A Psychologist’s Relationship with Her Spinner Ring.
A Psychologist’s Relationship with Her Spinner Ring.
How have you been dealing with living in a complex, sophisticated, demanding, and sometimes even threatening world? Are you resilient, just coping and getting by? Have you asked yourself questions like: what will the future bring? Am I able to meet the challenges of everyday life? Will I be happy, healthy and prosperous?
Even as a therapist I have to answer these questions for myself on a daily basis. So please know that when anxiety creeps in you are not alone.
What actually is anxiety?
Anxiety is a mental health condition that leads to negative thoughts, apprehension, worry, nervousness, and fear. These emotions can change how we process information, how we behave, and they can also cause physical symptoms such as heart palpitations, dizziness, muscle tension and shortness of breath.
Anxiety, while potentially an unpleasant experience, is a normal and often beneficial reaction to stress that alerts us to danger and helps us to prepare to keep ourselves safe. However, with prolonged and repeated arousal of our brain and nervous system, anxiety can become a habitual response to situations that are only a perceived threat, so not dangerous at all, and are often not even challenging. This is when we get stuck in the overactive fight, flight, freeze response, an active response where you either get aggressive, run away, or feel absolutely unable to do anything.
To get out of this unconscious habit our brain and nervous system have developed, we have many mindfulness techniques available that are easy to learn and made a beneficial helper by our side.
Mindfulness is a great way to reduce anxiety.
Mindfulness is a practice where you use the five senses to engage with yourself and the world around you in a non-judgmental manner by simply observing and noticing. Mindfulness means keeping your attention focused in the present moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and the environment.
So how do you become a mindful person?
How can you become someone who is reflective rather than reactive, who can observe present experiences, such as thoughts, sensations and bodily states in a non-judgmental manner without labelling the experience as good or bad, negative or positive, black or white, adverse or beneficial?
By focusing your attention on the present moment by simply noticing and observing all of its aspects, worrying and rumination can be reduced and, with practice, even eliminated.
May I invite you to try some of these helpful mindfulness techniques which include:
- Breathing into your diaphragm
- Focusing on a calming word
- Prayer
- Visualizing peaceful imagery
- Practicing Yoga or Tai Chi
- Meditation
- Doing a Body Scan
- Engaging in Progressive Muscle Relaxation, and last but not least:
- Make your Spinner Ring your therapeutic ally and helper.
Try using your Spinner Ring in a meditative manner:
- Remove your attention from your environment and focus solely on the beauty of your Spinner Ring
- Gentle spin its internal rings until you achieve a sense of calm, centeredness and grounding
- Combine your breath with the way you spin your ring; for example:
inhale – spin, hold – spin, exhale – spin; hold – spin
Then turn your attention to your mind and body and notice your improved calmness, better sleep, creativity, decision-making, and emotional well-being.