Psych Charm: Anxiety

Alchemy For Life

Anxiety – The feeling of stress, the activation of a fight-or-flight mode.

Anxiety for some can be a fairly dull but constant sensation of having to attend to a problem—a nagging feeling that you need to take care of something. This can be from the demands of your job, your responsibilities as a parent, a spouse, a parent or a combination of all of the above. For some, however, it can be an instant-on attack of intense feelings of fight or flight complete with rapid heart beat, and even sweats. It is the activation of the sympathetic nervous system over something you are aware of, or something you are not.

The reality of… Anxiety

The reality of anxiety is that everyone experiences it in some form. The problem is that sopme people get activated by things they are not even aware of (this is addressed in the upcoming book BeCAUSE!) and because of that, like many things, they can be going through a very intense experience alone. Some people get overwhelmed easily. Others are reminded of their past and how they failed at similar tasks (this is addressed in the book Three Voices).

My personal experience with Anxiety

For a very long time I was of the mind set that people who experienced it were just…well, stressed. Being self employed, going through a diovoce and raising two kids on my own 100% responsibility had it’s moments of stress. But I never really thought I experienced anxiety. I tried to keep ducks in a row, and sort of knew where all the stress was coming from. It was fairly predictable some days, some days not so much.

If anything I would experience what felt like a biological fight or flight, but no accompanying thoughts. This attack of panic would make me go hmm at best, and sometimes I’d check and say “Nope, all good.” Sort of like just having too much coffee—the effects are felt, but there was no fighting or fleeing. But my stress could be your anxiety.

How do you cope with Anxiety?

As I mention in BeCAUSE!, there is an underlying foundation of directives that have helped you and hindered you. These directives can certainly cause you to avoid something like the plague or move towards things that make you happy. And if you don’t lknow what’s causing it, then it just “happens out of nowhere.”

The first step is getting to the root, and interestingly, the root can be a smell from your childhood, the tone of voice someone uses, or an unfortunate avoidance of something most people would not—because you never developed the resiliency to deal with it. Something as simple as reframing a thought can help. Things like yoga, meditation or the over-used buzzword of “mindfulness” can actually help. Breaking things down into smaller componets (which is a lot of what the AFL coaching is about) can allow things to be in digestable bites. You can listen to this episode on the book Three Voices and this one about how our Second Voices talk to us and others.

The Anxiety Psych Charm

Anxiety is represented by a lightning bolt because it can appear suddenly and be very intense. As with all the Psych Charms the icon was something I developed to be universal, easy to understand and color-independent. It can also represent something other than Anxiety. Whatever it speaks to you is your relationship with it.

Alternate meanings:

• Remind you to live in the moment and not live so fast
• Take your time with eating (eating too fast is a leading cause for excess lbs and other issues)
• That inspiration can strike at any time
• You’re an electrician
• You’re a storm-chaser

You can always go to alchemyfor.life/charms for the latest news on them and grab one, or two.

Remember, regardless of whether you grab a charm, you are seen. There are a lot of people out there quietly suffering, and I don’t like that. I want you to know you are seen.

The post Psych Charm: Anxiety first appeared on Alchemy For Life.