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Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

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Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#141

Post by sgtnoodle »

mguerville wrote: post #108
burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

Same story here, and when the physical symptoms get bad enough to induce fear (am I having a heart attack, is this constant pain in my stomach a bigger medical issue, etc.) you just also accept it because you can’t change it. “It’s probably not a heart attack, but if it is... oh well, worrying about it won’t help”

Last year my heart's AV nerves progressively stopped working, causing my ventricles to slow and decouple from my sinus node. Before figuring that out, I was getting panic attacks from relatively benign technical disagreements with coworkers. It was very much a visceral fight-or-flight response. A few days before I ended up in the hospital, I tried playing a level of Tomb Raider and 5 minutes in I had a notable feeling of dread from it, like I was going to vomit and lose consciousness. Good times!

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#142

Post by adkadskhj »

agumonkey wrote: post #105
hnick wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that is why we like music. We can experience emotions without worrying that they are permanent or need to be resolved.

If there's something sacred to me it's music (or harmony). It's weird because it's not as foundational as smell or vision but it revives my soul like nothing else. That's the closest substitute to drug I know of. I have no idea why our emotions are so tangled with it and how comes it can untie knots in our minds like this.

I rely on music for emotional regulation. Not only does it help push me towards moods/states i want, like focus, energy, calm, etc - but it helps me manage moods i don't want. If i'm feeling sad, embracing the sadness with music can be enriching in a unique way. Almost like "having a good cry", but far easier to achieve, and with application for almost all moods and circumstances.

Music really is the center of my life, even though i don't play it. .. though i do dabble, and am currently learning Piano, so /shrug.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#143

Post by nwienert »

osullip wrote: post #104
burlesona wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really have any advice, but what I can say is it’s not really about distracting myself or avoiding thoughts, it’s more like changing how I think about things. For example, when I get some random aches and pains, it worries me a little. But in the past I would fixate on things, try to treat them, see a doctor etc. After a certain amount of grappling with my own mortality, I kind of realized that sometimes my b…

I read Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Written around 2000, it is surprising how many of his verses are relevant today. These are translations of the original, so have picked up some contemporary interpretation. "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." "The happiness of your life depends upon t…

All this stuff really ignores some real advice that really works.

Anxiety comes from a lack of competence, confidence, or self-awareness. Lack any or all (and we all lack them to some extent) and you’re more nervous.

Get experience talking, presenting, comfort with how you look and sound, practice humor, gauge if you can maintain an audience. These are all practicable things. You can work on them.

I think meditation or mindfulness or any therapy tends to be good for realizing the importance of this, and perhaps some peripheral issues, but would never beat the cause of anxiety because the anxiety is rational. If someone asked me to fly a plane I’d be anxious - and that’s a good response, at a normal level, it means I’d have more cortisol and norepinephrine to react quicker and pay attention. But it’s not great for social things because it makes you shaky, so people see it as more of a fault than a good thing.

A lot of people today want to subscribe to “believe and you can” or “it’s all in your mind” type mantras but to me it’s really backwards to something like, “it’s ok that you can’t, accept it, and with hard work you can.”

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#144

Post by andrei_says_ »

burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

You may find it productive to speak with your therapist about EMDR approach. It has shown to work with trauma, ptsd, anxiety.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#145

Post by natenatenate3 »

bamboozled wrote: post #17
burlesona wrote: post #6

I noticed as young adult that I didn’t really worry or consciously stress, but my body had somewhat predictable reactions to situations that I would realize, in hindsight, were highly stressful. Those physical reactions sucked, and as they got worse over time, it really concerned me. At some point I was encouraged to go to CBT, which I did, but honestly it made things worse. I became hyper aware of how anxious I was…

> I just realized that there was nothing I could really do about anxiety or the physical symptoms that came along with it. I decided to mostly try to quit noticing and thinking about it. And that really helped. I think this is mission accomplished from your mindfulness practice, you realized that you're not really doing anything and that anxiety just appears, you accepted it and it felt better.

I had work related anxiety for awhile, and then one day I realized I could co-op that energy to go faster, by body and mind eventually decided they didn't like that mind hack and the anxiety subsided.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#146

Post by ddlutz »

aantix wrote: post #86

Nutritional deficiencies should be part of this conversation. A majority of Americans are magnesium deficient. Magnesium calms the nervous system. “In healthy adults, magnesium sits inside the NMDA receptors, preventing them from being triggered by weak signals that may stimulate your nerve cells unnecessarily. When your magnesium levels are low, fewer NMDA receptors are blocked. This means they are prone to being st…

What dose do you take? I might give this a shot.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#147

Post by Wump »

Reminds me of the equation:

Pain x Resistance = Suffering

If you accept pain fully (Resistance = 0), then you won’t suffer. The more you resist, the more you suffer. And if Resistance is high, then even a little bit of Pain can cause a lot of suffering.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#148

Post by wing-_-nuts »

I sometimes have random anxiety at night. I used to have a bad habit of drinking myself to sleep, but I've since discovered that hard exercise is the best medicine. I do pushups until I'm completely exhausted. When I lay down, I'm actually relaxed for a good 20 minutes. It's amazing.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#149

Post by stakkur »

when it comes to anxiety, which doesn’t take place in your thinking brain, it [CBT] places the focus on the thought (“I thought there was a tiger!”) and not the physical response which preceded, and even caused, the thought (“my heart is racing and I’m full of adrenaline and I need tools to calm down”).

Inexplicably, the article seems to get CBT entirely wrong. A key part of CBT for anxiety is, in fact, about dealing with the body (e.g., the sympathetic nervous system) by activating the parasympathetic—through breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and so forth. This glaring miss on one of the most effective therapies for anxiety made me question the entire article.

Re: Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

#150

Post by h0l0cube »

nvrspyx wrote: post #129
h0l0cube wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not strictly true, but got this from Robert Sapolsky (Stanford neurobiology professor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAOnSbDSaOw&list=PL848F2368C... His opinion, or the best understandings on this, might have changed though. From the YT transcript: > Here's somebody taking Valium for anxiety, and here's somebody taking Valium to relax their muscles. What's up with that? It's the exact same thing. And it…

Going off of the quoted bit because I haven't watched the video, he isn't necessarily suggesting that is the mode of action, just that the mechanism of Valium does both. The mention of GABA enhancement from the comment above alludes to that. Behavior and attitude can influence each other. For example, happiness makes you smile, but smiling can also make you happy (to some degree). The same works for anxiety in which…

> Normal muscle relaxants aren't as effective for anxiety as Valium because they don't have any action on the central nervous system, just the neuromuscular mechanisms. Valium does much more than simply relax muscles. It affects GABA throughout the whole body.

Thanks for clarifying on this. A lot of people seem to think it's okay to just down-vote without providing some sort of counterpoint. I might be naive on a topic, but that's an opportunity to correct, not punish.

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