Mindful breathing is a conscious exercise; one in which we purposefully carve out some time (even 5 minutes) to pay attention to our breathing. The basics include: Pick a quiet location, free of distraction. Close your eyes and turn your attention inward to your breathing. Slow your breaths; inhale through the nose, expanding your belly. Exhale slowly. If your attention shifts from breathing, that is okay. Gently encourage it back to the simple act of breathing - in and out.

Yesterday's post examined what social anxiety is and how it tends to develop for people. Today, we will look at ways that we can begin to challenge social anxiety by lessening it's hold on us. The first step comes by way of exploring why social anxiety has become an issue. When we can understand something, it tends to give us permission to ask ourselves "Does it have to be this way?" It is also important to recognize that what may have started out as an association, has now

"I will worry about a social gathering as soon as know about it. I rarely commit so that I can have a way out."  "Just the thought of going to the grocery store can send me into a panic. And if the parking lot is full? Forget it, I don't even go in." "I hate talking on the phone; I get so anxious when I have to call for an appointment, or even to order a pizza." Social anxiety is the fear of social situations ; people who suffer with social anxiety will report that it really

There are times when we are just going to feel anxious as we get faced with challenges and worries that we must attend to. Using grounding techniques for those times help to get through the anxious moments. But there is something to be said for the practice of "being grounded." It can be a goal that we set as a way of life that helps us to consciously spend more time in our comfort system. By practicing the art of being grounded on a daily basis, we are giving ourselves per

Yesterday's post touched on the importance of using the practice of grounding when feeling especially anxious or overwhelmed. We explored five ways to use our physical selves to bring our calm back to the situation at hand. Today's post will feature five mental techniques of grounding: Describe what is around you. Take in your surroundings as a way to help ground yourself. "I am sitting on a blue chair. I can feel the way the chair supports my lower back; my feet are flat on

We can all have those moments when we feel especially overwhelmed. For those who struggle with pervasive anxiety, chronic worry, or panic attacks, being able to slow things down can feel almost impossible. Grounding is a practice that can help to do that. Grounding techniques are designed to use distraction as a way to help manage challenging emotions. Here are five grounding techniques that focus on using the senses, or our physical self in order to calm: Deep belly breathin

Worrying about something can often monopolize our thoughts, wreak havoc on our emotions, and rob us of our energy. 'Worst-case-scenario' worrying will quickly bring us from a place where logic might have had a say to the "worst outcome possible, which will be devastating."  Sound familiar? I think that everyone can say that worriers or not, we have all landed there a few times. I was recently with a client who talked about the things in her past that she was proud of having

When we are anxious about something, we tend to worry. Sometimes we 'worst-case scenario' our worries, other times we spend time ruminating through something endlessly; we can also have the tendency to over think everything. Over-thinking and anxiety work hand in had to keep us stalled. Self-doubt and fear combine to put us in a position of not being able to make a decision; it binds us to a state of limbo and opportunities may pass us by. The tendency to over-think may be a

When clients come into therapy with the issue of social anxiety, one of the most common statements I hear is "I am afraid of what people will think of me." It would seem that somewhere along the line, what was incorporated into their core belief system was a fear of judgement, a fear that somehow they weren't going to live up to someone else's expectations. "What happens if I say something stupid?" "I worry that all eyes will be on me." They fret about what they should wear,

There are times when our internal dialogue works against us. Sometimes this comes in the form of our core beliefs , but other times it can come from our thinking styles. For someone with anxiety, two common thinking traps tend to have the capacity to influence and reinforce their anxious mind: Catastrophising : the tendency to magnify the situation; to blow things out of proportion. This is really the "what if" kind of thinking that can lead someone into a loop of rumination,

Our survival brain is constructed to be alert and ready at any sign of danger. It is the part of the brain that will create a fight, flight or freeze response when our system becomes alarmed. In short, it creates a cone of attention - essentially, we become super focused to the alarm in our system and our energies are directed towards getting out of the danger zone. Thank goodness we have this cone of attention! Imagine encountering a bear without it - or not reacting quick

You're running late, feeling keyed up about not being on time; no one seems to be co-operating and the littlest one is starting to have a meltdown because she can't find her favourite hat. Before you know it, you are yelling at the kids and yanking the closet door practically off of its hinges. How did you go from anxious to angry so easily? Simply answered, our bodies set us up for it. When we are anxious, our body's muscles tense up, our blood pressure rises, our heart rat

When exploring when anxiety first started for them, many clients will link it back to their early adult years; I often remark that their anxiety may have started earlier than that as it tends to manifest differently in children. In an article entitled "10 Anxiety Symptoms in Children that Most Parents Miss" by Angela Pruess, we learn about how anxiety isn't always what we assume it to be in children. Pruess lists symptoms that might be masking what turns out to be underlyin

After a worry has passed we can often look back and recognize that the worry grew too big. We agonized over it, paced the floor with our minds over it, allowed it to grow out of proportion until it occupied way too much of our time and space. Perhaps, instead of reflecting after the worry, we can pause for a moment mid-worry and ask it "Are you a hypothetical worry or a practical one?" Hypothetical worries are not based on facts - they are based on fears . They are the worri

In an article entitled "How Anxiety Destroys Relationships (And How to Stop It) by Kristine Tye and featured on Good Therapy , Tye talks about the ways that anxiety can take it's toll on relationships. Two of the points I found especially relevant: "Anxiety breaks down trust and connection. Anxiety causes fear or worry that can make you less aware of your true needs in a given moment. It can also make you less attuned to the needs of your partner. If you’re worried about wha

My trusted colleague and friend, Darlene Denis-Friske, has a wonderful analogy for anxiety that she calls the 'dragon and the treasure'. Very often, when we are anxious about something, it has the capacity of keeping us from the goal we wish to achieve. The treasure is there, we are aware of its presence and the path to get it - but a dragon is guarding it. Afraid of the dragon, we hesitate; we lean into our fears, we convince ourselves we will never outwit the dragon, our f

One of the books that I read on vacation was entitled "maid" by Stephanie Land. A memoir, "maid" was  Stephanie's story about how an unplanned pregnancy, and subsequent life as a single mom, saw her strapped in poverty for years as she struggled to support herself and her daughter. For anyone who suffers from panic attacks, you know first hand how frightening and debilitating in the moment they can be. You most likely also know that they do tend to pass, and when we groun

I came across the website "Hope Heals;" an initiative being led by the Public Relations class of Algonquin College . In one of their featured stories, a student named Ellen Grickites, speaks about her experience with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT is a fairly well known therapy and is often accompanied by other types of therapies as a practical approach to challenging some of our core beliefs and automatic thoughts. There is a natural link between our thoughts, our feeli

Anxiety can become a problem . This is when people usually seek therapy as their anxiety has reached a disruptive place in their life. If your body is reacting in alarm when there is in fact no danger, it creates a distressful cycle as we try to manage our worries and fears physiologically. Our body produces symptoms based on our fearful thoughts, but without any real danger, our body then has no signals that “Everything is okay. We got this.” If anxiety reaches a level that

Anxiety is mostly anonymous . As much as our anxiety makes us feel exposed and vulnerable, most people (except those closest to you) cannot tell when you are anxious. I can remember how nervous I used to feel when having to present something in front of my peers in graduate school; I would have that sinking feeling in my stomach and it felt as though everyone could see my uneasiness.  It was a physiological reaction and one that felt both out of my control and very obvious .