Logically, I understand that my anxiety has no legitimate basis. But my emotional and physical side often disagree, and I can't calm down. How can I get my logical, emotional, and physical sides all on the same page?
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Last Updated: 05/22/2018 at 5:39pm
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Top Rated Answers
Anonymous
August 31st, 2015 5:16am
Often times some consistent meditation can be helpful in that situation. It is worth a try. Many people have seen the positive results from meditation.
First, give yourself time. Don't feel pressured about not feeling how you feel. Rather than fight it, embrace it. When you feel anxious, Stop and acknowledge "I'm anxious, I know I feel anxious, I feel anxious because_____" List them out, write them out, no close your eyes inhale slowly and exhale slowly for 30 seconds. Now look at the list again with your logical mind and ask yourself "Does this make sense? If it doesn't , Why doesn't it make sense?....then CROSS IT OUT....that is an empowering feeling.
Anxiety can be scary, no question about it. When you feel anxious, it's hard to focus on anything but the fact that you feel upset! When I get anxious, I like to use what is sometimes referred to as a "peripheral" technique. When you are experiencing anxiety, take 30 seconds to relax. Close your eyes, take slow and deep breaths in and out. Focus on your fingertips and your toes. Think about how your elbows feel, or your knees. Focus on the air going in and out of your lungs. A good deal of any emotional reaction is also the physical reaction. If you can learn to recognize and control the physical aspect of it, it's much easier to calm down. Remember - 30 seconds, deep breaths, focus on anything else but how you feel. It can be hard to get into the habit! But it's useful technique for a lot of stressful situations.
I have always noticed that what we feel is often rooted to some experience of us. If I feel anxious, I believe that it is a feeling worth investigating. Pushing it aside because it is not logically explainable is just ignoring the feeling because most of the causes of these feelings are not very obvious or stems from our past that we thing is long forgotten. I prefer to let myself feel anxious and in the process discover what it is that is making me anxious. That is the only way to get to the grass root level of the issue and work on healing from it.
One method I found extremely useful was the Grounding Method. My social worker once explained that being in a heightened state of anxiety makes us feel like everything is much worse than it really is, and things in our mind can get scattered and out of hand, so the grounding method is to bring you down to earth (this method works really great for panic attacks [for me at least]). How it works is, whenever you feel yourself start to get all rattled up you just start naming things in categories, start with colours, so you begin looking around at your surroundings and saying all the colours you see out loud, then when you run out of colours, you go to shapes, then objects, then numbers, then anything else you can think or see around you, and you specify, dont just think red, blue or green, or square, triangle and circle, you really think about it, relate them to other things and then your mind gets so busy thinking about the most random, far gone things that your panic subsides because youre so caught up in deciding whether that playground slide is light lilac or a purple-grey. I know its messy and sounds bizzare but trust me, it helps get your mind off of whatever it is your anxiety is spinning about. Thats why its called the grounding method, it keeps you thinking about your actual surroundings instead of letting your brain make up a bunch of nonsense and scary scenarios that dont even exist!
Anonymous
March 6th, 2015 3:46pm
There might be something that is worrying you that you have swept over. Anxiety can be caused by a variety of different things.
First off, it's great that your logical brain understands your anxiety and that is it irrational, and I believe the best way to merge all of your sides would be to recognize that in that current moment, you are anxious, and yes, it might be for nothing, or it might be for something small, but to recognize that anxiety and to tell yourself "I know I'm anxious right now, but it's (possibly, depending on the situation), irrational and I have nothing to be anxious about. Do some breathing techniques, calming exercises, etc., in accordance with understanding the fact that your anxiety is irrational.
Anonymous
May 26th, 2015 9:13pm
Meditation usually works for me. I understand that's not to everyone's personal taste though so try just breathing and staying still. Don't think about anything else just concentrate on you and what you want/need to do. If you have time on your hands try doing some exercise's. That can usually help :)
Anonymous
December 28th, 2015 7:41am
I can tell that it is really hard for you, so I can say that I don't have any experience in this but remember that 7 cups is always here for you
Some things that help me are deep breathing to get the physical and emotional sides under control. The logical side is hard to get on the same page when you have the physical and emotional aspects raging. It gives you a chance to chill before you logically think about what is going on and dispel it
A professional help might help you achieve this goal. Having someone who is objective to give you feedback is very important and crucial to the process
There is no logical, emotional and physical sides. There's the egoic mind which wants to prevail over everything, creating thoughts again and again and telling ourselves they are important and their purpose is to help us build our own identity: it's false. Anxiety comes from several reasons: mostly from disappointed expectations. Or from events which trigger our reactions, both mental and physical ones. Learning to become aware of ourselves and how our "monkey mind" works are the path towards a peaceful and a balanced life.
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