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How to Feel Better – 4 ways to Ease Anxiety

February 4, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

I spoke this past December at Arrowhead Church for their women’s night. I was really excited about it and I wrote a mostly new talk for their event. I was more nervous than usual when I got to the church and I had a “moment” in the green room where I felt almost a little woozy.

I knew it was anxiety. My hands were sweaty. My heart was beating fast. I know many of you can relate to this so I wanted to share how I coached myself.

I’m not talking about crippling anxiety that you might need to see a professional for, I’m talking about the anxiety that most of us feel at different times as we’re just living our lives! We live with a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress and there are things that we can do to help ease that, to help manage that better.

Anxiety can be one of the emotions that kind of keeps us stuck and in a loop. If we’re not careful and if we don’t come outside of ourselves a little bit and look at what’s happening, it can overtake us. 

Until the last few years, I haven’t had much anxiety in my life. Or if I’ve had it, I’ve been able to almost immediately talk myself into a more productive emotion.

But since I’ve been going through some hormonal changes,  it’s not been as easy to do that.  (HELLO PERIMENOPAUSE, I’m trying to love you.) 

I don’t let it define me. And I just do the thing that I’m doing with a little anxiety with me. It’s fine. It’s okay.

I had to teach myself how to sit with anxiety. How to let it be with me and not resist it. How to name it, describe it and actually feel it.

Anxiety is usually an emotion we feel when we’re resisting the primary emotion. 

I was probably afraid my talk wasn’t going to be good, so instead of feeling fear, I pushed that away and then was left with anxiety. But when I let anxiety sit with me for a bit, I was able to redirect my thoughts.

“Of course I’m feeling fearful and anxious. But, I’ve been preparing for this for weeks and I love these women and I know that what I have to share will bless them.”

And that was enough to allow my body and my mind to relax a little.

Instead of avoiding or reacting or resisting the fear and anxiety, I let them be with me. I could breathe them in and breathe them out.  I said a prayer. I did some stretching to allow the anxiety to move around and leave my body.  I didn’t judge myself for being fearful. I was patient and compassionate with myself.

Then, I focused on the people I came to serve.  I thought about THEIR struggles and hurts and needs.  I knew I was bringing help and relief and inspiration. I decided to interpret my emotions as excitement, as gratitude for being able to share in this way.

I want to share with you 4 skills that have helped me to feel better, to be more in control of my thoughts and emotions have served me so well!

One-Think it through

If you look up the definition of primary emotions and secondary emotions, primary emotions, most people will list four or six. Fear, anger, happiness, surprise, contempt, etc. There are these basic primary emotions and then there are emotions that we feel about those emotions.

Anxiety is a secondary emotion. It’s kind of a catchall and tends to be vague. We often get anxiety when we don’t know how to deal with the fear, when we don’t know how to deal with the anger, or when we suppress them. Anxiety is often a result of not processing our emotion, of not being willing to feel the emotions that we feel.

So think it through! Ask yourself lots of questions. What am I really feeling and why? What emotion am I avoiding? Right now I’m feeling anxious, but am I afraid? Am I angry? Am I scared?

Asking why is really important because we are going to want to blame our circumstances! It’s never the circumstances that cause our feelings, it’s always our thoughts.

The reason we have stress and anxiety is not because of anything that specifically happened. It’s because how we think about it.

How am I choosing to think about the things that are happening, or what’s giving me the anxiety? That means that there is another way to think about it! What are the thoughts that you’re having that aren’t true? I’m probably not going to die right now. I’m probably not going to forget all the words because look, I have all these notes. So examine your thoughts, really think about what you’re thinking!

Two- Be present

Anxiety is not the end of the world.

Anxiety is a flutter, a feeling in your body. If you’ve had panic attacks before, you may feel panicky, like, oh my gosh, I don’t want this to go to a panic attack. But I want you to remember that anxiety is a normal part of life. We all feel this way, so don’t make it worse by catastraphizing it.

You might feel short of breath, or hot and have sweaty hands. You might feel it in your stomach or your heart might beat fast. We so often have all of these physical things but we don’t put words to them.

What I did was I sat down and allowed myself to feel the anxiety. Just be with it. Just go, oh, this is what it feels like to feel anxious. Oh, interesting. I feel feel a little tight in my throat. Let me take some deep breaths. Let me breathe from my diaphragm. Interesting that my heart’s racing. Let me take some more deep breaths and let me just feel what it feels like to feel a little active. 

I moved my body quite a bit so that the anxiety had somewhere to go. A lot of times when we feel anxious and stressed, we almost get paralyzed with our bodies and we carry the stress so tight. So I literally opened up my heart. I did some stretches, bent over and touch my toes, took a deep breath.

Three- Lean into discomfort

A lot of times what we do is we avoid the emotion.

If we don’t just allow it and process it, it’ll be some kind of reaction or some kind of explosion because we can only hold that for so long. But if you sit with anxiety and you let it be there, it usually passes fairly easily, especially if you don’t resist it.

In our society we have such a low tolerance for discomfort. We can almost always choose to not do the hard thing. And we often choose to buffer against it, with food or drink or distractions of some kind.

If you choose to buffer, you’re not going to get to the place you want to get to in your life. In order to get to where you want to get to, the version of yourself that you want to become, you have to be willing to sit with discomfort. 

Why do I walk into things that are going to make me uncomfortable on purpose? I don’t have to. Because the best version of me is the version that walks into discomfort, who experiences it on purpose. Because I know that when I share my story and I’m able to connect with people, I am becoming a better version of myself and I’m using my gifts to bless other people.

Four- Look at the physical

There are so many things we can do to support our physical body’s own ability to manage stress and anxiety! Here are just a few:

  • Diet- One of the very common causes for people who have a lot of anxiety and stress is hormone fluctuation from poor diet. Too much sugar, eating too many calories, always shooting your insulin too high, living with chronic stress where your cortisol is too high all effect how your reacts. Really deciding that for the sake of your body, you’re going to get it on more of an even keel with what you eat is so important.
  • Gut health is very important. Are you doing probiotics? Are you taking care of your gut? Most of your serotonin is produced in your gut.
  • Exercise is huge! There are so many studies that show that longterm exercise is as effective or more so than antidepressants for depression and anxiety.
  • Essential Oils– of course as you know I love oils! I love trying to find natural treatments that really help with this. I have found Frankincense is super helpful, along with Peace and Calming and Stress away. One of the things that I did before I spoke is I took a couple drops of Frankincense and I just breathed it in really deep and I said a prayer of thanks and gratitude that I could be there doing this, that I have the ability to speak into women’s lives.

Anxiety is part of life and I’m thankful to have more understanding around it.

Don’t beat yourself up and don’t judge yourself. I hope these 4 tips will help you feel better! You’ve got this mama!

Want to dive deeper into our emotional and mental health? Get on the waiting list for my coaching program, Life Mentoring School, where I coach women on how to get unstuck and live with more passion and purpose!

Filed Under: Featured, Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, life coaching, mental health, natural health, self-care, self-help

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ediewadsworth

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Dr. Edie Wadsworth|Lifeingrace
2 years ago today, your world shattered into a mil 2 years ago today, your world shattered into a million pieces.

Sometimes I marvel at how we were blessed enough to be there holding you when it all came crashing down. I do know this—I can’t remember my life without you.

I do know that thousands of tears and meals and boo-boos and toy trucks later, we stand in awe of you---your courage, your brave big boy fight, your tender little boy heart, your hilarious old man ways. 

We know how sacred this walk with you is and we don’t take it lightly.

We are here for it all and we couldn’t be more grateful.

We have always loved you and you have always been our special gift.

 Love you little one. Let’s keep listening for Aslan. He will find a way to put everything back together. 

“Herein lies the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.”
Hiring these two out for all your ring bearer and Hiring these two out for all your ring bearer and flower girl needs.  They provide ample entertainment to your guests and accept plush toys for payment in lieu of money. May or not be VERY strong willed.  And also adorable. @williamsperformance @ginawilliamsh @ameliadurand4
I turned 51 last week and spent a much needed few I turned 51 last week and spent a much needed few days alone with this guy.  As soon as we drove out of the driveway I started crying. I don’t think I realized how much I needed a break.

it was incredible and relaxing and amazing and so life-giving. 

this week it feels like last week was 100 years ago because you know, life. 

I am excited to say that despite the fact that I’m another year older I managed to figure out how to go live on YouTube with my new camera. It only took me approximately 6000 hours. So maybe you’ll join me at noon today on YouTube and we’ll try something new together.

Here’s to 2021. Maybe it will get its act together but if it doesn’t we will get ours together😂🥳❤️❤️❤️
“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, tryin “To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
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I am HERE FOR ALL THE LOUNGE WEAR. 

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We took Tommy boy for this first ski adventure tod We took Tommy boy for this first ski adventure today and it was so satisfying to see him tackle something hard and keep his chin up and have a BALL doing it.

He was very entertaining to his ski school friends, despite the fact that his German instructor couldn’t understand a WORD he said. 😂🥳

But all you mamas out there can see through all the pretty pictures and videos to know that days like today can also be full of frustration.

Making sure everybody has their stuff, the reservations, the snacks, the HASSLE of boots and poles and gloves and skis, the tears, the snappy replies, the hurt feelings, the wrong turns, the missed moments, the potty breaks.

NEED I GO ON??????

But then there’s the down to your soul goodness of being smack dab in the middle of God’s glorious creation, the sheer joy of the wind and sun on your face, the fleeting feeling that everything is right in the world, the triumph of tackling something hard and pushing through all the doubt and fear.

I felt every emotion today. What a privilege to live this life we’ve been given. What grace to live it with these people.

Today was a dream. But like every dream come true, it has a cost, it requires more of you than you think it will. You will want to quit.  A million times.  But what waits for you on the other side is worth fighting for. 

That’s what we’re diving into this week in my online workshop LIVE YOUR DREAM.

You may have given up on setting goals, but don’t stop dreaming.

Come dream with us and let’s make 2021 the year we were willing to be so alive that we would risk feeling EVERY emotion, every setback, every failure in order to see it come true.

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What’s one thing you’re dreaming about this year???
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