One Method For Dealing With Anxiety; Utilizing Ancient Wisdom Combined with Modern Technology

in #health7 years ago

I have noticed in some of the posts/blogs here on Steemit people mentioning that they have anxiety and quite frankly, that sucks. I have had my own issues with anxiety in my life as for many years I was burdened with an unnecessary yoke of shame put upon me by those I trusted most, and it literally took a nervous breakdown to rewrite all these harmful neural pathways developed over four decades of life. Even after the NB I still had some anxiety, largely because I am quite empathetic and I can feel the negative feelings of others, whether they are directed at me or not. And once felt, it could become baggage for me that might take days to rid myself of. But now, thanks to the techniques I want to discuss, I can say that I am 90% free of anxiety. I do not expect to ever be 100% free because sometimes anxious feelings are a warning and being aware of them is important, the trick is to not be disempowered by them.

You will often hear people say to those with anxiety things like "DON'T PANIC" and they do so with good intentions, unaware that such a statement is one of the worst things you can say to anyone. The reason this is such a wrong thing to say is that the brain does not register the "DON'T" in that statement and all the brain hears is "PANIC". This is a cornerstone of Neural Linguistic Programming, aka, NLP. A more clear example of this is if I do not want you to think of the colour blue and I say, "don't think of the colour blue", the first thing your brains does is think of the colour blue. To keep you from thinking of blue what I should say is"think of red or yellow or orange" or any other colour that is not blue. Similarly, some people will say "think happy thoughts" to someone enduring anxiousness and this too, though cloaked with good intentions, is useless. Thinking happy thoughts is a rationalization and rationalizations take place in the frontal cortex while the anxious feelings are rooted deep in the amygdala, the fight or flight centre of the brain. The amygdala is part of the limbic brain and is located in both hemispheres. The amygdala gland in the left hemisphere is associated with the brain's reward system, while the one in the right hemisphere is associated with fear conditioning.


By Original uploader of gif version was RobinH at en.wikibooks - this is Image:Constudoverbrain.gif from Commons, cropped and resaved in PNG format, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5228021

The frontal cortex evolved much later than the amygdala and the limbic system and therefore is prone to be shut down by the limbic system when confronted by stimuli that provoke the fight or flight response. Studies have shown that this is so, that reasoning is disabled and this is seen as a necessary evolutionary byproduct for in a fight or flight response, it is often the quickness of response that makes the difference and if one were to wait for the reasoning of the frontal cortex to finish it could be too late.

The Meridians are paths through the body by which 'qi'(chi) flows; the life force or energy, which seem to follow the similar paths of the nervous system. These meridians or paths connect various parts of the body and can sometimes get blocked or need stimulation and traditionally, acupuncture was the method used. But, it is not the only method for one can stimulate these meridians simply by gently tapping them. Which brings us to the techniques I want to discuss to help you with treating your anxiety.

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM TECHNIQUE, EFT, TAPPING

Emotional Freedom Techniques, EFT for short, aka, Tapping is a method that activates certain meridian points that produce a calming effect on the amygdala or fight or flight response centre, while at the same time incorporating NLP to help rewrite the neural pathways. It is easy to do and from my own personal experience, it seems to be quite effective. Here is a free ebook by The Tapping Solutions which is short and right to the point. For a more in-depth look at this wonderful piece of technology here is another free ebook

Some instructional videos.

May you find the healing you so richly deserve
Peace
#daemon-nice

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