Best Tips to Help Prevent Anxiety

Hey, babes. I'm so happy to see you. This is Dr. Nicole. And today we're going to talk about the best tips for preventing anxiety. I know we've been talking a lot about what you do when you're anxious, and sometimes it's nice to just have ideas on what you can do to prevent anxiety. A metaphor that we can think about in terms of this is that sometimes anxiety can feel like, as one of my warriors describes it, a fire hydrant trying to fill a cup of water. So that fire hydrant is the anxiety, and it's just pushing all of this information out really forceful, really fast. And the strategy that I want to share with you today is how we can modify the outlet of that fire hydrant so that it's not 0 to 100 and it's able to come out in trickles that are manageable to fill your glass. And so there's a few things that I want to share with you. And the more that you practice it, the more you're going to get results with it. And these are things that you would be doing on a regular basis in order to prevent anxiety from happening to begin with. That being said, if you find that you are generally moderately anxious, you can still use these. And then overall, we see in the research that the anxiety will go down and the more that you practice it. And the research does show that it takes 90 to 120 days of consistent reversal and practice for these tips and tricks to work really effectively. So stick with it. Don't give up. You are worth it. You are worth the practice. You are worth the effort. And pick one of these things that you resonate with, that you like, and then just practice five minutes a day and you will get results. And so let me share with you some of my favorite tips to prevent anxiety from getting in your way and taking center stage. Okay, so number one is a process that I call sunbeaming. And sunbeaming is a kind of breathing exercise where you would close your eyes and you would imagine a sun ray coming into your head. And so you would notice. And I want you to notice either your third eye or the top of your head. And I want you to see if you can detect with your mindful awareness, temperature, sensation of warmth. And I want you to notice any sort of a sensation of warmth. And try to mindfully, if you dial in on that sensation, try to mindfully amplify that. And you can do that by thinking of heat, imagining heat, remembering the sun on your head, the sun on your face, or Maybe the blow dryer on your face, or the heater on your face, or sitting next to a fire, whatever it is, mindfully imagine. Detect on your third eye or the top of your head a sensation of warmth. And then as your eyes are closed, imagine that a ray of sun is coming out of the sky and it's beaming onto your forehead or your head. Then notice that with this light, the sunbeam, that it feels warming, comforting, cleansing, purifying, and know that this is coming from pure nature. I want you to notice that you're able to gently and mindfully amplify that sensation of warmth. And imagine absorbing the heat, the purifying energy. Then as you do that, breathe out the stress and mindfully accept and bring in the warmth and allow a sense of openness into your head and shoulders, and allow your shoulders to roll back and then down, and then just spend a few minutes noticing the sense of heat. So this is called sunbeaming. The second is there's an exercise called clockwise counterclockwise. And so what you do in this exercise is, you would imagine, not a really disturbing memory, but something that's mildly disturbing, mildly irritating, mildly frustrating, mildly anxiety producing. And I want you to bring that to your mindful awareness. And then concentrate on any physical symptoms that emerge in your body, whether it's in your chest or your gut or your back or your muscles or your neck, wherever it is. I want you to just notice physical sensations that emerge when you allow yourself to remember this mildly or moderately disturbing memory. I want you to drop in and notice. And I want you to mindfully rate on a scale of 1 to 10 or 0 to 10, where 0 or 1 are not at all bothersome and 10 is the worst. And then I want you to notice how it feels not logically disturbing, but how it feels in terms of physically and emotionally disturbing. And so then the next stage, once we've identified that, once you've dialed in on that, I want you to imagine energetically which way it's spiraling. Is it spiraling clockwise or is it spiraling counterclockwise? And then so you'll ask yourself, which direction is that feeling going? Which direction is that energy going? And then I want you to notice that. Allow your mind to just detect that spiral with it. And then on the exhale, I want you to actually change the direction of the spiral. So let's just pause for a moment, notice, notice which way it's going. And then I want you to mindfully, on the exhale, change the direction and notice what happens when you do that. If this is helpful for you, practice it each day with different levels of disturbance. Because the more that you rehearse this, the more that you can master changing the direction of the spiral, you'll actually change the way that your body is experiencing that disturbing memory, which will change the way the brainstem, the midbrain, and then the prefrontal cortex part process it. The next exercise that you can try is called befriending the body. And with this exercise, for each day that you do it, you're going to pick one part of your body and you're going to befriend it. And so maybe start with your hand and notice anything and everything that you can appreciate about your hand. Think about moments that it served you helped you. Acknowledge what the hand has done for you. Think of memories where the hand has assisted you in your life. Express gratitude for that part of your body and spend each of the parts of your body. Spend five minutes with each of them and just notice and be gratitude filled for that part of the body. So just notice one part of your body every day for five minutes. The next is making a mandala. And a mandala is something that represents an inner collection of all things, which you could buy a coloring book or craft supplies. You can create a mandala in your yard with rocks and sticks. Sometimes I like to color it and just get a blank piece of paper and then I color. But when you're building your mandala, I want you to draw it in a clockwise circular pattern. So clockwise is the direction a clock goes. And so you would start with the section over to your left and then go to the right and then go down and then just start coloring and coloring and coloring or building with the rocks, building in a circular pattern. And then as you do that, I want you to imagine the seasons. And so for me, I think of the fall on the right around 3 o', clock, and then we go down into 6 o', clock, 7 o', clock, 8, we have the winter. And then 9, 10, 11, we have spring. And then summer is 12, 1, 2. And then we get fall again. And so as you build it, mindfully think about the seasons. In life, we always have seasons. While not every fall is the same for you, you won't be in the same place in the future. And notice how everything changes, but yet it's all connected. How the spring rain waters the flowers that will bloom in summer. And so start to notice that anything that is changing is changeable. And allow yourself to be in that clockwise pattern the next One is to become your own parent. And this is really important for those of us who don't have parents that are present for us that don't have parents that are living or didn't have parents growing up. And we've had to be our own parents. Do you resonate with that at all? And so the exercise of becoming your own parent is a part that is really needed where we can parent ourselves and create a sense of safety, that continuity that we always needed and always wanted. And so to cultivate that is so you notice that there's a part of you that's wiser. We call this the wise mind. In dbt, Glenn and Jolio calls this the knowing. See, some people call it your intuition or your gut. And this is the part of yourself that can be the parent part. All of our parents, no matter their intentions, they will always fail us because they only know what they know from their own life perspective. And nobody is perfect. And your earthly parents won't be living likely your entire life, and they won't be able to parent you your entire life. And at some point, you have to go out on our own. And so in this meditation, we call upon our older wise self. We drop into that body, drop into our knowing. And then we meditate on a question that we would like to ask ourselves, our parent, our wise self, our knowing self. And then we just wait. We drop in and we wait and we notice and we meditate and we just allow our thoughts to drift and wait for the answer from the gut. Another exercise is creative input. And so our mind is full of thoughts and belief systems and ideologies. And beneath the surface, oftentimes these belief systems are giving us false input. Do you have any parts of you that are speaking words that aren't life giving to you? I call these the antagonists or the sabotagers. Where do those parts get their messages? And ask yourself what is going on in your brain that reinforces these messages? For example, most people spend more than two hours a day consuming social media, the news, the television, Netflix. And that is someone curating a message for your brain. That is somebody who doesn't know you, who's outside of you, curating a message and creating something to dial in straight into your brain. And that is going into your mind all the times that you're letting it in, all the times that you're consuming. And we are oftentimes the result of our gestalt. We are oftentimes an effect of our communities. We're effective what we are consuming. And so with Creative input. I want you to be creative for 20 minutes a day. And it's where you're intentional about what you're bringing into your awareness, what you're bringing into your world. And so I want you to think about reading poetry like Rumi, or reading a book or listening to a podcast that you select, that you choose. Changing what's going into your brain will change what's coming out. And then the last thing I want to share with you today to help prevent anxiety from occurring is a breathing shift. This is where you bring up a good positive or happy memory. And then you notice where the breath is, and you place your hand over that area when you breathe that happy memory. So when you think of a happy memory, are you breathing from your chest or do you breathe from your gut? I want you to place your hand on that place and then breathe for a moment or two and notice how it feels. And then I want you to switch and bring up a memory with a low level of disturbance, Something that on that scale of 0 or 1 to 10, that's maybe like a 2 or 3, just mildly disturbing. And then I want you to notice where you feel that sensation and place your hand over that location of your body. And then I want you to then think about that memory and put your hand back on the happy place in your body. And I want you to pair the two of those. So, again, we think of a happy memory, we notice where in our body we feel that we place our hand there. And then we think of something slightly disturbing. We notice where we feel that we place our hand in the new place. And then we're going to pair them. So you're going to think of the disturbing memory, but you're going to put your hand back on the happy place. And so you're going to deliberately change your breathing and your pattern and your placement accordingly, and then notice the disturbance dissipate. So if you're looking to get to the root cause of your anxiety, if you're tired of the pill for an ill model, if you're tired of feeling stuck in these patterns where you're just spiraling, spiraling, taking a pill, taking a supplement, taking more and more and more, and you just feel like you're stuck. Practice, practice these. Go through all of them. This will be recorded for you. And then go through each one and figure out which one resonates most with you. We also have a free webinar, it's called Somatographic Imagery, which will give you 45 minutes of me walking you through an Exercise that's similar to this, and once you've learned to master it, you can do it almost anywhere and it works. You can get your life back from anxiety. And one of the things that we need to do is we need to temper that fire hydrant so it's not going from 0 to 100 and knocking you over. We want to start doing the work ahead of time and doing the work between anxiety sessions during the anxiety sessions so that we can start moving you towards green and feeling like yourself again. So I want to thank some of the warriors that are on in this group. I see Jared here. I'm so happy to see you. You are absolutely amazing. I love that you're continuing to show up for me, show up for yourself, show up for the people that are here. Jared, you're incredible. Love Frances, my soul sister. I'm happy that you're here. Love. How can I best support you? Leave a comment on any questions that you have or any topics that would be interesting for you, and I will make sure to include that in our schedule for upcoming lives and podcasts too. I love the comment that Haley left. She's saying that she loves that the sun can feel so healing. And she asked, can you actually use the sun for this exercise? And the answer is absolutely. In order to cultivate that warmth in a mindful moment, like if we're sitting in an office meeting and we're super stressed, we want to be able to go back to a moment where we had the sensation that we're trying to cultivate. So practice out in the sun and allow it to come into your third eye, into the top of your head. Notice the warmth so that when you are somewhere where there is no sun later that you can practice that. What works for you? What's helpful for you in stopping anxiety in its tracks before it takes over? I would love to hear more. Put it in the comments, Send us a dm and I will be here every Wednesday and every Friday doing a live for you. And if there are topics that would be helpful for you, then let us know. Otherwise, you can check out more and learn about my practice@www.Dr.nicolecane.com. if you haven't, get in the Anxiety Freedom Warriors Group and download the one week seven day Anxiety Freedom Challenge. It's going to include a tip every single day to help with the anxiety thoughts and a tip every single day to help people's physical sensations of anxiety. You're going to get 14 tips. They're all totally free, no obligations. It's just my way to love on you. And so go and download that today and you're going to get lots of videos. There's a great community in there and again, it's all free. So take advantage of that and I will be back here on Wednesday, 12 o' clock Eastern. And I cannot wait to see you guys next time. Sending you lots of love from Northern Michigan. I'm going to go spend the rest of my day getting that sunshine right in my head and doing some breathing and some gratitude work. I am grateful for you all and I will see you next time. Bye.