What do Anxiety and Stress Mean to You

Anxiety and Stress are closely related except Anxiety can underlay many unresolved issues I think of a quivering nervous element that feels a little ‘out of my control’ – what is it like for you?

Its Common Enough

Anxiety lies at the heart of anything that makes us uncomfortable and can include things like Public Speaking, Smoking, Confidence and Stress.

In The Flow

When we are relaxed and in our centre, the flow we feel when all is well and everything clicks into place, running just as it should.  When we feel this good Anxiety has nowhere to latch onto.

It Can Come from Nowhere

But Anxiety can erupt, perhaps it occurs in certain situations, and a former experience has an Anxiety rush that pushes through and sits there, for a myriad of reasons:

• Meeting new people
• Giving presentations
• Trying something new

So instead we might just hold on firmly (as much as we can) to live within our comfort zone.   Its different for everyone, but one of life’s challenges is to find our edge or Anxiety Edge, that place where comfort meets the ‘unknown’ and how we handle it indicates the amount of work we may need to put in to address it.

Fight or Flight

Life should be full of challenges and the unknown.  That’s part of its fun, joy and excitement.  But you may not always embrace it as such.  If you can remember a time when you were in danger, or felt you were in danger and how the Adrenalin pumped through your body, and how quickly you leap into action?  Your heart beat rapidly and your breathing may have became faster.

This is the primitive ‘fight or flight’ response …. Its an inborn genetic response that helps to protect us throughout our life.  And the surge of Adrenalin gives the strength needed to do one of two things:

• Run
• Stay and stand your ground

Its survival mode …. and its very useful to us as hunter-gatherers. But in a western post-industrialized world its tricky … we get those same feelings and they’ve nowhere to go so instead we may turn them in on ourselves, because we no longer need to fight to resolve issues, but our response mechanism or ‘instinct’ may still want to.

It can be confusing …. we don’t need to run either …. but the skill set of dealing with life’s confrontations has changed and we can find alternative ways to address these feelings without becoming unsociable and without losing our self-respect.

Tell me more …

If you’d like to learn more you’re welcome to an ‘introductory chat’ – see how to kick-start the process – all sessions are ‘private and confidential.

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