Therapists have for years been charging $100’s for simple techniques in how to deal with stress. These techniques, despite being simple and easy, are extremely effective and should be freely available to everyone.
To deal with stress and anxiety you need to understand what happens inside your body when you get stressed.
There is a gland in your stomach called the adrenal gland, this gland produces adrenaline. You can feel when this adrenaline starts to be produced by a slight discomfort in your stomach. We call this “having butterflies” in our stomach. This adrenaline then moves up your body into to your heart where it causes palpitations as it decides which part of your body needs it the most. This is the Fight-or-Flight Response.
The one place that this Adrenalin is not usually sent to, is the brain, which is important, as the brain usually tells us what to do in a given situation. A situation where the brain turns itself off and lets the body take control, is a time the brain is going to remember. So the next time you are in a similar situation, your brain says to itself “I know what I do now,” and it switches off and produces adrenaline. This is what leads to phobias.
On top of this if you don’t release this adrenaline it will move around your body until it reaches you heart again and causes the same feelings of anxiety and palpitations.

This learned pattern of behavior can easily be combated, by allowing the natural process of the flow of adrenaline to happen, but by changing the effect.

To do this it’s easy:

Now this may sound like a bit of hippy nonsense, BUT, what you have physically done is instead of allowing the adrenaline to cause your heart to palpitate, you have controlled your breathing to relax yourself. By imagining the colored ribbon you have created a visual image that distracts you from what has caused the anxiety in the first place. You have then used this visualization to suppress the adrenaline back in to your stomach to the point it is no longer being produced.
The key is RELAXATION. You can’t be stressed and relaxed at the same time. Because the thing that is causing you anxiety occupies your mind, you need to fully occupy your brain with something else so that it hasn’t got the chance to think about what is stressing you.

You could also try this:

What you have just done is take control of your body again, you have slowed it down by taking slower deeper breaths. You will have also used your auditory, visual, & kinesthetic parts of your brain in a way so that it can’t concentrate on what is causing you anxiety.
You can now either deal with the thing that stressed you or just forget about it and get on with what you have to do.

How to Get to Sleep:

We have all had those troublesome nights when we either can’t fall asleep or we wake up and can’t get back to sleep. You might find that the more you try, the harder it is, and you toss and turn for hours.
The problem with trying to get to sleep is the actual trying. It’s really difficult to make yourself relax because you have to actually work at it.
The best way to do this is to relax your body first…then relax your mind.
Have you ever noticed how when you clench or tighten a muscle and then let it relax, it seems to be more relaxed than before? Well this is a exactly what you need to do to start your relaxation. But if you have any muscle problems, don’t do anything that would damage them more or cause you pain. To start:

Now you have relaxed your body you will find it easier to relax your mind, to do this:

And that is exactly what you will have created. You will have started your own comfortable little dream which you can now just let develop and take over. Before you know it, you will be off to sleep.
In this exercise you have used each part of your active mind to imagine a relaxing scenario, that is so completely distracting and absorbing, there is no space left for the thing that was occupying your mind to keep you awake.
This is something that you can practice whenever you want to go to sleep. Soon you won’t need to do the muscle exercises and you will just be able to use your mind to distract itself, allowing you to relax.

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