How To Calm the Nervous System
Jane’s heart leaps into her throat the minute the boss asks her to stand up and give a presentation in front of the group. There was no warning. She had no time for preparation. And Jane was terrified of public speaking. The anxiety immediately begins to rise. Panic begins to set in. She desperately tries to gain control of herself. She screams at her mind in her head, “No! Stop getting anxious! Stop it!” Despite this, the anxiety continues to get worse and worse. She begins to hyperventilate. It becomes near impossible for her to speak. Jane has spiraled into a panic attack and the topic of “How To Calm Your Nervous System” is important to understand how to prevent this from happening to you.
How To Calm Your Nervous System By Understanding Patterns
The subconscious mind on its simplest level has two main functions. One, it is a meaning-generating machine. It creates associations between meanings of value and threat with objects in the world and stores those associations in memory. Two, it uses those meanings as a basis for creating patterns of emotional responses and behaviors. These patterns are essential strategies for dealing with the object, based on its associated meaning. In the above scenario, Jane’s subconscious mind has associated public speaking with the meaning of threat or danger. Her anxiety and avoidant behavior is a pattern kicked off by the subconscious mind to deal with that threat or danger when it’s encountered.
Patterns On Top of Patterns
What makes this simple function of creating patterns more complex is the subconscious mind is constantly building patterns on top of existing patterns and meaning on top of existing meaning. In the above example, Jane’s subconscious mind also associates anxiety itself with being a threat or danger. She does not want other people to see her as anxious. This kicks off another pattern which is to try and use her willpower to rigorously control her nervous system. This is what we call a “maladaptive pattern” because it’s a pattern that’s not effective at its intended purpose.
Thinking About What You Don’t Want Makes Everything Worse
Why is Jane’s pattern maladaptive? Because the subconscious mind does not process negation in thoughts. Understanding this is key to understanding how to calm your nervous system. If you think about what you don’t want, the mind still has to imagine your thoughts, so you have a frame of reference for what you don’t want. Since thought and emotional state are intrinsically linked, thinking about how you don’t want to be anxious automatically makes you more anxious.
Spiraling the Nervous System Down Into a Panic Attack
This is what often leads to a spiral down to a panic or anxiety attack. A person will feel anxious and they will attempt to stop the anxiety by commanding their mind like they would a child, dog, or subordinate. They begin barking out orders in their head in the form of “Stop it! I don’t want to feel anxious! I want to stop being anxious!”. This, of course, leads to an increase in the intensity of the anxiety which also increases the intensity of the anxious thoughts. Thoughts begin to shift to “Oh no! I’m more anxious! I don’t want this! Stop being anxious!”. This heightens the anxiety even more and combines it with a feeling of loss of control or inability to stop one’s mind, thus acting a feeling of panic to the mix. This continues until the anxiety and panic become overwhelming.
How To Calm Your Nervous System By Changing Patterns
Therefore, the secret of how to calm your nervous system lies in two different parts. One, you have to use your imagination to think about what you want to be which is calm and relaxed. Two, you have to change the patterns of your body so it’s in a state of relaxation instead of a state of arousal. This means deep, slow breaths instead of fast, short breaths that occur in a state of heightened anxiety. The result of both of these is to take the mind down a different neural pathway than the spiral down into overwhelming anxiety.
Training Is Needed To Learn How To Calm Your Nervous System
The problem is this is very difficult to remember to do in the middle of a panic attack, because thought is, as mentioned before, emotionally state dependent. Thus, when people get angry, they lose the ability to remember the anger management skills they learned in an emotional state where they were calm. The same implies to anxiety management skills. Learning them when you are calm and relaxed is easy, but using them in a state of anxiety is another ballgame.
Training How To Calm In Hypnosis
To solve the above problem and truly learn how to calm your nervous system, hypnotherapists train the subconscious mind to trigger a new pattern when the body begins to experience anxiety. We do this by taking them into hypnosis and bringing up a memory of them being anxious. Then, we guide them through creating a new pattern. If you want to try it yourself, here are the complete steps. Don’t worry if you struggle to implement this. This is something that needs a board-certified hypnotherapist to train your mind for maximum effectiveness.
Creating New Patterns For Your Nervous System
- Imagine a time, a specific time when you felt anxiety. Recall this time right now, allowing yourself to see what you saw, feel what you felt, and hear what you heard.
- As you allow yourself to experience the anxiety of that memory, think of the word “calm”, “relaxed” or “peaceful”. Whatever word feels best for you is the right word to use. This is your anchor or triggers word. It’s a word that when thought kicks off the positive pattern we are training.
- As you think of your trigger word, imagine yourself, in the anxious memory, beginning to calm down and feel relaxed. Allow yourself to see what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel as you imagine yourself becoming calm, relaxed, or peaceful.
- As you begin to sink into this calm, relaxed or peaceful image, begin to take nice deep, calming breaths.
- Once your body and mind completely relax and the anxiety is gone, repeat the process by going to step one and bringing the anxiety back up.
Conclusion
If you found this post on how to calm your nervous system useful, you may find these posts on how hypnotherapy for anxiety works, nervous stomach anxiety, and situational anxiety.
