Emotional Health

Anxiety is a natural response to danger. It is a feeling of worry or fear characterized by a pounding pulse, sweaty hands, and restlessness. When you feel threatened, your body’s automatic flight response is activated. 

In moderation, anxiety isn’t a negative thing; it may help you remain alert and concentrated, as well as inspire you to solve problems. However, if your anxiety is intense and debilitating, and your concerns and fears are interfering with your relationships and everyday life, you’ve most likely crossed the line from normal anxiety into an anxiety disorder. In the worst case, uncontrolled anxiety can lead to depression, poor physical and mental health.

If you find yourself drowning in anxiety, I have got good news for you! You can deal with it naturally on your own. 

Here are 3 natural ways to deal with anxiety:

1. Practice deep breathing.

The breath is a good indicator of your level of anxiousness. Anxiety is shown by short, shallow breaths. One of the wellness tips for dealing with anxiety is to practice deep breathing. Lengthening and strengthening the breath sends signals to the brain that it’s safe to relax. You can deal with anxiety if you can learn the art of deep breathing.

2. Understand the thoughts behind your anxiety and divert your attention from them.

You should understand that anxiety is just a feeling and that feeling can be replaced with another. Whenever you begin to feel anxious, do well to identify and shrink the negative imaginations causing you to fear and worry; and increase the intensity of positive imaginations in your mind. 

For example, if you begin to feel anxious in an event where you have to address a massive audience, you should first try to understand the cause of your anxiousness. If for instance, you realize that you are anxious because you keep imagining the negative consequences of giving a poor address, rather than dwelling on those negative thoughts, be positive. Think of how impressed your audience will be with an awesome address; think of how happy you will be as well; you could even think of positive things outside your upcoming event. Positive thoughts kill negative feelings that spur anxiety.

3. Face your fears repeatedly.

Avoiding fears only makes them scarier. If you felt very anxious addressing a massive audience today, it’s best to get back and address another massive audience tomorrow and many days after. By repeatedly doing what you fear or worry about, your level of anxiety will begin to fade, and you will become comfortable doing them.

It may not be easy, but with determination, you can overcome anxiety.

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Anger is an emotion characterized by bitterness towards someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Everyone feels angry sometimes. However, anger becomes a problem when it begins to impact a person’s daily life and causes them to react in a way that might hurt themselves or those around them.

Anger can become a problem when it comes out as aggression or affects a person’s life and relationships. This might be because they find their feelings of anger overwhelming or uncontrollable. Anger can be ways of expressing or responding to a range of other feelings, like:

• Frustration 

• Embarrassment or humiliation

• Guilt or shame

• Jealousy

• Hurt or sadness

• Feeling a loss of connection to family, friends, community, or country

• Being threatened or frightened 

• Feeling unfairly treated 

However, uncontrolled anger can take a toll on both you and your relationships. 

Here are the consequences of expressing anger:

Headache:

 When you are angry, muscles in the back of the neck and scalp tense up, causing a tight band-like sensation around the head.

Insomnia:

 People who are generally angry or struggle to keep their temper in check have a worse night’s sleep than happier people.

Depression: 

Anger is an emotion that everyone feels sometimes, but if a person is feeling angry all the time, they may be experiencing depression.

High blood pressure: 

Anger causes an outpouring of stress hormones like adrenaline, which causes the heart to beat faster and increases blood pressure.

Heart attack: 

Research shows that in the two hours after an angry outburst, a person has a slightly higher risk of having chest pain, a heart attack, or a risky heart rhythm.

Stroke: 

Researchers found that two hours after an angry outburst, a person’s risk for a heart attack increased nearly five times, and their risk of stroke shot up more than three times, compared to when someone was not angry.

Weakens the immune system:

Prolonged sessions of anger take the toll on the body in the form of high blood pressure, stress, anxiety, headaches, and poor circulation. Few minutes of anger is so stressful that it can impair the immune system.

Shortens the life span:

Stress is tightly linked to general health. If you are stressed or angry, there is a tendency for shortened lifespan. 

Increase of anxiety:

When you are angry or anxious, your body secretes hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline, that prepare you to fight or flee. During angry moments, you are likely to experience rapid heart rate and chest tightness.

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When it comes to happiness and success in life and your general wellbeing, emotional intelligence matters. Therefore, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and mange your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and resolve conflict.

There are five categories of Emotional intelligence which include:

• Self-awareness: This is the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions and their impact on others.
• Self-regulation: This is the ability to manage your negative or disruptive emotions and to adapt to changes in circumstances.
• Motivation: This is the ability to self-motivate, not only yourself but also others.
• Empathy: This is the ability to recognize and understand how others are feeling.
• Social skills: This is the ability to manage the emotions of others through emotional understand.

An individual with high Emotional Intelligence has sufficient self-awareness to recognize negative feelings and reasons accordingly; so as to prevent escalation. This is a key ability in maintaining good wellbeing.

These three aspects of Emotional Intelligence; self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation, can effectively help individuals deal with negative emotional challenges; as they enable the individual to recognize and understand their own emotions and trigger points. Being aware of these is the starting point to building effective strategies to manage them and even replace them with more positive emotions.

However, emotional intelligence doesn’t just benefit mental but also physical wellbeing.

Feeling better mentally, makes people more physically active. Hence, they go out more, do more and thus move more. Their ability to self-motivate makes them more likely to build up a regular pattern of physical activity and follow it. During the activity, endorphins (chemicals produced naturally by the nervous system to cope with pain or stress) are released which improve emotions, energy levels and sleep.

The intelligent use of emotions is a fundamental mechanism in wellbeing and Emotional Intelligence. They enable an individual to effectively manage emotions and emotional information to cope with challenging situations resulting in improved mental and physical wellbeing.

Learning to use emotional intelligence is like learning to walk. When you have never done it before, there is a lot of stumbling, but once you get it down, you pretty much got it. You can get fancy once you learn to walk; dance, ski, run, ice skate or you can just walk. Emotional intelligence is the same kind of thing.

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Mind refers to the part of our body that creates thoughts and ideas. Matter, on the other hand, is everything, including our thoughts and ideas.

“Mind over matter” is an English idiom that means the use of will power to overcome physical problems.

“If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter”

Jack Benny

A few instances of how our mind can prevail over matter include:

#1. Accomplishing Great Things

Sometimes, some things may seem beyond our power to achieve. However, when we think things through, take on the decision to do them while believing that we can do them, we are choosing our mind over matter, and the power of our belief can supersede our physical strengths enabling us to achieve those great things.

#2. Healing

We have influence over some aspects of our body by means of active thought. Our thought can be a source of all disease and all health

For instance, many of us may begin to exhibit the symptoms of an illness just because we suspect that we have them. However, the symptoms may begin to wear off after we are tested and confirmed not to have the illness.

Similarly, many people have healed themselves through the deliberate participation of their minds. We sometimes exhibit automatic healing due to our conviction about the healing power of certain medicines. Thus, illustrating the interconnection of mind and body in a wider range of phenomena.

Therefore, with “mind over matter,” we can employ beneficial ideas to bring our body to health in a time of illness, as what we think affects how we react and our bodily response.

#3. Finding Peace

The mind can indeed be devilish sometimes, conjuring conspiracy against our peace and well-being, taking us through pains or tempting us to do things that are not morally right. However, if the mind, i.e., the part of us that creates those thoughts, decides not to mind i.e., pay attention to those thoughts, then whatever the issue does not matter, and we would be saving ourselves a lot of stress and pains.

Hence, if you do not mind about the problem you have, it won’t matter that they exist.

#4. Overcoming addictions.

Addiction can come in different forms like behavioral addiction, alcohol and drug addictions, sexual addiction, etc., and overcoming addictions can be quite challenging. However, willpower and strength can help to break over an addictive habit.

When you identify the need to change, accept that those things are bad for you, and you make up your mind, and you are ready to dispose of them, you have chosen your mind over the matter. Thus your motivation for them will decrease.

Therefore, the only things that matter are the things that we make up in our minds.

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Pessimism is the attitude that things will go wrong and that people’s wishes or aims are unlikely to be fulfilled.

American Psychological Association

A person with a pessimistic personality tends toward a more negative—or some might say, realistic—view of life. Optimists, on the other hand, see things more positively.

Pessimists usually expect negative outcomes and are suspicious when things seem to be going well. Optimists expect good things to happen and look for the silver lining when life doesn’t go their way.

“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.”

― Thomas Friedman

Personality science has revealed that pessimism is not just about negative thinking; it also includes a focus on outcomes; that is what you expect will happen in the future. While optimists expect positive outcomes will happen more often than not, pessimists expect negative outcomes are more likely.

The “defensive pessimist”, takes negative thinking to a whole new level and actually harnesses it as a means for reaching their goals. Research has shown that this way of thinking can not only help them succeed; but also bring some rather unexpected rewards.

Who is a defensive Pessimist?

Individuals use defensive pessimism as a strategy to prepare for anxiety-provoking events. In enforcing defensive pessimism, individuals set low standards of their success, regardless of how well they have performed in the past. They think about concrete negative incidents and defeats that may negatively impact their goals. By looking at potential negative consequences, defensive pessimists may take steps to prevent or plan for them.

Defensive pessimists could alleviate their anxiety over public speaking by imagining possible obstacles such as forgetting the speech, being thirsty, or staining their shirts before the event. Because defensive pessimists have thought of these problems, they can appropriately prepare to face the challenges ahead. The speaker could, for instance, create note cards with cues about the speech, place a cup of water on the podium to alleviate thirst, and bring a bleach pen to remove shirt stains. These preventive actions both reduce anxiety and promote superior performance.

The Benefits of Defensive Pessimism;

Could Enhance Performance

The crucial factor in defensive pessimism is setting low expectations for the outcome of a particular plan or situation; like expecting that you won’t get hired after a job interview; and then envisioning the details of everything that might possibly go wrong to make these worst-case scenarios a reality. This gives the defensive pessimist a plan of action to ensure that any imagined mishaps won’t actually happen; such as practising for the interview and getting there early.

The benefits of defensive pessimism also extends to actual performance. Study carried out by Seery and Colleagues in 2008 showed that this has everything to do with negative mood. When prompted to be in a good mood, defensive pessimists performed poorly on a series of word puzzles. However, when they were put in bad mood, by being instructed to imagine how a scenario might have negative outcomes; they performed significantly better. This suggests that they harness their negative mood to motivate themselves to perform better.

Enhance Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem

Strangely, defensive pessimist can even help boost confidence. Julie K. Norem in 2007 demonstrated that students who were defensive pessimists experienced significantly higher levels of self-esteem compared to other anxious students. In fact, their self-esteem rose to almost the levels of the optimists over the four years of the study. This may be due to increases in the defensive pessimists’ confidence to anticipate and successfully avoid the negative outcomes they imagined.

Promotes Health

The defensive pessimist’s strategy of being prepared to prevent negative outcomes can also have some very real health benefits. Although these individuals will worry more about getting ill during an outbreak of an infectious disease compared to optimists, they are also more likely to take preventive action.

When pessimists become chronically ill, their negative view of the future may be more realistic and encourage the sort of behaviours that healthcare professionals recommend for managing their illness. Fuschia M. Sirois studied two groups of people; those with either inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) or arthritis and asked them to rate their future health on a simple scale ranging from poor to excellent. Because both arthritis and IBD are long-term health conditions that often worsen over time you wouldn’t expect people to think their health would improve that much in the future.

However, those who were optimists still rated their health as improving in the future, whereas the pessimists saw their health as getting worse in the future. Taking this view may lead pessimists to engage in the types of coping strategies necessary to manage symptoms such as pain.

The key difference that separates defensive pessimists from other individuals who think negatively; such as those who are simply anxious or depressed – is their coping mechanism. Where anxious people use avoidance to cope with anticipated problems, the defensive pessimists use their negative expectations to motivate them to take active steps to feel prepared and be more in control over outcomes.

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To live a happier, healthier life, it’s important to learn how to accentuate the positive. Commit to following the simple steps outlined below for one week and you’re sure to bring more positivity and happiness into your life. Consider it a one-week experiment.

How to Become More Positive

Be aware of your thoughts

You can boost your happiness by focusing on positive things and reducing your negative thinking. This week, follow every negative thought with a positive one. This practice will help to retrain your habitual thought patterns to bring more positive thoughts into your life.

The ratio of positive to negative thoughts is a major factor in overall happiness. Your brain is constantly monitoring the emotional tone of your thoughts—too many negative thoughts and your brain responds by creating stress and sadness in your body. When you add more positive thoughts, your brain will create relaxation and happiness.

Get Motivated

After you’re aware of your negative thoughts and feelings and have worked to counteract them for a few days, they will gradually begin to lessen. You’ll be able to concentrate more on what you want to do without experiencing distracting emotions and stress. This will make you more productive and energetic. Best of all, it will make you happier.

List happy thoughts

Take 30 minutes and list all the happy thoughts you can think of. Just use a piece of paper and make a long list. Give yourself a good 30 minutes. List the people and places that make you happy: good friends, favorite vacation spots, childhood memories and more. List things that make you happy: puppies, babies, the smell of a new car, a lobster dinner, a day of relaxing by a pool. List anything and everything you can think of that makes you happy.

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