Melissa Tiers - The Anti-Anxiety Toolkit: Rapid Techniques to Rewire the Brain

Rapid Techniques to Rewire the Brain

The Anti-anxiety Toolkit: Rapid Techniques toRewire the Brain

By Melissa Tiers

Copyright 2012 Melissa Tiers

Smashwords Edition

This book is available in print at mostonline retailers.

This ebook is licensed for your personalenjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away toother people. If you would like to share this book with anotherperson, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Ifyoure reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was notpurchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.comand purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard workof this author.

To all my anxious clients, students, andfriends who trusted me enough to let me into their minds. Thankyou.

My goal for this little book is to allow thereader to be able to get relief within ten minutes of opening it.With that in mind, Ill keep this introduction short.

When I work with my clients to overcomeanxiety, my approach is two-fold. First I teach them differenttechniques to address the cognitive, emotional/biochemical,structural and energetic aspects involved. For many people, justlearning about these things decreases the intensity ofepisodes.

Then we work together to systematicallyneutralize the triggers and reprogram the responses. So even thoughthey have many techniques to stop anxiety, the reprogrammingprocess makes it so they rarely have to use them.

Its like learning a martial art. First, youlearn how to kick ass. Then you learn how to never need to use it.Its interesting how the more skilled you get, the less you have tofight.

So, think of this book like that.

Stop The Bully In Your Brain

This books preliminary chapters cover quickways to interrupt the anxiety pattern. Once you get this you willbe in a much more receptive state of mind to practice the more indepth processes that come later on.

Think of anxiety as anetwork of neural clusters in the brain that create an area ofassociation assome neuroscientists like to say, "the cells that fire together,wire together." For instance, a violin player will have anarea of association that correlates to the hand she uses to fingerthe instrument. The more she practices, the more robust the areabecomes. If she stops playing for a while, the cluster shrinks backto normal size.

This corresponds to research on London taxidrivers that shows more density in the area of the brain associatedwith navigation. (Because unlike New York, London cabbies actuallyhave to know the city.)

As you can see, the more we reinforce thepattern the thicker and stronger the cluster of neurons becomes.And as that happens, it becomes much more difficult to controlthem. My friend John Overdurf refers to these clusters of neuronsas the bully on the block who is strong, thick and overlysensitive. This makes it easily triggered.

But new research in neuroscience tells usthat the brain is malleable and capable of changing even the mostingrained patterns. So, each time you stop the pattern of anxiety,you are working to rewire the brain. Google neuroplasticityif you want to learn more.

Luckily the brain can be rewired more easilythan most people imagine, and by practicing all the techniques inthis book you will become an expert in neuro-plasticity.

Thats because if you can interrupt theanxiety and then connect that cluster to a more resourceful statelike relaxation, you will be cross connecting those neurons andloosening up the area of association that had been keeping thatcluster strong.

So not only do you get immediate relief, youare slowly but surely dismantling the neural network that used tokeep that anxiety active.

And this book will give you many differentways to calm, inform, and change the bully in your brain.

Heres another way to think about it. Anxietyhas a structure. Some people will see something external and thensay something inside their heads and then feel anxious. Others willhear something or tell themselves something and then make aninternal image and then feel anxious.

Other people will remember something as animage and then react to it by feeling anxious. There are manydifferent combinations of the above.

Once you understand that you are generatingthe anxiety and that it doesnt just descend out of nowhere, youcan begin to change it. This book will show you how to do that bychanging the internal images, dialogue and feelings associated withit in the body.

We will start with quick and easy techniquesto interrupt those patterns; we will then move towards all thedifferent ways you can manipulate and change your internalstrategies.

I suggest playing with and practicing thesetechniques as you read them. If you become familiar with thembefore the anxiety is in full swing, then you will be armed andready when you need to be.

Thistechnique involves stimulating both sides of the brain to stopanxiety. It is absurdly simple yet amazingly effective. Grab a ball(or apple or anything you can toss) and think of something that iscausing you some anxiety.

When you can feel that anxiety somewhere inyour body, rate the level of it on a scale of one to ten.

Now pass the ball back and forth, from onehand to the other, crossing the mid line, so you are stimulatingboth hemispheres of the brain. It will have a more rapid effect ifyou keep one hand in front of you as the other swings out to theside each time you pass the ball,. Do this for a minute. Stop. Takea deep breath, and check in. You might note that the anxiety hasdissipated.

This is because by activating bothhemispheres, you are spreading blood and electrical impulsesthroughout the brain and this floods that area of association anddiffuses it. That bully of an anxiety cluster just cant keepitself together.

Now, think of the same situation again andsee how much anxiety you can manage to conjure up, and rate it onceagain on the ten- to-one scale. Pass the ball or other object for aminute, and check in. Repeat till the anxiety has completelydiffused.

This is something you can do anywhere. Assoon as you start to feel that anxiety, simply grab an objectkeys,a bottle of water, anything will work as long as you are movingboth your arms, and crossing the mid-line of your body.

In helpingpeople to overcome anxiety, Ive noticed some commonalities.Whether its what doctors call a specific or a generalized anxiety,internal dialogue is either the trigger or what keeps the patterngoing.

You will learn many different ways toneutralize anxious internal dialogue later in this book, but fornow, try this simple way of shifting out of your mind.

Start by picking a spot or focal point tostare at. Slowly begin to expand your peripheral vision to includeall the space around the spot.

Now expand your vision even further to thesides, all the way up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Expandit even more, allowing your visual field to open so that you canimagine almost becoming aware of the space behind you.

This might feel strange at first but afterpracticing three or four times you will notice a general calm comeover your mind and body as you realize your internal dialogue hasstopped.

This is what Carlos Castaneda calledstopping the world. I teach it to my clients who have anxietybecause it allows them to move awareness from the inside, out.

The great thing about peripheral vision isthat it can be done anywhere, anytime and with practice, becomesanother way of being in the world.

This techniqueis adapted from the work of the HeartMath Institute, which is agroup of doctors and psychologists who are studying heart ratecoherence and its effect on mental and physical health.