Anxiety

I have written this and want to share it with everyone, so many people suffer from anxiety and I want to help people understand it.

What is Psychology

Simply put psychology is the study of the mind and behaviour, Primarily psychologists study for a very long time and the end result actually ends up being more of a researcher role.

Statistics and data analysis is a huge part of psychology and you will find these people in government positions and working in large corporations. They play a large role in mental health, workplace efficacy/performance and also market research.

Any and every industry has or can benefit from a psychologist, be it an IT company to a sports team or gym.

As you may be aware, a large portion of the training you would have taken part in would have a large portion of the information on the importance of psychology and mental health in this marvellous industry.

Unfortunately until recently talking about mental health was a bit of a taboo topic and you will still find people today that firmly believe that Anxiety and psychological diseases do not exist and that you just need to grow up.

There is solid proof that these things do exist and have a very strong effect on our physiology. There are many scholarly articles that show a strong correlation between depression, anxiety and other psychiatric diseases to cardiovascular dysfunctions and other medical conditions.

The first step you need to take is to educate yourself on psychology,

To understand the correlation between psychiatric disorders and physiological dysfunction.

Don’t just take anyone’s word for it, actually study and read articles, start with the articles that I have referenced and grow from there.

You need to learn about the link between anxiety and mental stress and how it is linked to excessive Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) release and catecholamines.

The SNS and catecholamines are the cause of that feeling you get with an adrenaline rush, which includes the release of dopamine epinephrine and norepinephrine, this is due to the body receiving a stress response.

Your behaviour is controlled in your frontal lobe, when you suffer from stress, your hypothalamus takes control and puts you into fight or flight mode.

The fight or flight response is important but it is a survival mode and should not be active constantly. Unrelenting stress and mental strain are almost inevitable in this day and age, this is what causes anxiety, panic attacks and lack of concentration.

There is a way to fix this, you need to re-engage your frontal lobe.

The frontal lobe is in charge of many functions but two functions you will focus on are the concentration of active movement and logical reasoning and this is what a lot of therapies and activities focus on.

The following list of activities has something in common.

-Powerlifting

-Running

-Massage

-Yoga

-Pilates

-Meditation

-Reiki

-Dancing

-Active breathing

-Even using the toilet

The common trait is that people find great stress relief doing these, de-stress, clear your mind, etc. You can use whatever term you like but they make you feel good.

They all require active concentration of movement, touch and physical awareness, this re-engages your frontal lobe and in turn the logical reasoning part of your brain, the antithesis of the hypothalamus, which controls the fight and flight response.

Psychology and people

As mentioned above you will be dealing with sufferers all the time and the first hurdle you must negotiate around is the psychological aspect of health and fitness.

Take a leaf out of the sales team book, it is all in the communication. When you go to a car dealership the more skilled and advanced sales representatives will greet you in a very different way than a normal person would, they have had specific training in body language and the use of words to make you more comfortable and trusting of them.

Go to shake their hand and if they know what they are doing they will shake your hand with their hand below yours in a supinated position (subconsciously means give me).

There are many things that they will do, focus on the benefits, bypass and negotiate negative aspects of a vehicle, relate it back to the client/customer. Whether you like it or not, it works.

I highly recommend two books. The first is How to win friends and influence people, this discusses the most effective way to communicate with people to get what you want.

All great communicators and leaders understand everyone's desire for acceptance, you need to listen, reward and make them feel proud of their accomplishments and never be negative or reprimand them.

The second book is called Mind hacking by John Hargrave, this is a very educational book and gave me significant motivation to write this.

While dealing with a person you need to listen and identify the causes of their uncertainty, once you identify, you must then confirm that the issues brought up are the only things preventing them from being comfortable with you.

The task is then to solve each concern and if you have truly built a good rapport with them and made them feel comfortable, you will have successfully negotiated your first psychological hurdle.

I understand that it is not a pleasant way to learn about psychology but thinking of the sales industry is a very easy way to understand how easy it is to guide people into making them feel comfortable and willing to make choices that they would normally not be accepting to make.

Now transfer that image into the gym, workplace, or your friends and family and think about how you may have once convinced a parent or sibling to do something for you by acting in a certain way that you knew would garner sympathy or maybe even anger, it's so easy to control the desired reaction that even dogs have mastered it.

I believe that you will be more successful in caring for your friends but more importantly yourself once you understand psychology more.

How do you think you could incorporate the knowledge of psychology into guiding people in a positive way?

“Manipulation” and “guidance” essentially mean the same thing but the flavour of the word is what is important, people don’t like being manipulated but often seek guidance.

Communication is key to everything, the words you choose can affect someone's psychological state. The words you use on yourself will also have a very large impact on your psychological state. Funnily enough, you are someone too.

Fortunately, everyone is influenced by everything that happens around them, and you can use this to help people. Look at ads, think about stereotypes, what is meditation and hypnosis? There are influences everywhere and I want you to recognise you can study this and replicate these techniques for positive outcomes.

Watch this ted talk video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj-hdQMa3uA&list=RDLVNj-hdQMa3uA&start_radio=1&rv=Nj-hdQMa3uA&t=0

This is an excellent nugget of education that teaches you the art of storytelling, an amazing example of how you can communicate in a way to get an emotional reaction.

Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS)

The SNS is our fight and flight system. This can also be described as our stress response. Imagine, you have just woken

up and you need to go to the loo. With bleary eyes, you get out

of bed and waddle to the bathroom. As you enter the hallway

you see a lion standing there with a hungry look in his eye.

He roars at you!! What happens? This is what people generally call an “adrenaline rush”; you feel your heart start pounding in your chest, your respiratory rate speeds up, your muscles tense ready to run and your pupils dilate to let lots of light in.

You could hear a pin drop and you can smell the lion’s coarse mane. All of your senses become finely tuned to the situation and your brain starts processing really quickly to get you out of there.

This is a much-exaggerated example of SNS activation. When your brain recognises that you need a boost, the CNS sends impulses to glands and smooth muscles and tells the adrenal medulla to release hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline.

This causes effects such as an increased peripheral vascular resistance (so more blood gets back to the heart for increased cardiac output), an increase in respiratory rate to increase oxygen supply to the heart and lungs, and an increase in heart rate to pump the blood back out to the working muscles.

In a regular setting (let’s say a footy game) this SNS activation is a great thing. But in a first aid emergency (let’s say, someone has had their leg chopped off!!) it can be really bad as it can make the condition worsen (leg chopped off, means a lot of bleeding, SNS activation makes HR go up, so without direct pressure, the casualty may bleed even more).

Parasympathetic Nervous System (PaNS)

The PaNS are the opposite of the SNS, it is responsible for resting, relaxation and digestion. Imagine you have had a long day at work; you are wired and overexcited from all the great stuff you have been helping your clients do and buzzing about their great results. You need to go to bed because you

have an early start tomorrow. You go through your usual nighttime ritual, brush your teeth, put your favourite PJs on, get a glass of water and climb under the covers. You read a book for a few minutes, but gradually feel your eyes blinking more, your breathing has slowed down, your body feels heavy and you drift off to sleep. This is the PaNS at work.

As you rest, your PaNS works (through the release of hormones such as dopamine) to slow down your body processes, HR, RR, BP lowers and your level of awareness falls.

The PaNS also come into play when you have eaten a meal. Chewing stimulates the vagus nerve (the main PaNS cranial nerve), which kick-starts all of the digestive processes –

peristalsis in the stomach, bile release into the duodenum, motility through the small intestine. You can also stimulate the vagus nerve manually; performing the valsalva manoeuvre (holding your breath and bearing down, like bodybuilders do when performing a really heavy bench press) will kick the PaNS into gear.

A good way to understand anxiety is when you are stuck in the sympathetic mode, constant stress reaction and struggling to switch off and move into parasympathetic mode (repeating myself, there is a very strong correlation between overstimulation of the SNS and cardiovascular diseases).

On an anatomical level, this all occurs in the Hypothalamus which is a small section of the brain. A very large focus in the treatment of this dysfunction is targeted at influencing behaviour and forcing you to use a different section of your brain, the target is the frontal cortex.

Frontal cortex

The frontal cortex or lobe is responsible for logical reasoning, behaviour and movement planning.

Anxiety and depression is a condition which is correlated to irrational thoughts, behaviour and action which affects day to day living. Therefore it is understandable that the aim is to attempt to stimulate logical reasoning, there are many scholarly articles and research papers that experiment on the frontal cortex and they have found that it is easily stimulated with movement planning and perceptual decision making.

There is also a correlation between frontal cortex damage and cognitive behaviour/reasoning.

If we can stimulate the prefrontal cortex we are also able to stimulate logical reasoning and bypass the part of the brain which is constantly creating a stress response on the body.

The big picture and Point of it all

We have covered a lot about neuropsychology and the basics of what happens with stress,

It is important to understand the foundation of stress so that you can help people and more importantly yourselves. The big goal everyone should achieve is to reduce psychological and adrenal stress no matter what form it takes.

The number one way to do this is to use techniques that activate the frontal cortex, give yourself a sense of control and focus on logical reasoning and step by step planning, do this by MOVING.

Thank you