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Overcoming anxiety

if you are attacked or threatened, your body releases a number of chemical components which cause dilation of the pupils, tunnel vision, constriction of blood vessels, hyperventilation and rapid heartbeat. They also have stimulating and anesthetizing effects. Additionally, your digestive system goes nuts in order to rid your body of extra weight. These are all normal and necessary events which enable an organism to either fight off an attacker or run from it.

In nature, an organism's response to this attack will burn up all of the chemicals released when it either fights or runs away at top speed from the threat. After the organism has expended all of these chemicals, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over, and R&R occurs. However, if these chemicals are prevented from being used up appropriately, they quickly become toxic to the body. This is not dissimilar to the analogy of continuously eating food and never eliminating the waste, and therein lies the problem.

In our modern society, we don't typically have to worry about attacks from wild animals, and most of us can go a very long time without ending up in a hostile situation. However, smaller stressors (rent due, relationship problems, school or work deadlines etc.) will over time build up to the point that they release the same chemicals as a full-on attack. Then, seemingly out of the blue, you find yourself in "fight-or-flight" mode with no visible threat or cause in sight. Feelings of dread, panic and despair come out of nowhere, making the sufferer feel as though they're "losing it". As odd as it sounds, you'd have been better off immediately reacting to a direct attack on your person.

So the key, as you may have guessed by now, is keeping a check on these smaller stressors and not letting your body's defensive chemicals build up to major threat levels. You need to burn them up regularly, as quickly and as often as they occur.

Movement is life. Plain and simple. We are not designed to sit on our butts day in and day out without substantial amounts of movement. Animals don't have the modern conveniences that we do, so they have no choice but to do two things, and only two things, during the course of their day. They walk around looking for food, and they try not to become food. Walking around looking for food is movement. Occasionally sprinting either after their food, or to avoid becoming food is intense physical movement. At night they sleep. This pattern is mirrored in the behavior of our hunter/gatherer


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