Dealing with physical anxiety
Globally it is that we are actually facing very real threats. So normally, when I’m working with people, we’re dealing with imagined threats, fears that don’t actually exist and never gonna happen, but that they cripple us. So, for example, you know, public speaking or doing this or doing that, things that never happen.
The problem and the difference with now are that these are real threats, that we’re doubly afraid of, you know, health, survival, actually living, but also financial survival or not being able to as well.
So we’re actually dealing with real threats. So you’re right in this is real. This is real. This is some real shit and we’ve all got our old experiences of fear that perhaps hasn’t been resolved properly as well. Yeah, and the problem is that when we go into the fear what’s actually happening I use a lot of neuroscience with my clients because they love that context. They need that evidence and science is that what’s happening is we’re going to the limbic part of our brain.
So the part of our brain, which is really old, even beyond the trauma, you know, the part, the brain that would help us fight tigers or run away from real threats, and so we’re actually going into that. So we go into it’s called a fight, flight or freeze mode and we come away from this part of our brain, which is the rational thinking part of our brain.
For example, I did.
I did a live on Facebook yesterday on the back of you saw it on the back. I was in a supermarket while I got a fled one supermarket because the crowds and it really freaked me out. It’s like armageddon.
And then I went into another one, and again it was like, really full-on, and I went into fight or flight. My one of my modes is to freeze.
Yeah, so it can paralyse you. And I froze. And I was like, what the? I won’t swear. But it was like and only because I know so I know that you have to take a really deep breath into your stomach that engages the parasympathetic nervous system. It calms you down, so I actually had to do that. I was hanging onto the trolley bar to come back into the now to do that, and it’s only when I calmed myself down, was able to go.
Dealing with physical anxiety
Okay, what can I do about this? What can I do right now? And it enabled me to reach out to my boyfriend because he’s great. He’s been reading and he’s a really great cook. He’s been reading about wartime rationing what you need to get.
So he was like, get the jars, get the dried fruit get the this, get the that. Bang. But it was only when I came out of that real physical, visceral reaction was I able then to do that.
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