Lesley | Anxiety Therapy Buffalo Amherst WNY

Autogenic Training to Reduce Stress

September 25, 2017 by Lesley

In your quest to manage stress, you’ve probably tried a variety of things. You’ve reduced caffeine. Tried to increase your sleep. Stopped checking email after 7pm. Maybe you’ve also been drinking more water, and you’re taking time off.

So you’re doing many things right, and maybe you’re looking for another level of stress management strategies.

This is why I’d like to share more about autogenic training with you. Developed in the 1920’s, autogenic training is a form of self-hypnosis. Using visual and verbal commands to yourself, you change your breathing, body lightness and heaviness, and your body temperature.

This is a medication-free technique you can learn to manage your stress and improve your relaxation. You may be familiar with aspects of autogenic training such as progressive muscle relaxation, or guided visualization.

Standard autogenic training consists of six exercises which make the body feel heavy, warm, and relaxed. For each exercise, you get into a comfortable position (usually sitting in a comfortable chair or reclining.)

You focus your attention and then use your visual imagination and verbal cues to relax your body in specific ways.

Here is one video, leading you a deep relaxation technique:

As you can see, the process is one of focused verbal commands, as well as visual imagining. You can instruct your body to relax, you can slow down your breathing, and you can make your body feel warm and heavy, with practice.

(This is an effective technique to improve your sleep, too!)

The overall goal of the commands is to achieve deep relaxation and reduce stress.

Like any meditative or self-regulation technique, autogenic training requires practice. It’s not an immediate fix. To get proficient with it, you’ll need to practice for at least a few minutes, several times per day. You can learn the specific sequence of exercises through online training or directly from a teacher of this method. It usually takes 4-6 months to master all the exercises.

While autogenic training has many benefits, you can only know if it will work for you after you try it. It does offer a natural way to calm your body and calm your mind, and can improve your capacity for focus and meditation.

You can never have too many strategies to better manage your stress; because what works for you today may not work tomorrow, or if you are in a particularly stressful period of your life, you might need more than one strategy to cope.

If you feel you could benefit from additional strategies to manage stress and lower your anxiety, we can help! Give us a call at (716) 926-6009 or click here to schedule an appointment.

Why Stress Management Matters

September 5, 2017 by Lesley

You’re probably familiar with the term “stress management” but have you wondered what it really means?

The way I think of it, stress management is about taking charge of your life- how you think, how you feel, and, maybe most importantly, how you deal with problems.

Stress is a fact of life for most of us; it’s just part of living. Even when things are going well, that can create its own kind of stress- think about something like planning for a wedding, or welcoming a baby. Both of these happy events can still feel stressful.

If asked, most Americans will say they are stressed, and more than 50% worry that they are too stressed. There are many things you can do to manage your stress over the long term, including seeking therapy, and making some lifestyle changes.

The goal of stress management therapy is to help you relieve the pressure you feel and regain a sense of control. If you’ve ever heard of the concept of “learned helplessness”, it’s a type of depression that results when you feel that you can’t change your circumstances, no matter what you do.

It reminds me of a client, Janice*, who worked in a very hostile office environment. She had a poor relationship with her boss, and was often blamed for things she didn’t even do. At first, like most of us, she complained and protested against the unfair treatment. But, after a while, she slowly gave up. She felt she needed that job, and that she had no choice, and that no matter what she did, it wouldn’t change anything- so she became depressed and felt helpless.

This is an extreme case, but it does illustrate how important a sense of autonomy and independence is for our mental well being.

When I help my clients with stress management, we start with the basics- sleeping, eating, and relaxation.

Did you know that sleeping one or two less hours per night can significantly increase your feelings of stress? And yet most Americans undersleep by 2-3 hours per night.

Skipping meals can also increase your anxiety, or eating meals that are very sugary or have a lot of caffeine can disrupt your system. You crash once the sugar or caffeine wears off.

Being unable to relax is another sign of stress gone too far. Learning simple diaphragmatic breathing exercises, or progressive muscle relaxation can make a difference as well.

If you’re too stressed to sleep well, eat well, or relax- you need to make some lifestyle changes now. Too much stress, left unchecked, can harm your health.

If you feel you could benefit from additional strategies to manage stress and lower your anxiety, we can help! Give us a call at (716) 926-6009 or click here to schedule an appointment.

Three Easy Ways to Be More Mindful

August 1, 2017 by Lesley

If you’ve been looking at ways to manage stress, you have probably come across the concept of mindfulness. In its simplest definition, mindfulness is about being aware of, and present to, your surroundings, moment by moment (or as frequently as possible).

The ultimate goal of mindfulness is to be present to your life, right now. When you are able to do this regularly, you can avoid shifting mentally back and forth from the past to the future. This can lead to a greater sense of well-being and peace.

There is a whole branch of meditation focused on mindfulness; but for most of us, it’s not practical for us to sit daily in meditation, even though we know this is something that would be good for us.

So how can you be more mindful, more easily?

Here are three ways to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life:

1) Set a daily reminder to breathe.
If you use a fitness tracker or you have a reminder on your phone, set it to ring once per day, and when it does, take 5 minutes and just breathe. Focus on breathing from your diaphragm. You know you are doing this because your stomach will expand on each breath. If it helps, you can put your hand on your lower abdomen, and feel it expanding and contracting. 5 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing a day can reduce your stress and increase focus and clarity.

2) Take 15 minutes to do nothing.
In our fast-paced world, we don’t usually make time to do nothing. Yet, even just 15 minutes of doing nothing each day can make us feel better. If you take a bus or train to work, rather than using that time to read the paper or catch up on emails, what if you just sat quietly and looked out the window? Or, alternatively, what if you took 15 minutes from your lunch hour to close your office door, put your feet up and just relaxed? This simple change can make a huge difference.

3) Taste your first three bites.
When eating a meal or a snack, consciously decide that you will focus on tasting your first three bites. Notice the temperature of your food. Notice the texture. Chew slowly and experience the flavor. This is a good strategy to encourage your children to adopt, too. Eating mindfully can result in better digestion, greater satisfaction, and you might even eat less, too.
These are three easy ways to add more mindfulness to your day. Start by incorporating at least one into your routine this week. Stick with it, and you’ll feel the difference.

If you feel you could benefit from additional strategies to manage stress and lower your anxiety, we can help! Give us a call at (716) 926-6009 or click here to schedule an appointment.

Can Drinking Water Really Lower My Stress? YES!

May 4, 2017 by Lesley

Staying hydrated, like getting enough sleep, directly affects your body’s cortisol levels and can therefore reduce stress.

Often, at the end of a session, we encourage our clients to remember to drink plenty of water. How much water you consume on a daily basis is also a routine part of our assessment process. Why? Do we want you to stay hydrated and keep your skin looking great? Definitely! But it’s also more than that. Water plays a key role in how the body functions. It can help our bodies recover and heal from physical and emotional stressors. It does this by flushing cortisol (a stress hormone) from our systems, along with other toxins. Water also assists in regulating our moods (reducing anxiety, improving depression) because it promotes optimal functioning in the brain and body while at the same time pulling (emotional) toxins out. Additionally, water has been demonstrated to play a role in regulating our sleep/wake cycles.

Most of us these days are dealing with multiple stressors on a daily basis: our jobs, our kids, household management, money and finances, health issues, our partners, relatives and friends, not to mention current geo-political and environmental stressors. But, did you ever consider dehydration itself as a stressor? Did you know that being even a half-liter dehydrated can increase your cortisol levels? And we know that cortisol is a stress hormone linked directly to feeling anxious. Imagine the effect on your body of being chronically dehydrated. When your body doesn’t have enough fuel in the form of water and food (for stable blood sugar), it will run on stress (cortisol and adrenaline) to keep you going. The question then becomes how much water do we need to stay hydrated? The answer is that it depends. There are many individual factors to take into account including your size, physical activity level, current stress level, and diet to name a few. There are however, some guidelines: the Mayo Clinic recommends drinking 8-8oz glasses of water per day (64 oz), about a half a gallon of water per day. Other sources suggest consuming .5-1 oz of water for every pound that you weigh (so essentially taking your body weight and dividing it in half). So, for someone who weighs 150 lbs, that’s 75 oz of water per day. Keep in mind that the amount of water you will need to feel good goes up in stressful situations, whether the stress is physical or mental/emotional.

This happens because when a stressful event occurs (external or internal), our bodies release a flood of cortisol preparing the body for fight or flight. The fight or flight response directs energy and blood to your arms and legs (to prepare you to run or defend) and away from areas like the stomach and intestines (where digestion occurs), which are not critical to survival. So, if you do experience a flood of cortisol, we recommend that you offset it with a healthy amount of water, taking in .5-1 oz for every pound that you weigh. Drinking water allows your body to remove the cortisol and return to a healthy balance. There is another complicating factor for many of us: caffeine. Caffeine is something that many of us rely on on a daily basis. But did you know that caffeine is dehydrating? In addition, it also promotes the production of cortisol in the body, so it’s a double whammy! So, along with your morning coffee, make sure you also include a glass of water.

The takeaway: drinking more water is a great way to lower your anxiety and stress levels, and contribute overall to a greater level of health. So, drink up, people!

If you feel you could benefit from additional strategies to manage stress and lower your anxiety, we can help! Give us a call at (716) 926-6009 or click here to schedule an appointment.

Connect

Search