Practical Anxiety Tips You Won’t Find on Social Media

It is common knowledge that anxiety can cause symptoms such as restlessness, difficulty concentrating, fatigue and nausea, but did you know that these are actually classified as different types of anxiety and the way to deal with them is all different? Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) has an extremely meticulous theoretical framework for identifying and regulating anxiety. Understanding and having a systematic way of regulating your own anxiety according to the three-pathway theory is essential to effectively dealing with anxiety in your everyday life.

Anxiety Regulation Guidelines

We are going to talk about three separate levels or pathways of anxiety that are all felt physically within the body. Remember, we can regulate anxiety through regulating our physiology! When regulating anxiety, the golden rule is to keep breathing throughout all of the regulation techniques. This is fundamental. The other rule is that we want to regulate from Cognitive / Perceptual Disruption to Smooth Muscle, from Smooth Muscle to Striated Muscle and from Striated Muscle to relaxation with no anxiety, in this order.

1.Striated Muscle Anxiety: The Green Light for Relaxation

When we think of striated muscle anxiety, we think of anxiety that makes us feel tense in the body. This level of anxiety activates or sympathetic nervous system with the “fight or flight” response in which our heart rate and blood pressure rise in preparation for a perceived threat. This is the level of anxiety where we tend to feel jittery and filled with nervous energy. At this level of anxiety, simply pulling one’s attention to the tension and consciously relaxing the parts of the body that are tense is usually enough to regulate the anxiety back down.

Striated Muscle Anxiety Presentations

• Sighing
• hand clenching
• foot tapping
• various forms of fidgeting
• dry mouth
• jaw clenching
• biting

Striated Muscle Anxiety Regulation Techniques

As stated above, the key to all anxiety regulation is first giving attention to the physical manifestations of the anxiety and not ignoring them. At the level of striated anxiety, employing progressive muscle relaxation, in which one systematically focuses on releasing tension one body part at a time from head to toe, and meditation are effective regulation methods and enough to release the anxiety-induced tension.

In the next article, we will continue exploring the two other types of anxiety: smooth muscle and cognitive/perceptual disruption (CPD), and discuss appropriate regulation techniques for each. Stay tuned to learn more about these types of anxiety and how to effectively manage them.

2.Smooth Muscle Anxiety: The Yellow Light for Tension

Unlike striated muscle anxiety, smooth muscle anxiety tends to show up in muscles that are out of our conscious control such as the muscles responsible for contraction and expansion of the stomach, intestines and blood vessels. It is at this level of anxiety that we our parasympathetic nervous system is activated in a “rest or digest” response. At this level of anxiety, we typically have a drop in blood pressure, heart rate and muscle tension, usually feeling more fatigued or nauseous than anything else.

Smooth Muscle Anxiety Presentation

• migrainheadaches 
• nausea
• burping
• diarrhea
• bladder urgency
• vomiting
• asthmatic attacks
• IBS
• gastrointestinal spasms