Anxiety specialist Caroline Cavanagh explains how modern life lets your conscious mind dominate, creating chronic stress. She guides you through a grounding exercise that engages your senses one by one, acting as a reset button that brings your brain into balance and reduces stress.
Chapters
Hi there, it's Caroline Cavanagh. I'm an anxiety specialist, and as I record this, it's the 2nd of December, and so this is day 2 of my advent calendar of stress-busting tips. My aim is to share 24 of them throughout the whole of advent to give you a great toolbox of different tips and techniques that you can use at different times in this Busy, stressful world, but also a very stressful time for a lot of people. Yesterday I spoke about gratitude, which I said was my favourite one, so I kind of set a bit of a high threshold to start off with. But today is one that I do still do, perhaps not as regularly as I could, and I forget about it sometimes, but when I do tune back in and start using it, it reminds me of how incredibly powerful it is. And it's all to do with how our brains work. So within our mind, we have 2 parts. There's the conscious mind, which is in the frontal lobes here, and we have the subconscious mind, which is in the back of the head. The conscious mind has almost become overly dominant in modern society. As my mum used to say, it's like the tail wags the dog. The conscious mind is really, really busy and And it's the only part that has the capacity to actually go into the past or out into the future. The subconscious only ever deals with the present moment. But because we've given our conscious mind so much power, it's going, what did I do yesterday? What have I still got to do? What presents have I still got to buy? All of those things. It's just another layer of things to think about that the conscious mind is processing. And it's like there's two different channels of energy. This one living in the moment, this one living in any particular time sphere that there is. And what this technique does is it brings both of those parts of those brains back into harmony in the now. And in that moment, there's a real like it's okay again. It's calming down. I talk to it a bit like it's a bit like a reset button. And by resetting, you're shutting out all of that stress that's going on out there and bringing yourself back into the only thing that you can truly control. And that's what's going on within you, what your mind, what your body is doing. And when you're in control, you feel much less vulnerable, much less stressed. So I'm going to do this little exercise. If you're up for it, do it with me. Because it's really, really simple and you can do it anywhere. It's a little bit more effective if you close your eyes to start off with, but sometimes that's not possible, so I'm going to do it now. Because when you close your eyes, you shut off that outside world and it allows you to have a much greater focus on your inner world. So by shutting the eyes, the first thing I'm going to do is really tune into my hearing. And the wonderful thing is, it's beautifully quiet. I hadn't noticed how quiet it was until I choose to actually tune in and notice it. Once you've heard everything you can or can't hear, move your attention round to your sense of smell. And as I do that, I'm now more aware of the perfume that I put on 2 hours ago. I've been wearing it for 2 hours, but I'm only just smelling it again now. And then when you've done that for a few seconds, tune into your kinesthetic sense, your sense of feeling. Become aware. I'm aware now of how the floor feels underneath my feet. I'm aware of how my feet feel within my shoes. I'm aware of how the wool feels against my skin. All of these things, it's just tuning in, bringing your attention back into you, because the The more you're aware, the more control that you have, the calmer you feel. And once you've been through those 3 senses, open your eyes and just look around. Just see what is actually around you. This is my workroom. I spend many hours a day here. And it wasn't until I did this exercise with a client very recently— I've got a little box of tissues on a table down there— and I looked across this box of tissues that I'd seen God knows how many times, you know, days, weeks it had been there. And thought, it just looks like it's got marijuana all over the box. The packaging was all these sort of like fronds, and I just thought, oh, I gotta burst out laughing, because even though it'd been in my vision for ages, I hadn't actually seen it. Because when you really look, it's amazing what you see that was there all of the time. And by doing this exercise, as I said, it brings those 2 parts of the brain back into the present moment, and in that synchronicity, there's a real harmony. And hopefully by doing that, even if you do it 3 or 4 times a day, it's just that little pause, reset, so that you can then carry on with your day but from a lower platform rather than that platform of stress. Kids are brilliant at doing this. We talk about how children just live in the moment, and so I encourage you for a few times during the busy days that we all lead Get yourself to be just in that moment because now is the only time that you can really enjoy now. Like I said, I'd really not— I hadn't noticed how my perfume smelled until I choose to smell it and realize I really do like that. I need to get another bottle. That's on my Christmas list. So, um, the more you can do this, the more impactful it has. You can just spend 10 minutes— or 10 minutes— 10 seconds even on each of those senses. Or if you've got a bit more time, indulge yourself, have a bit more time in that. But a very simple thing, building on what we said, or what I said yesterday, the more you flex each mental muscle, the stronger it becomes. The more you practice living in the moment, the more that will become your norm. And all that stuff that's either happened in the past or it hasn't happened yet because it's in the future can't stress you because you're living in the moment, and that's the moment that you can really enjoy. I hope you've enjoyed listening to this. If you want to get more of these tips in ahead of the videos, there's an ebook of 30 tips. There's a few more extra ones in there that's available on my website, carolinecavanagh.co.uk. And if you pop to the resources tab, the ebook is available along with lots of other downloads as well that you can just access with my absolute pleasure. And tomorrow I will be back with tip number 3, and I'll look forward to sharing that with you then. Bye-bye for now.
