Something happened to a very good friend of mine yesterday, where anxiety physically
stopped her from doing something she wanted to do. For her - and for anyone
else out there, here is how exercise can help reduce and manage anxiety.
Anxiety can be described as "A
negative emotional state which is characterised by nervousness and worry which
is associated with heightened "arousel" in the body".
You can experience "State
Anxiety" which describes feelings of anxiety "right now". And also "Trait Anxiety" which tends to be general
feelings of anxiety across all situations – like a personality trait – unfortunately,
those with high trait anxiety will have higher state anxiety
Both trait and state
anxiety can manifest themselves in different ways. They can be mental – or Cognitive anxiety – e.g. negative thoughts and nervousness or more physical
which is Somatic anxiety – e.g.
muscle tension, butterflies
The relationship that you
have between you "felt arousal" – i.e. how anxious you may feel – and then the
subsequent emotional response depends on your cognitive interpretation of
your anxiety.
That is to say, you can
feel anxious but you may interpret this to be pleasant or unpleasant. Some people function better in what is known
as a "Telic state" where you
tend to enjoy more serious behaviour, like making plans and prefer low anxiety
arousal levels. Others prefer a "Paratelic
state" where behaviour is spontaneous;
they are more concerned with now and prefer high arousal or enjoy anxiety as
they see it as exciting.
Understanding how you
function and react to anxiety will be a great step towards helping yourself
deal with stressful situations.
You can experience
Tension-stress - which is the discrepancy between your preferred state of being (calm or hyper!)
and your actual arousal levels. It may
bring with it unpleasant emotions. Telic
people may then see a stress situation then full of threat and anxiety, whilst
partelic people may feel boredom and not enjoy the lack of threat in a
situation.
Telic people have to employ "effortful
coping strategies" to help deal with the situation whilst Paratelic people
might create challenge in order to face this – maybe start and argument, make
themselves late, be unprepared etc. Try
to think about how you react. Can you
start to see and understand how you function in stressful situations? This will all help to you make plans to deal
with your anxiety.
There is more to
understand about anxiety and I will post again about this. We will look at some
coping strategies that may work for you and examine which is the best way to
reduce anxiety – Relaxation, Goal-Setting, Imagery or Self-Talk? In
the mean time, here is some information about the positive effect of exercise
on anxiety – regardless of which state you may be in J
- Exercise has a low to moderate anxiety reducing effect, equivalent to other non-pharmaceutical interventions
- Exercise programmes of 10 – 15 weeks can reduce trait-anxiety across a wide range of subgroups
- Single sessions of moderate aerobic rhythmic type exercise lasting at least 20 minutes is most likely to result in reduction in state anxiety
- Single session of moderate exercise can reduce short term physiological reactivity and to enhance recovery from stressors
- Higher levels of fitness are associated with less physiological reactivity to and enhance recovery from stress – a stress buffering effect.
- Mops up excess Free Fatty Acids and glucose
- Uses adrenaline, noradrenalin and Cortisol in an appropriate manner
- Reduces acute rises in BP – especially diastolic
- Reduces muscular tension
- Aids relaxation
If all else fails, at least there are minions to make you smile...
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