No-fuss anxiety tips #6: Make use of your ANS
Your ANS is your automatic nervous system.
It includes the parasympathetic branch which restores calm and balance to your body and mind. Its possible to work with the ANS to promote relaxation and calm
Welcome to this sixth blog in a mini-series of no-fuss tips for managing anxiety. Each article in the series contains simple tips and techniques for managing anxiety, drawing on therapeutic thinking from a range of psychological and psychotherapy theories. In this blog, we’ll take a look at how you can work with your ANS (autonomic nervous system) to reduce anxiety and promote a sense of calm and relaxation.
What this mini blog series on anxiety won’t do is explore the origins and purpose of anxiety for you – this type of deeper exploration is what counselling offers. That said, having strategies for managing anxiety is a great place to start. Each article is designed to be quick read, no-fuss. So, let’s get into technique number six: how to make good use of your ANS.
You and your ANS
We all have an ANS – an autonomic nervous system. Your ANS is the mechanism behind your anxiety. It’s a body-based system that regulates processes for rest and activity and it consists of two main branches: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
The sympathetic branch of the ANS stimulates your body’s fight, flight or freeze response. When faced with a danger, or potential danger, the sympathetic system causes changes in your heart rate, rate of respiration, digestion and muscle tension so that you’re physically primed to fight, flee or freeze to protect yourself. This process kicks in rapidly as soon as your brain detects threat, even if your brain is mistaken. For example, on seeing a coil of rope from the corner or your eye, your heart may begin to beat fast. In a fraction of a second, the limbic system within your brain has processed the visual clue of the rope as a “snake”, even before your thinking brain has named the fear. Your limbic system recognises the potential threat to life and uses the ANS to trigger immediate action via increased heart rate. Blood is pumped rapidly to your arms and legs so you can run or fight. The same process is likely to happen if you see a real snake from the corner of your eye. This process is extremely useful to our survival. However, when you remain in a state of heightened sympathetic stimulation, your body remains tense, on edge and anxious.
The parasympathetic branch of the ANS is focussed on restoring calm and balance to our bodies after sympathetic stimulation. It prevents your body from overworking and brings your breathing, heart rate and muscle tension back to a more regulated state, facilitating rest and recovery.
When you experience anxiety that persists for any length of time, your sympathetic process is activated and can become overactive. Your parasympathetic system doesn’t get much opportunity to restore a sense of balance. It is, however, possible to take action, and activate your parasympathetic system to restore that sense of equilibrium to your nervous system.
How to boost the parasympathetic branch of your ANS
There are various ways that you can boost the parasympathetic branch of your ANS to support a calming and relaxation response. Perhaps you’ve tried some of these already, and felt the calming effects they can have. If so, can you build more of them into you daily life? Or are there any here that you’ve not yet tried?
Chanting, humming and singing
Quality sleep
Massage
Yoga, tai chi, or qigong
Meditation
Taking a cold shower, or splashing your face with cold water
Today, consider one of the steps you could build into your day to regulate your ANS. Consider setting yourself a daily goal of how you can implement one of these into each day across the next week.
Next steps:
To help develop your repertoire of managing anxiety, look out for more blogs within this series. Blog number 7 focuses on how you can put time limits around your anxiety and worries to try to gain back some control.
And, if you’d like to talk through how counselling can help you with a deeper exploration of your anxiety, do make contact with me, Claire Law.
I’m a BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist offering professional counselling and psychotherapy in Preston, Lancashire and online for adults based in the UK.
We can talk through how online counselling or face-to-face counselling at my therapy room in Preston could be helpful for you in managing your anxiety and getting to the roots of what lies behind your anxiety. I’d love to hear from you.
References:
Richer, R., Zenkner, J., Küderle, A., Rohleder, N., Eskofier, B.M. (2022). Vagus activation by Cold Face Test reduces acute psychosocial stress responses. Sci Rep. 2022 Nov 10;12(1):19270.
Shobana, R., Maheshkumar, K., Venkateswaran, S.T., Geetha, M.B., Padmavathi, R. (2022). Effect of long-term yoga training on autonomic function among the healthy adults. J Family Med Prim Care. 2022 Jul;11(7):3471-3475.
Trivedi, G., Sharma, K., Saboo, B., Kathirvel, S., Konat, A., Zapadia, V., Prajapati, P.J., Benani, U., Patel, K., Shah, S. (2023). Humming (Simple Bhramari Pranayama) as a Stress Buster: A Holter-Based Study to Analyze Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Parameters During Bhramari, Physical Activity, Emotional Stress, and Sleep. Cureus. 2023 Apr 13;15(4):e37527.