How to Get Out of Stress-Mode
By: Bridget Webber
Tags: Anxiety, Psychology, Self, Mental Health, Stress

Are you stuck in stress-mode? If so, you think of specific problems in your life. It’s hard to change tack and shift your mind to other topics. Essentially, you’re in fight-or-flight. This is the animalistic, survival setting left over from primitive days. It’s still necessary, however, because it helps you cope in emergencies.

The problem is, stress-mode, fight-or-flight, suits short-term emergencies. Those we face that aren’t over fast, like living in stressful conditions, and relationship and career difficulties are long-term problems. We need to manage them with another approach. Not with fight-or-flight, but by responding to them without constant anxiety.

With your primitive survival mechanism activated, you are ready to flee from danger, fight, or hide. A better approach for chronic difficulties would help you switch off and take a break from stress. It also needs to help you build your immune system and experience powerful positive emotions like gratitude and joy.

In fight-or-flight, your immune system is on red alert. All energy channels into helping you cope with an instant emergency. But as you gain the energy to flee or fight, maintenance shuts down in other areas of your body not needed for instant survival.

You might become ill, find it hard to get over an infection, or get depressed if you remain in fight-or-flight too long.

People who note you’re stressed, might advise you to list life’s blessings to increase thankfulness. The idea is to develop a flow of happy hormones with gratitude. Until you switch from narrow to wide focus, though, it’s almost impossible to benefit from attempts to be thankful or experience feel-good emotions.

A fresh approach to managing stress

A narrow focus aids short-term stress management. Your body and mind streamline attention so you concentrate on the challenge at hand. But as you can imagine, with a blinkered view of life, channeled into what worries you, you develop anxiety and your happiness sinks.

The answer is to widen your focus. With a wider field of awareness, you won’t get stuck in stress mode. You’ll find relief because you don’t worry all the time.

How to widen your awareness

Here’s a simple, yet powerful mental exercise to help you widen your perspective of life and alter your attention away from anxiety. When you practice often, you will find relief from stress and your mind and body will relax. In short, when you practice increasing the expanse of your attention, you switch from narrow-minded anxiety to open-minded calm.

At a time when you won’t be disturbed, and have nothing important to do, sit in silence. Get comfy and follow your breath. Take deep belly breaths, so if you place your hand on your stomach it will rise as air fills your belly.

When your breaths are nice and slow, imagine the space between your eyes. Now think about the distance from ear-to-ear then the top of your head all the way down to your feet. Continue to take slow breaths and consider the distance between your body and the wall furthest away from you. Or, if you’re outdoors, the distance between you and, let’s say, the furthest tree, or another landmark.

Imagine the space between you and the object in the distance, and relax. Continue to carry out the exercise comparing the distance between yourself and objects far away and your perspective and focus of attention will widen.

Open focus

Open focus is a scientific practice discovered “in the 1960s by American psychologist and biofeedback pioneer Les Fehmi PhD. Dr Les Fehmi developed mental exercises derived from his studies in brainwave synchrony and forty years’ research in the field of EEG biofeedback.

It aids Alpha brainwaves, which we associate with inner balance and relaxed awareness. Make it part of your daily routine. Indeed, use it regularly, not only during stressful times, and tapping into an alpha brainwave state to reduce anxiety will be simple when you need it most.