How to regulate anxiety at physiological, motor and cognitive levels.

Several guidelines to not let anxiety seriously affect our quality of life.

Surely many times you think that you would like to know how anxiety works and what you can do to control it.

One of the psychological problems that psychologists see most often in consultation is anxiety. Specifically, people without serious mental health problems who are overwhelmed by anxiety..

All human beings, or almost all of us, can suffer a problem of this type in the course of life. And the most important thing I want you to know is that it's not about never being anxious or stressed, it's about that you are able to regulate your anxiety. But to do this, we must first understand this psychological phenomenon.

What is anxiety?

I am going to explain in a few words what anxiety consists of and how we can do so that it does not overwhelm us.

You have to know that anxiety is an adaptive behavior in a situation that poses a danger to your integrity or is for your integrity or is new.

In a situation that involves danger, we instinctively respond in three possible ways: we escape, we fight or we stay as if we were dead, blocked. The latter comes from our ancestors. When faced with a wild beast, they would appear as if they were lifeless so that it would pass them by and not attack them. This is the explanation for being blocked in front of a situation that our brain interprets as dangerous..

When something is new to us, anxiety makes us become active, that we are with our "batteries on". In short, we are in what we have to be, with all five senses.

How can we regulate anxiety so that it does not overwhelm us?

We can manage anxiety at three levels: physiological, motor and cognitive (thinking).

At the physiological level

They are those signs that appear in anxiety, we have palpitations, sweating, tightness in the chest, ..., a long etcetera of things that happen at the physical level when anxiety overflows us.

At the motor level

As far as the anxiety at motor level is concerned, we feel very restlessWe can't stop moving and stay still in one place.

Cognitive level

Our brain is an extraordinary "machine" of survival, not of well-being.not of well-being. Therefore, what it does very well is to anticipate negative things that may happen to us and to ruminate on the negative things that have already happened to us. We are very often naturally in this state.

Well, when it comes to regulating anxiety is not about not going through this process, because our brain has the innate tendency to fall into this bias of giving more strength and importance to the negative, but to be aware of it and, to the extent that you know it, try to give more value to the positiveand not to believe all the negative things you think.

Several tips: what to do?

At the physiological level, with two fundamental tools. One is Jacobson's progressive relaxation. It consists of tensing and untensing the different parts of the body. As you train it, you will be able to relax when you are tense.

The other technique we have to regulate the level of physiological activation is deep breathing. When we feel anxious we hyperventilateWe take short, shallow breaths. This means that we do not oxygenate properly.

To remedy this, what we have to do is something very easy: make longer and more prolonged inspirations and expirations. In this way we can regulate the level of activation. The additional advantage is that you can do it at any time. No one will notice that you are breathing deeply.

At the motor level another important key that psychologists constantly recommend the regular practice of sports.. To the extent that you practice physical exercise, it will increase your well-being, and you will be able to regulate your anxiety considerably.

As for what to do on a cognitive level, there is something to keep in mind. As we mentioned earlier, the brain is a magnificent survival machine and, as such, it continually presents us with the negative. We have to learn not to give so much value to all the negative things that we anticipate or remember, and for this We have to focus our attention on what we have, not on what we lack..

In this way we will not give so much importance to all those negative thoughts that come to us easily. We have a lot of junk thoughts that we should not give more importance to.

As long as you are able to put these tools into practice, you will be able to see anxiety as an ally, and not as an enemy. And if you are able to value anxiety as an ally, you will be able to control it.