, they can increase anxiety, deepen depression, cause relationship difficulties, and lead to a host of other complications. Some common distortions are –

• Mind Reading: You assume you know what people are thinking without having evidence or proof of their thoughts.

• Future-Telling: You predict the future – that things will get worse or that there’s danger ahead.

• Catastrophizing: You believe what might happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “

There a variety of others that could be addressed, but by reading the aforementioned, you can see that we all encounter these (often) anxiety-inducing thoughts. Part of our work is learning to recognize them and then argue against them.

The Apostle Paul wrote to his protégé, Timothy, from prison before his death to encourage him by stating – II Timothy 1:7 – “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.” Amplified Bible

Paul is reminding Timothy that he doesn’t have to allow fear to rule, but learn how to discipline his thinking with calmness and balance. We can learn how to control negative thoughts as well as implement a variety of techniques to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and manage it.

So, is anxiety really all in your head? Yes, it is! In our succeeding blogs, we will discuss the brain and its influence on the person resulting in anxiety, as well as how to counter anxious thoughts and symptoms.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Coping Thoughts

According to Psychology Today, on March 2, 2022, the World Health Organization announced, “In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by a massive 25%. 

Anxiety igniting thoughts is part of daily life for many. It is important to learn how to challenge negative thoughts with coping thoughts. Here are some examples to illustrate how one can react to thoughts that ignite anxiety and replace them with coping thoughts:

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Perspective

An effective tool for changing your thinking and the emotions linked to the anxious thoughts we have is to refocus your thoughts on where you are going!

Place your hand in front of your eyes.  All that you can see is your palm and that appears to be the only thing in front of you. If you lean back, or lower your hand, then you can see past your hand and realize that there is more in front of you than your palm. You can see the room or out of the window.

In art, there is an effective technique used for creating perspective, which is called finding your horizon. When drawing or painting a landscape, the artist determines the position of the horizon — where the sky meets the earth in the landscape. 

This intersection establishes the perspective of the picture. We can utilize this same principle in training our brain to let go of bad thinking: find your horizon. 

Rather than focusing on the immediate, look at your future, focus on your outcome, find your horizon. 

Jesus gives us an insight into His own personal coping mechanism. He demonstrated that he also was able to endure his present circumstance by finding his horizon.

“…And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame…” Hebrews 12:1-2 NLT

Jesus raised His eyes from the immediate surrendering of His will in Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas, the mocking trials in Pilate’s and Herod’s courts, the rejection of the population (“Give us Barabbas!”), the beating, the carrying of his cross, and being crucified between two thieves. THE JOY LURKING ON THE HORIZON was that you and I could be saved.

Finding your horizon causes everything else to fall into perspective.

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

Anxiety

The word “anxiety” has become commonplace in our everyday vernacular. Anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, restlessness, etc.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States, age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population, every year. Anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment.

At Spanish River Counseling Center, we see clients who are under tremendous stress from financial, physical, and/or relational situations. Stress is a response to a threatening situation. Anxiety is a reaction to stress.

Anxiety can induce negative thoughts; therefore, it is helpful to learn how to challenge these negative thoughts. Here are ten questions to challenge negative, anxious thoughts:

1. Am I mistaking a thought for a fact?

2. Am I jumping to conclusions?

3. Is there any evidence that disproves my thoughts?

4. Are there any facts I’m ignoring/or have overlooked?

5. Can I see any other way of viewing this?

6. If my friend were having this thought, what would I tell him/her?

7. If he/she knew I was having this thought, what might he/she say to me?

8. If I look back at this in five years, but I see it differently?

9. Have I had any experiences that show that this thought isn’t always true?

10. Am I ignoring any strengths that I have or any positives to the situation?

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern

"Hands and Feet" of God

Ashley Brooks stated, “As facilitators, we become the hands and feet of God, walking alongside those in our offices who seek healing and freedom. The Holy Spirit in us can work in conjunction with what he is doing in, around, and through the clients sitting in our offices.“

As healers and helpers, our life experiences, difficulties, and tribulations serve a purpose. The hard times we endure and go through are opportunities for our Heavenly Father to bring comfort and counsel into our lives. The word comfort in the New Testament means, “to come alongside.” These transformative experiences are times we learn how He comes alongside, helping and healing us.

Not only are we professionally trained as counselors, but through our personal journey with God, we become an extension of Him to bring comfort to others via the comfort we received from the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.

We become His hands and feet to those we are privileged to meet with, come alongside, and offer to counsel to. It is an honor to be trusted and involved in the process of healing in the lives of our clients.

“All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too.”

— Tracy Lewis, Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern