How To Deal With Stress and Anxiety

Have you been dealing with stress or anxiety recently? As a therapist, we see many clients come in feeling stressed about work, school etc or anxious about an upcoming event, project, deadline.

Everyone feels overwhelmed at some point in their lives, but it's learning how to deal with stress and anxiety that will make the difference for your mental health and wellbeing.

We've included some breathing techniques and a suggestion for dealing with panic attacks etc

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Transcript

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Got you here.

Thanks for listening.

Hi.

Welcome to the therapy guy.

My name is Alan and today I'm going to give you

some tips for dealing with anxiety and stress and helping you

obviously understand how you can cope and what you can do

for yourself to try to manage those feelings.

There's lots of different information you

can get on the internet.

Please be aware that even the advice that I'm giving you

now, because it's going out to everybody, it has to be

fairly generic, it has to be aimed at everybody.

So it may not work specifically for you.

At the start.

What I'd like you to do is almost try to

change the techniques that you may read on things like

Google or different websites and even the ones that I

give you to yourself and your own circumstances.

There's lots of things that you can do.

There's lots of things that help different people, but

the things that help your partner or your friend

or anybody else may not specifically help yourself.

So just be aware it's not you.

It's not because your stress and anxiety is worse.

It's just because we are all different

and different things work for us all.

It's no different to exercising.

Some people like to play football, some people

want to play golf, some people run.

Some of it will cycle.

The end result is still the same.

The fitness is there, the enjoyment is there, but

it's just a different way of getting there.

What is stress, anxiety?

How can it affect us?

There are so many different physical ways that stress

and anxiety can affect us that I'm just going

to give you a few I'm just going to

give you some things that maybe you can notice.

Some things you may not be aware of.

It can be things like headaches, back pain, neck pain.

We hold a lot of tension in our body when we're

stressed and anxious, so we may sit a bit differently, we

might stand a bit differently because of this tension.

We may be a bit stiffer, so we can feel this

discomfort in our back, in our neck, and even other areas.

We can get chest pains, which may also be

something to do with us breathing too fast and

not getting us enough oxygen into our bloodstream.

Can also be things like problems with digestion,

getting acid reflux, nausea, shaking, sweating, some dizziness,

and sometimes some tingling or numbness in our

fingers or our face or anything else.

And again, some of these things can be due to

us not getting the oxygen we need in our bloodstream

because we're in this fight or flight response.

Now, some of the emotional things that we can

sometimes think and feel is we can find ourselves

being more irritable, we can find ourselves getting angry

easier, more frustrated with the smaller things.

We can find ourselves crying at random times

over things that we wouldn't normally cry about.

Obviously be really impatient sometimes this

can lead us to decrease productivity

so you may find that work slows down

your output, your enthusiasm for doing things like

going to the gym or being with friends.

You may find that you struggle to think

you have all these thoughts going around in

your mind because you're stressed, anxious.

You haven't really then got the thoughts.

The spare capacity in your brain to concentrate on work

or other things that can lead to us forgetting things,

dates, appointments and people say oh I'm forgetful.

It may be an indication that you've just got a

lot going on for you at that time and your

brain is just trying to prioritise some of the thoughts

and the things that are happening to you eventually this

can lead to us burning out.

Now there's quite a lot of different things, different

ways that people express and what it is about

burning out for me it's really about obviously just

losing all that enthusiasm, that drive to get up

and do the things that we normally do.

I like going to work, seeing

friends, eating and looking after ourselves.

We just lose everything for us and we just start to

give up on things and it is really the extreme end

of where our anxiety and stress can lead us emotionally.

But the physical impacts that it can

have on us too are immense.

I read an article the other day which would

suggest that 40% of the physical symptoms that people

go to the doctors for now are stress related.

So as I said earlier, the bad back, the

neck pain, that sort of thing, it can be

an indication that you're just really stressed.

So what can you do about things?

What can you do on a very basic level?

So some generic and general tips would be you

could try to talk to someone who you trust.

Now what I would try to do is find someone

who is there and not going through too much themselves.

We don't want you just obviously listening

and colluding with the other person about

how bad each other's lives are.

We want someone who is reasonably good place, which

is why talking to a therapist often helps.

Not only are they impartial, but they're there and

they've been trained specifically to manage their own feelings,

obviously not bring them into the room with yourself

which is why a lot of people find that

they can talk to a therapist more easily.

We can try to look after

our physical wealth doing this.

That doesn't involve necessarily going to the gym,

it could involve just you going out for

a walk, you eating regularly, eating what you

can as healthily as possible.

We can soon start to notice our diet changing.

We find we eat more sugary stuff or

quick fixed foods, things that gives us energy.

Because when we're stressed and anxious, your

brain uses a lot of energy.

So we instantly fix the sugar stuff.

The things that will give us that feel good factor that

we need just to pick us up and keep us going.

We can try some breathing exercises and I'm going

to give you one or two of them in

a minute just to help you through them.

We'll get some details about that just in a while.

Keep a diary.

And what I would say on this diary is don't

just write down the bad stuff, but write down some

things that you've got right or things that have gone

well for you in the same sort of context.

So if you write half a page of things,

thoughts and feelings about negative stuff, try to look

for some things that you've got right.

So I managed to get out of bed and go to work.

Now part of your brain says, well, you should be

doing it anyway, but you still manage to do that.

You've got up even though you're feeling

this way, you still were strong enough

to put yourself into that position.

You can try complementary and alternative

therapies. People find getting massages, aromatherapy.

All this can help because we're all so different.

As I spoke about earlier, different

things work for different people.

And remember, if one thing doesn't

work, please try something else.

If you go to a therapist and you don't like them,

or the way that they help you and support you isn't

working for you, first thing I try to encourage you to

do is talk about it with the therapist.

The second thing I'd ask you to do is find

somebody else, try somebody different, but learn from that experience

and ask the next therapist questions about how they work

so you get the support that you need.

If we go back to the breathing techniques,

just briefly, there is really big one that

I really promote, and you may have heard

of it, it's called 7 11 breathing technique.

Now it's a really powerful technique for helping

people reduce the feelings of stress and anxiety.

But like anything else, it needs a bit of practise.

What people tend to do is just basically use it when

they actually feel the stress or anxiety is at its peak.

It can be really difficult to focus then on

trying to do that, trying to use that skill.

So what I normally encourage my clients to do

is to practise it when they're feeling okay.

Practise it when they're watching the TV or

stuck in a traffic jam or the red

lights or something in short little easy bursts.

So that the skills are there

And you're already preparing yourself for

if and when you need it.

How does it work?

Well, if you think about it, our

breathing controls how we think and feel.

If you breathe more quickly, you can

become more excited and more anxious.

If we breathe more slowly, we can

feel more relaxed and in control.

If you think about it, when you go to

sleep nighttimes, you end up breathing more slowly.

You don't end up breathing rapidly as

if you were if you're watching an

exciting movie or running or anything else.

7 11 technique basically revolves around you breathing in

to the count of seven and then breathing

out to the count of eleven.

It's important to try to do this as slowly

as possible, but it can be quite big.

Those numbers are quite large for when you start.

The important thing here to remember, it's not

so much the numbers, it's the routine.

You breathe out for longer than you breathe in.

So you could do breathe in for the count of

five and you breathe out for the count of eight.

Whatever is comfortable for yourself, really.

The indication is no different too.

Like if you went to the gym, you

wouldn't be able to run a marathon.

As soon as you go through or lift heavy

weights, you have to build up to that.

So if you start with the lower numbers

and then start to build up working towards

the 7 11 breathing, then you'll find it easier.

Remember, the thing to do is make sure

that the outbreath is longer than the in.

If you even think of the words, in is a

shorter word, and out, it's an easy way to remember.

Try to practise it maybe three to five times a day.

It helps, as I said, if

you attach it to something else.

So if you're having your first drink

in the morning, try some breathing exercises.

If you're watching TV and an advert comes on, then

try breathing exercises for maybe one or two minutes.

The more frequently you practise

this, the easier it becomes.

And you can email me and I can send you a worksheet

with all this information on and it will help you say I

always tell my clients to take a photo of it so that

then they've got it with you, it's on your phone.

We don't leave our phones anywhere nowadays.

So if it happens and the anxiety or stress is

getting too much and you forget you already have it

on your phone here for you to do.

Or of course, you can listen to

this podcast again, which should be fantastic.

There are lots of different ways that you

can help with just reducing your stress, and

that breathing technique is just one of them.

Another thing that I use is sort of mental exercises.

These work really well for myself because it's how

I think and feel and it really works with

how my brain sees things and does things.

So what I might do is if I can feel

myself starting to get anxious, I might start to name

all the things I can see around me.

So you just scan your environment at any

point and you just see the different things.

Try to notice something different

that you haven't seen before.

You can sometimes count backwards, so you might

like, start at 100 and count backwards.

I don't know, in seven or eight.

So you go 93 or 92.

Whatever it is that you decide is the number you

want to go back, but you drastically reduce that thing.

You might pick an object and describe

it in your mind in detail.

You might look for every way.

It's a mindfulness technique that I use for my clients.

I ask them to describe every single detail

about a pen that I give them.

If you pick up everything, it could be your phone,

it could be your iPad, it could be your computer.

Just look for every single detail about how

it's manufactured, the colours, the textures, everything that

you can see on that item.

Try to read things or spell your

name or name of other people.

Try and spell them backwards.

Doing these different mental challenging exercises can change

what area of the brain that we're using.

So we change from the emotional side of the

brain to the rational, practical side of our brain.

And it helps us then to obviously change the

way that we're thinking and distract us away from,

obviously, the anxiety and stress that we can feel.

Other things you can do is you can name all

the movies that you've ever seen or all the music

that you like, all the songs that you can remember.

Try to do these things.

Mix and match it.

Now, another technique that you can adapt is something

that works really well for people experiencing panic attacks

or PTSD, and it's called the 54321 technique.

Now, this is really about looking at your surroundings.

It's really about trying to bring you away from

that stress and those feelings that are overwhelming you

at that time and bring you back into the

room that you're in, wherever it is.

So what I would do there is

five things that you can see.

So look for the small details, look for maybe

the smallest objects that you can see in the

room, but name five of them, cheque them out.

Five things you might not have seen before in the room.

Four things you can feel.

Now, if you look at it, it might be your phone,

it may be the clothes you're wearing, the table you're sat

at, the chair you're sat on, anything in your environment.

Four different textures that you can feel.

Three things that you can hear.

So it could be your breathing, it could be

the traffic going by, the wind, the rain.

There could be lots of things.

Any music you can put some music on

in the background, that sort of stuff.

Two things that you can smell.

This can be even more difficult, obviously,

because it depends on where you are

and what you're doing in that time?

Well, it may be stuff like the fresh air or an

air freshener in an office or a house, the grass, it

may be food or smell, some restaurants as you're walking through.

And then one thing that you can taste.

So one thing that I try to encourage people who are

having these sort of flashbacks, these panic attacks, is that they

carry some mints or some chewing gum, things like that, in

their pockets, on their person, so that when they start to

do that, they can actually taste it.

It's always something that you can smell too, so it's

always something you can feel and something you can see.

So it ticks some of those boxes.

If you just get out that piece of sweets

or that chewing gum, whatever it is that you're

carrying around for yourself, give me something healthy.

Of course, some of these things you need to

adapt and you need to work with them.

So practise them.

They won't always work unless you adapt them

to how you think and feel and the

support and experiences that you're having right now.

Try them, use them, keep doing, practising them

three, four or five times a day.

Attach them to something else.

Even the 54321 technique, you can just run through

it in your mind, you can use it.

It doesn't have to be experiencing what a

trauma or an anxiety or panic attack.

You can just get used to doing

the sequence when you're feeling calm.

So that it's there as a skill ready

for you when you need it most.

As always, if you need any advice, any guidance,

any more information, please don't hesitate to contact me.

I'll be happy to hear from you, I'll be

happy to send you any information that I've got

and point your right direction for more information or

more support that could help you.

I'd like to thank you for listening for today.

I'm going to sign off and I hope you

tune in next time for going to have some

meditation podcast come up so that hopefully help you

with mindfulness and help you with your sleep.

But for today, I'm going to sign off as a therapy guy.

Stay safe and look after each other.

Bye for now.

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