Stress, Anxiety, and Tension Control

Hello Everyone,

All is well I hope, if not let us further discuss how to take back control of over our stress, anxiety, and tension…and again please remember what I put forward comes from my own experience. Each individual is an individual and may find that things that worked well for me do not work for them. I will try to remember to discuss calming and relaxation techniques I have tried but resulted in only minimal success. If you feel I am focusing too much on one thing, or would care to suggest some ideas / experiences of your own send in your comments I would love this to become “group therapy” where people with sleep problems can come for a wide prospective from their peers. Continuation from last week…

The first step in my journey, came with the recognition that self-awareness is key to having any degree of control over my life, and therefore sleep. Regular check-ins are of great benefit to me and really don’t take a great deal of time. Once I found a cause for stress, anxiety, or tension I had to find a solution.

Dealing with tension was quite easy and straightforward for me. Once I realized where in the body my tension was building up I mobilized the area. For me tension builds because I am keeping a muscle or muscle group contracted for an extended period of time so simply moving and stretching helps eliminate the tension. A few slow deep breathes and a yawn then relaxes the rest of my body.

Stress and anxiety are not so easy for me to address. This called more for external rather than internal change and this is where the resources found on the Sound Sleeping site really started to be of benefit. I had already begun to use the mp3 downloads at night to help me wind down. When I realized that the severity of my nightly stress and anxiety clearly reflected my day’s stress and anxiety I started to use the mp3 materials on my breaks a work. This tended to help momentarily but the job usually took over again after a break as did the stress. I decided I needed to bring this tool into my work environment but for practical reasons I could not use audio materials at my workstation. So I got this idea: Ya know how every once in a while a song gets caught in your head and drives you crazy until it decides to leave? Well I decided to try and reverse that process. I would listen to my mp3s and then try to recreate them in my head. My recreations were not exact, but the sounds I found calming and relaxing, have over time, become very vivid in my imagination. In this way, I can carry this helpful tool with me into any situation or environment. A few minutes at routine check-ins recalling these sound has helped me to continuously relieve stress throughout my day. Listen to the examples, identify sounds that enhance calm and just try to hear them in your head, once they’re in your head, you can take them anywhere. It takes a little time and practice, but I really think it’s worth a try.

That’s all for now,
Sound Sleeping!

Relaxation Terminology

 FYI – For now, I’ve decides to blog once a week, see how that goes, and inform you if I decide to make any changes.

I’d like to discuss some general terminology as I understand it. I realized that some of the words I will be using with a great deal of regularity, may in fact mean different things to different people. It is important that you understand what I’m referring to when I use these terms. I often lack consistency with my terminology but I will try very hard to stick to the descriptions I will now lay out. If anyone is unsure of what I mean when I am discussing one of my ideas please let me know, I want to be clear, but I realize that often I’m not.

1. Calm and Relaxation: From this point on when I discuss calm I am referring to a state of mind, when I discuss relaxation I will be referring to a physical state of the body.
2. Anxiety, Stress, and Tension: Anxiety and stress are states of mind, while tension is a physical state of the body.

So let’s look at how these terms interrelate and how they factor into the discussion of sleep. When the mind is calm, our bodies will be more relaxed. When our bodies are more relaxed, our mind is more capable of achieving calm. When the mind is anxious and / or stressed, it in turn causes tension in the body. Conversely, tension in the body can greatly increase levels of anxiety and stress. It’s all interconnected. My nightly goal is to go to bed at night having achieved at least a reasonable degree of calm and relaxation. In order to realize my goal, I have learned to take “time out” throughout the day to check in with my mind and my body. I know that might sound a little NUTS, but it’s important to know when your body’s becoming tense, and correct the problem before it increases stress and anxiety, just as it is necessary to realize when anxiety or stress are causing body tension. It’s a vicious cycle and you have to know whether the body is negatively effecting the mind, or vice-versa.

I’d like everyone to try a little experiment. Set a clock or watch alarm for one hour intervals and do a physical and mental “check in”, determine whether you are experiencing higher levels of anxiety, stress, or tension, if you are, think back on the hours activities and try to determine what the source was and whether physical tension effected your anxiety and stress levels or was it the opposite. I always say “knowledge is power” and have found that by keeping track of my own personal observations, I can now recognize when my body or my mind might be creating a problem that could effect my coming night’s sleep. Once I’m aware of the potential problem, I can try to correct it before it gets beyond my control.

Sorry, I know I’ve been going on too long. General concepts are often vast, but I want to cover the basics before I deal with specifics.

Have a good night, and I hope 6 more follow.
Karen