How to stop worrying about your health. How does excessive anxiety affect a person. Real on lock
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Psychologists say that every third inhabitant of a metropolis lives in a state of anxiety, and every second regularly encounters episodes of anxiety that arise literally from scratch. According to experts, the habitat, which has changed a lot over the past 100 years, is primarily to blame for this. For a long time, a person's life depended on his reaction and strength. AT modern world there are many external factors that affect a person and from which he is powerless to defend himself. This is what creates our anxiety.
They are just streams of words that have no power over you - unless you let them. Now you can choose whether to practice with them or not. Do you really want to grab the string of one of the balloons? Do you really want to jump out and tell that longing has exploded in you? Or do you want it to help? This exercise takes power from your concerns.
Where do worry and anxiety come from?
The thing about the future is that this is it, the future. We never know anything except what we can see with our two eyes. Since there is no positive or negative on it, we will focus on the negative in an effort to protect ourselves from failure.
Anxiety vs Fear - What's the difference?
Between these feelings, an equal sign is often put, although, in fact, they are unequal. “Fear is a normal emotion that indicates that something new, unknown and probably dangerous is approaching,” explains Maria Arkhangelskaya, psychologist, trainer of the Women's Training Center "Alternative" . - Thanks to this feeling, the body is mobilized, all its reactions are accelerated (it is no coincidence that at the moment of danger, it seems that time slows down). When the frightening event is left behind, relaxation sets in. In other words, fear can sharply bind a person, but then, nevertheless, let go. Anxiety is a background state of chronic tension that accompanies you throughout the day. Sometimes it can last for weeks or years.”
Do you want to understand yourself better?
My advice is to just try to focus on the present. Think about how you could make your day better and what would make you happier that day. Write down everything you can do to make you feel better that day and try to do all the things you can. Also try to set long-term goals for yourself. Things you want to complete in the next couple of weeks or months. You'll be so distracted by the goals you've set for yourself that you'll be happy that you won't have time to focus on what could go wrong in your life.
Anxiety is often accompanied by throwing, restlessness, muscle tension. “It may occur at the beginning of some mental illness, for example, various phobias or hypochondria, - says Tatyana Tikholaz, psychologist at the Academic Clinic of Neurology and Dentistry "Cecile". “In such cases, anxiety manifests itself vividly in the form of palpitations, trembling, sweating, shortness of breath, dizziness.”
How excessive anxiety affects a person
Sometimes its the case when we want everything to be perfect in life, smoothly and without stress! Issues like this make us worry about the future because we want to try preemptive strikes against situations. But we only live once, and it may be easier said that it is done to say to live in the present and enjoy our life in the moment - but it is certainly a statement to be considered. If you've experienced a lot of bad things in life, it's okay to be paranoid when it happens again, but you can't see into the future or what it holds for us - and holding on to the idea that things aren't going so, it will only cause you suffering.
What is the cause of increased anxiety?
Why do some people tend to worry for any reason and without it, while others remain calm in any situation? It turns out that the whole point is in the peculiarities of the work of the nervous system, or rather in the strength of the displacement mechanism. Every day we receive thousands of signals from the outside world, some of them are filtered out (displaced), and some are processed in the brain.
Anxiety is the fear of uncertainty. The future is the most uncertain thing in our lives! We all want to know that we will be successful and have everything we want in life. However, worrying about the future robs us of real joy, so we should focus on our current actions because it will lead to a good future.
Understand that anxiety is bad
Think of life like a roller coaster. But worrying about what will happen will help? Life is too short to worry about it. If you think that things can go wrong, then it's natural to worry all the time. Sounds like you might be having an anxiety problem. Anxiety can make you worry about simple things such as the way you look or what will happen to you in life.
“People with a powerful repression mechanism weed out everything that does not correspond to their picture of the world,” says Maria Arkhangelskaya. - This is characteristic of demonstrative personalities, hysterics. They can't stand their experiences and look for reasons for failure in other people or in a set of circumstances: "I went through 10 interviews and they didn't get me a job ... They were just afraid of the competition."
Did you have five to nine servings of vegetables today? Cut off saturated fat and get eight hours of sleep? Dictation of rules for healthy lifestyle life has become a cottage industry, with websites, talk shows and books about dosas and the inability to stay healthy.
But when it comes to achieving these goals, many of us find ourselves falling behind. Whether you're a busy parent who can't find time to exercise, a chronic dieter trying to lose 20 pounds, or a multitasker who gets six hours of sleep, it's almost impossible to follow the rules.
There is another category of people in whom the repression mechanism is very poorly developed. They read a maximum of signals from the environment, do not filter out any of this, and live in constant anxiety. There are especially a lot of various external signals in a big city, so residents of a metropolis worry much more often than provincials.
Love, one of the most respected women in healthcare, has a new rule: stop worrying about your health. In the new book Live a little! Breaking the rules won't hurt your health, Dr Love makes the case that perfect health is a myth, and that most of us live much more healthy life than we understand.
Love, clinical professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says the inability to live by various health rules is a major source of stress and guilt, especially for women. For most of us, "pretty healthy" is healthy enough.
How to reduce the degree of anxiety?
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Psychologists often compare the tendency to increased anxiety with chronic disease: it will stay with you for life. All you can do is try to keep your anxiety under control and learn how to reduce your level of anxiety. “The strategy here is simple,” says Maria Arkhangelskaya. - The circle of your anxiety should be equal to or less than the circle of your possibilities. In other words, you should only worry about what you can influence. Everything that is not within your zone of influence should be thrown out of the alarm zone. Say, if you do not belong to the category of people who are able to change the situation in the world, for example, economic and political, then you should not constantly worry about this.
"The goal is to live forever?" she said in a recent interview. I would say that it is not. Domar, a Harvard professor and senior staff psychologist at Beth Israel Diacones Medical Center, explores research and counseling in six areas of health - sleep, stress, prevention, nutrition, exercise, and relationships.
Always ask yourself if the problem can be solved
In all six, they write, the biggest risks are at the extreme, and the average soil is bigger than we think. Most people find it best to get at least eight hours a day. But the studies on which this belief is based show how men and women sleep in ideal conditions - silence, darkness, and no duties other than participating in sleep research. These studies tell us how much sleep people will sleep when they have nothing else to do, but they don't tell us anything about how much sleep we really need on a daily basis or what happens if we get less.
For most of us, typical things and situations cause anxiety. Let's see how to deal with this.
Expecting the worst. You worry about not making it to the bank before closing time, failing a speech, or failing to complete an important project. “Think about how much time you spend worrying about something that hasn't happened yet! - He speaks Robert Leahy, cognitive psychologist. “Use it to plan your life to avoid the worst.” Make a list of the events that worry you, and next to it write down the actions that will help prevent them. For example, you can rehearse your speech in front of loved ones to remove the roughness, or make an appointment with a doctor if you are worried about your health. Direct your attention not to empty experiences, but to concrete actions.
The study found that people who slept seven hours a night were the least likely to die over the six-year study period. Sleep more than seven hours or less than five increased risk of mortality. It wasn't clear from the study whether more or less increased sleep risk, or whether an underlying health problem is affecting sleep habits, but the results did evoke the old "eight hours" rule.
The reality is that individual sleep needs can vary. Some people need very little, while others need more than average. The sleep problem causes a lot of guilt on the part of women, Dr. Love said. We need to be more realistic. If you sleep all the time, you don't have enough sleep for you. If you're fine at six o'clock, don't worry about it.
Another strategy is offered by Maria Arkhangelskaya. She advises to accept defeat in advance. Mentally experience the very worst that you fear and accept the situation as a given. Understanding that life does not end here greatly reduces anxiety.
Fear of change. Anxiety about this is characteristic of those who are used to keeping everything under control. They believe that they can control others with the power of their actions and even thoughts! "Try to turn your attention to your own life, which you can control to a greater extent, advises Robert Leahy. - Start small: focus on some pleasant little things that happen to you at a particular moment in time. For example, while walking your dog, focus on the rhythm of your steps; at dinner, focus on the taste and aroma of the dish. Over time, you will find it easier to accept the flow of life.”
Similarly, while exercise is important, many people don't put enough emphasis on fitness, which comes from everyday tasks like picking up and chasing kids, running groceries, and cleaning the house. And there is nothing magical about weight loss. People who are obese or underweight have a higher mortality rate, but overweight people are just as healthy as normal weight, and sometimes healthier. “The goal is to be as healthy and as good a quality of life as you can,” said Dr. Love. "It doesn't have to be subtle."
Often people-controllers include people close to them in their area of responsibility. “Even when it comes to our children, there are a huge number of things that you cannot influence,” says Maria Arkhangelskaya. - In particular, you are not able to 100 percent protect the child from bad habits. There will always be a chance that he will try cigarettes or drugs. Realizing these things is sometimes very scary. What can help in such a situation is the formation of a sense of trust in your man, children, as well as faith in God, the guardian angel, the justice of the structure of this world.
Health experts agree that moderation is important and people shouldn't panic about their health habits. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, a professor of family medicine at the University of California, San Diego, cautions against interpreting a relaxed health message as an excuse to overeat or stay quiet. "I think the problem is the slippery slope," said Dr. Barrett-Connor. In the process of translating this message simply to the masses, they may feel that they have been forgiven.
They shouldn't feel like they're sinning, but they shouldn't feel like it's a license not to try to do better. Nelson, director of the John Hancock Research Center for Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity Prevention at Tufts University, who read the book, says it could help people realize it's easier to be healthy than they thought. Most of the population is doing nothing because they have been overwhelmed, Dr. Nelson said. "This book might interest them because it's not that hard anymore."
Premonition of misfortune. Some people (especially women) tend to consider their anxiety as a harbinger of future misfortunes. In other words, they pass off increased anxiety as intuition. In this situation, it is important to determine what you are experiencing: unproductive anxiety or a real premonition of some unpleasant events. It is not easy to do this, because often we not only foresee misfortunes, but also attract them with our fears.
It's to use your body, have fun and live a little. But the fact that a great leader battled a wave of anxiety gives me some comfort. The steps to overcome erroneous beliefs and develop healthy thought patterns are the same. When we are anxious, energy use is consistently higher than normal in the orbital cortex, the underside of the front of the brain.
In this step, you are compressing a bit of the distance between the thought and you. By looking at this colorful picture, you are taking the problem from your emotional center to your physiological being. If at all possible, look out for some other activities that can take your mind off your worries. Schwartz says: By rejecting obsessions and compromises with dignity, keeping in mind that they are not what they say, that they are false messages, you can learn to ignore or bypass them, refocusing your attention on other behavior and doing something useful. and positive.
“Try to understand what caused your anxiety,” advises Robert Leahy. - Intuition always begins with a feeling, and anxiety - with a thought. For example, if you, having met a colleague, suddenly experience internal discomfort (sometimes it is felt at the physical level - your stomach may shrink, your head may hurt), most likely this is triggered by intuition. And perhaps she says that this person should not be trusted. If you worry about work all the time, then thoughts about possible future troubles are evidence of increased anxiety.
You basically devalue anxiety as soon as it tries to intrude. Overcoming fear is essential to your success. The future belongs to risk takers, not to asylum seekers. Life is perverted in the sense that the more you seek security, the less you have. But the more you look for opportunity, the more likely you are to achieve the security you desire.
Stop Worrying and Build Courage
One way to stop worrying and start having courage is to plan ahead and prepare. Set clear goals and objectives, then gather information. Read and research in your chosen field. Write out detailed action plans, and then take the first step towards relieving stress.
Another marker of intuition is that it always generates clarity and calmness. You can’t say the same about anxiety - if you don’t work with this feeling, it gives rise to even more anxiety.
Experience the events of the past. Returning to the experiences of unpleasant events from past life, sometimes it seems that in this way it will be possible to stop regretting what happened. However, in fact, repeated experience of past events “feeds” feelings of guilt, self-doubt, and regret. “The only general advice that can be given in this case is to turn the page,” says Maria Arkhangelskaya. - Scroll and look to the future. History has no subjunctive mood: what happened could not have happened differently under the circumstances.”
The second kind of courage is the courage to endure, persevere, stay on it once you start. Perseverance is a form of "manly patience" and it is one of the rarest forms of courage. Courageous patience has the ability to persevere after you have begun and before any feedback or results of your actions are received. Plan your work and work on your plan and continue patiently, even in the face of disappointment and unexpected setbacks.
Consciously choose to connect with and be around other men and women who seem positive and unafraid of life. Move away from negative people, people who always point out the reasons why they are insecure and afraid. If you want to be the exceptional person that you can be, carefully control your suggestive environment and especially your human environment.
To make it easier for you to rethink the past, write down what happened before, your actions. Then think about what you would do now and also write it down on paper. When describing, do not use the words "should", "cannot", "no one", "everyone", "always", "never". Replace them with more realistic ones: “may”, “prefers”, “some people”, “sometimes”. Do not forget the most valuable thing in the past is the experience that you have received. It can be good or bad, in any case, if a similar situation arises again, you will be able to behave more adequately and wisely.
In principle, the described techniques will help you behave more adequately and wisely in anxious situations. And worry less about trifles.
Being in a constant state of anxiety is simply impossible to exist normally. Sooner or later, this can lead to sad consequences. However, there is absolutely no need to worry. How to stop worrying and become pathologically serene? There are several recommendations.
It's basically good approach to life. Although certainly someone wants stability and therefore will object that it is impossible not to think about the future. And another will consider it an insult to offer to forget the past. But it is not proposed here to abandon all this. It's about anxiety and not having to relive what has already happened or worry about what's to come.
Yes, it's not easy. But what will change if you get upset many times over an already broken cup. She won't be whole again. Conversely, before something unpleasant happens in the future, there may be many more events that are likely to change the situation and eliminate the cause for concern. That is, the problem will disappear, and the nerve cells will already suffer. 
So problems need to be addressed as they come up. And forget about them afterwards.
Problems need to be addressed.
Let's repeat, but with an emphasis on action. Something is troubling. How to stop worrying yourself? Answer the question:
- Can I solve this problem?
If yes, then you need to do it and not worry.
If not, then why worry, because nothing can be done anyway.
Imagine the worst possible outcome of the problem.
When you manage to paint in your imagination the worst that can happen, then you don’t need to weed your hair or sob quietly in a corner. You should humble yourself and prepare mentally to accept such an outcome. Moreover, most of the problems with such a consideration will turn out to be insignificant and invisible on the scale of the entire life path.
When the worst option has already been accepted, then the anxiety goes away and the rational question arises, but how to avoid it. And at this moment, a calm and common sense can offer many valuable options. That is why it is so important to stop worrying as soon as possible.
Let go of the situation.
It is very difficult to live if you strive to constantly keep everything under control. When you manage to open up to surprises and not accept them as a deviation from the plan, the level of anxiety drops. 
Don't try to please everyone around you.
Not only is it impossible, it's also useless. And if others express their dissatisfaction with you? How to stop worrying in this case? Understand that this is their dissatisfaction. And let those around them fight it themselves.
The reverse principle also applies. Don't worry about everyone around. You need to limit the circle of people who you care about, because they are really important to you. There is no need to worry about everyone else. This is not a call to be indifferent. It only talks about anxiety. Can you help - do it. If you can't or don't want to, don't worry.
You cannot be responsible for everyone and for everything around you. This gives too much cause for concern that no one needs.
Do something exciting.
If you manage to find a case that completely occupies all thoughts, then this will relieve anxiety. Because the brain will simply be busy with other things. Interesting job, hobbies, communication with loved ones may well help to become calmer. Since you literally have to stop worrying yourself because of the peculiarities of the structure of the nervous system.
Cultivate self-confidence.
The more stable a person stands on his feet, the less afraid of falling. Therefore, you need to get rid of confusion, indecision, which in themselves are synonymous with anxiety. To be able to make a decision and have no doubt that everything is done correctly is worth a lot.
Understand that anxiety is bad.
This is downright unhealthy. When you manage to realize this, you will be able to block anxiety much faster and more confidently, because this is necessary to maintain the integrity of your body and fight premature aging. Although the end of life is also the answer to the question of how to stop worrying, it is unlikely that anyone will like this option.
Practice being calm and happy.
Yes, consciousness is also trainable. If you constantly pull yourself up as soon as anxiety begins to creep up, then in the end it will become unusual and alien. But the state of balance must be constantly cultivated. Even if at first it will be just affirmations, like “I am calm.” Everything will be easier once it is learned that it works and that a person is able to control his own mood.
Eliminate the habit of worrying.
How to stop bothering others and yourself with your problems? Just take it and stop. This is also a peculiar habit - to worry about trifles. The easiest way to get rid of a bad habit is to replace it with a more acceptable one. What if the habit of worrying is replaced by the habit of not worrying? Everything complex becomes elementary. 
Yes, difficulties make us stronger. But you can find many ways to strengthen your character without such sacrifices. You need to stop worrying as soon as possible, right now, because by and large absolutely no one needs it.
