Still in the Storm
A guide to stress and anxiety management
Published by Crown House Publishing Limited, Wales
ISBN 1 - 8998364-1-1
Priced at £5.99
"Why use this particular book to beat stress? Simple. This guide has been designed to be totally user friendly and approachable, while presenting a programme of exercises that will offer long term stress solutions.
Fun to use, friendly and filled with delightful cartoons "Still - in the storm" will enable you to understand why you feel and act the way you do and to do something about it!"
| Chapters | Description |
| 1 | Are you a born worrier? Anxiety is learnt - so it can be unlearnt! |
| 2 | Stress overload? Know what stresses YOU? Learn ways to help - with time management, saying 'No' etc. |
| 3 | Half empty or half full? The worry wheel and your perceptions of anxiety and panic. |
| 4 | Dealing with the stress response. Exercise, breathing and self hypnosis., utilising positive suggestion. |
| 5 | Increasing your self confidence and how you see yourself. Confidence at your fingertips - anchoring techniques |
| 6 | Where do you want to go? Taking control of your future - goal setting and mental rehearsal. |
Anxiety and Panic attacks
When you start to feel panicky, do you know why you feel this way, heart pounding, chest tightening, lightheaded etc? Our primitive ancestors, when threatened, maybe by a sabre-toothed tiger, had to run or turn and fight. Their bodies developed a survival reflex that produced a belt of adrenalin when they were threatened to help them move more quickly or fight more strongly. Unfortunately we still have that reflex and what our minds perceive as 'threats' are not only truly dangerous situations but also anxious thoughts. So when an anxious thought comes along we produce adrenalin but we don't use it because we are not engaging in a physically active response. The adrenalin causes the physical feelings of increased heart rate, increased breathing rate and the blood tends to preferentially flow to our limb muscles (so we have less going to our brain and may feel faint or nauseous). We then get another anxious thought about how we feel "I'm going to faint" or "I'm feeling really ill" which produces more adrenalin and so the feelings increase and the whole thing begins to spiral into what we call a panic attack. The self-same chemical gives the same feelings when someone goes on the "Big One" at Blackpool but then they call it excitement or an "adrenalin burn". It is the interpretation that you put on the original feelings that changes things. If you can acknowledge the feeling when you get it as " The adrenalin is here again" and tell yourself, maybe as you physically let your muscles relax a little as you breathe out, "It will soon pass" you will find that it doesn't build up into panic.
You can begin to recognise what you are saying to yourself in thoughts or images in your mind as you begin to feel anxious so that you can interrupt the cycle. If you wait until you have a lot of adrenalin on board then really the only way to help yourself is to do something physical - run up and down stairs or do some physical jerks! Our feelings may seem to arise very quickly but with practice you can begin to catch the thoughts and images that fuel them and so start to change them.
We are usually very good at playing the worst possible scenarios
through our heads over and over again, especially if we feel low or worried.
What is this doing? Each time we play the possible negative outcome our mind
perceives a threat and produces adrenalin, and off we go again! We need to look
at possibilities in case there is anything we need to do about it but then we
need to put it in a box and turn our minds to something else. Sometimes writing
our worries down can help - is it still going to be important in a year's time,
in ten years? Is it your problem, or really someone else's? If you are thinking
of negative outcomes to situations can you also think of some positive possibilities?