Reduce Stress by Doing Nothing
- Do you wish your brain would shut off so you can go to sleep?
- Have you found you’re unable to relax?
- Have you felt overwhelmed with things to do but cannot focus to get anything done?
- Does stress grip your body and mind and you wish you could just get a break?
It can feel like you’re going crazy when your brain and body are becoming the enemy. Your brain is also an organ, just like your heart, and like the heart, it can be trained; but when it’s overwhelmed it’s not functioning properly. When your brain is overwhelmed, it has had as much as it can take. You push forward and keep busy so you can distract yourself from what you’re feeling.
This desire to distract yourself and keep busy with anything else causes us to fill our days and keep going and going at all costs. And that cost is high. You keep moving until you’ve exhausted trying to get things done; but since you can’t focus, you don’t finish things, and push them to tomorrow. You think if you’re exhausted then you’ll be able to sleep at night. But at night your body is so tired but your brain still won’t shut off. After a while, you’re just running the hamster wheel waiting for the next vacation or holiday break when you can and will crash, still not getting things done. And since you are your own worst critic, you beat yourself up over this, ensuring the cycle continues.
F
The entire globe is more stressed than previous years. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2020 Stress in America study 8 out of 10, 78 percent, of Americans say that this pandemic has increased the stress in their already stressful lives. Stress impacts the whole body. Because it’s supposed to. If you didn’t feel stress then we wouldn’t mobilize to do things.
If you had no stress about a test then you wouldn’t study. Whether it is your mind or your body that is overwhelmed, the common reaction is to blow up with anger and in the bodies case, pain. We could also shut down and either avoid the mountain of things to do by doing other stuff or adding to our list so that we don’t have to.
Following this avenue, we can easily see how stress builds. Stress impacts everything. According to the same study above, when considering the physical and emotional toll of increased stress, nearly half of adults (49%) report their behavior has been negatively affected. Most commonly, they report increased tension in their bodies (21%), “snapping” or getting angry very quickly (20%), unexpected mood swings (20%), or screaming or yelling at a loved one (17%).
When we say stress, we can just as easily say anxiety. For most they are interchangeable. Stress/Anxiety hijacks your whole body. You may be struggling with physical health issues like asthma, cancer, chronic pain, heart disease, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, or headaches and migraines. When your body feels like the enemy and you’re battling an invisible adversary, it make sense that you might feel like the war is lost.
You feel as if you’re going to die. Your mind is going so fast that you can’t grab on to any of the thoughts to even make sense of them; let alone try to challenge any of them. When you’re feeling this you cannot relax. If you cannot relax, then forget sleeping.
What keeps you up at night? Stress and sleep are mortal enemies. Insomnia is just trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or both.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, 48 percent of Americans report insomnia occasionally, and 22 percent experience insomnia every night or almost every night. This can be due to current stress or past experiences that are still bothering you. It can be a side effect of other issues or a monster that stands all by itself. If 49 percent of Americans have increase in stress and 48 percent of Americans struggle with insomnia, what do you think? I don’t believe in coincidences. After hours and hours of lost sleep, it still amazes me that just 2 minutes per day can greatly reduce your stress and restore your restful sleep. A trained and caring therapist can help you learn this and support you on your path to healing.
Mindfulness Therapy can restore your sleep and start draining that stress bucket
Everyone has stress and I am the therapist and owner of Trauma Therapy Company and I have taught many women how to reduce this stress and get back to sleep. I don’t just help women with stress, anxiety and sleep issues, I am a women recovering from anxiety, stress and sleep issues. I partner with mothers and my experience and skills to restore hope. Whether you have been struggling for a few years or since childhood, I can help you learn these skills to greatly improve how you handle stress and learn to relax. In our sessions, we’ll learn skills to address your stress, pain and insomnia. When you work with a therapist who has been there, it becomes easier to build a foundation with these skills to make them uniquely yours and get at the root cause of these symptoms. I use mindfulness to help you develop your own unique meditation practice to help you deal with what’s already coming up, the anxiety, stress and sleep issues.
This allows us to look at what deeper work and find the “why”. Why is this happening? What is causing it? These are the questions I hear from all my women. And if they know the “why”, they want to know the “How”. How do we stop it? You can learn mindfulness to manage symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, asthma, cancer, chronic pain, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, sleep problems, headaches, and Multiple sclerosis. If you practice for just 2-5 minutes daily or twice daily, I guarantee you will see a reduction in symptoms in just two weeks. This issue has been causing you so much loss in time. Could you dedicate less than 2 minutes a day to reduce it?
You have a stress bucket, just like everyone else. That bucket’s size depends on your genes, experiences and skills. When that bucket overflows with stress, the reactions are unique to you and what doctors call symptoms and diseases. By draining that stress level, we can prevent the bucket from overflowing. You can drain that bucket with the help of someone who has been there. When you learn the skills – To fall asleep, stay asleep, calm the panic, reduce the pain – you take control of your life and your body. I keep mindfulness and mediation simple. Pausing for 2-3 minutes to take inventory of my body and my mind. Focusing all my attention on my breathing. Concentrate on feeling and listening to my breath as I inhale and exhale though my nose and mouth. Breathing deeply and slowly.
When your attention wanders, gently return your focus to your breath. I scan the body from my head to my toes very slowly using many different imagery. Becoming aware of your bodies sensations. Not judging, just noticing, pain, tension, warmth or relaxation. I do this at the beginning of the session and after some deeper work. I also teach this as a coping skill at the start of treatment and encourage client to make it their own. There is no right or wrong way to meditate, as long as you’re slowing down and focusing on the body. Meditation is a skill. Just like any other skill, it takes tome to learn. The benefits are too high not to learn. If you do this for just 2-3 minutes every day, I can guarantee that you will see a small reduction in your symptoms. You know you’re struggling with your mind and body, this is the route to connect these two together. You have been struggling long enough and the time is going to pass either way. In the time it took you to read half this page, you could have your first brain workout done. I am asking you to just sit and try as hard as you can for 2 minutes, to do nothing. You deserve it and so does your body. You want to reduced tension in body and increased relaxation. If we work together, you can gain the ability to take breaks and focus on the things you need to get done.
You can increase your stamina and creativity. Learn how to take care of yourself, shut down the autopilot, and reduce or stop physical and emotional reactions to things. Take control of your mind and be able to focus, be more efficient at work, and make better decisions. Your senses will be heightened and enjoy living again. If you control your mind, you control your world. You can decide what you want to think about and do and no longer be influenced by the past. If you control your breathing, then you are controlling your body and the physical reactions to the world.
But you still have questions about Mindful Therapy
I can’t meditate, my mind is racing That is actually good. Meditation is a practice. The practice comes from bringing your mind back when it wanders. It can and will wonder, that’s why we are distractible.
This happens all day, whether you are meditating or trying to clean your house. This is more proof that this is the exact workout needed for your brain. The thing that is the hardest is called our edge, that is where the most growth can happen. When working out, the muscle that is the weakest is the one we work on the most
How can two minutes actually help me? If you have ever tried to clear your head for two minutes, you know it’s very hard. Because it’s hard we know it’s a workout for your brain. I know this works because I meditate daily as well. I used to struggle with falling asleep every night. I would lay awake for hours until the alarm went off. That was every night. Now, that only happens maybe once every 6 months, when something actually happens that is worrying me for a good reason. I would not ask someone to do something that I don’t do myself. How could I teach it, if I don’t do it. According to the CDC, 35 million Americans meditate.
It’s too loud in my house to meditate Absolutely, mine too. That is the great thing about it only being 2 minutes a day? Do your kids sleep for more than 2 minutes a day? Can you park your car for two minutes? If we can find two minutes to listen to a Tiktok or Netflix, then we can find time to meditate. You’re symptoms cost you more than 2 minutes a day, you can’t afford not to try this for two weeks
If I can, then you can too
I have been practicing meditation myself for 4 years. I have been teaching people how to meditate for just as long. As soon as I started seeing benefits for myself, I couldn’t wait to teach someone. I have focused on trauma since I started my professional career because it impacts all areas of mental health. The more people I worked with, the more I realized the commonality in all of them. Healing from the stuff that has happened to them. The symptoms resulting from the experiences are different in each individual. I believe everyone can meditate, we just need to learn the best way for you.
My 4 years of undergraduate experience in psychology and child development prepared me to see how trauma impacts our mental and physical health from our development in the womb to adulthood. My 2 years in graduate school and two years after I spent learning ways to heal trauma in the mind and body. And in the years since I have been working with clients to make unique plans and skills that will meet their individual goals and healing paths. I have struggled my whole life with focusing on my breath.
When I start to focus on my breath, I get intense pressure in my chest, like I can’t breath and then I think I am breathing wrong or not getting enough oxygen. It messes up my rhythm to focus on the breathing even though I want to control my breathing. Over the years I have found ways that work for me, with a lot of support and practice. I never tell someone to do something that I am not willing to do. Everyone has different goals for control of their body, we cannot compare someone else’s to yours.
First we need to get the image of the “perfect meditator” out of our mind. Because that’s not what it looks like. Meditating is hard work and our face may look like that of severe concentration or body evacuation. Meditation is a skill. Just like any other skill, it takes tome to learn. The benefits are too high not to learn. If you do this for just 2-3 minutes every day, I can guarantee that you will see a reduction in your symptoms.
You know you’re struggling with your mind and body, this is the route to connect these two together. You have been struggling long enough and the time is going to pass either way. In the time it took you to read half this page, you could have your first brain workout done. I am asking you to just sit and try as hard as you can for 2 minutes, to do nothing. You deserve it and so does your body.
Call me at (234) 600-8200 for a free 30 minute consultation and I can explain how you can learn this and answer any questions you may have.
