From the author: The original article is located at: Any potentially dangerous events will always be a cause for our concern, even if they never come true. Fighting external circumstances is stupid and futile. The confrontation is unequal and means failure. Therefore, anxiety will always be a part of our life if we think far into the future. What is anxiety? Simply put, it is an emotional state that arises when we are mentally transported to a frightening future, draw terrible pictures for ourselves and feel about it fear and anxiety. Anxiety is characterized by feelings of excitement, tension, panic, and “buzzing” in the body. It is insidious in that the events have not yet occurred, and we are already experiencing a set of unpleasant emotions now. When something terrible happens, we act based on the events. With anxiety, we don’t even have the opportunity to act, because nothing has happened yet. That is, anxiety is a constant experience of uncertainty, which has no constructive outlet. I tried to find ways for myself to cope with anxiety. The simplest thing is to tell yourself that you need to be in the present moment. But this helped only temporarily. Because some part of my consciousness still ran into the future and saw scary pictures there. Then I decided to start with the physical manifestation of anxiety. Our thoughts always cause a certain response within us. Depending on the thoughts there will be an emotional reaction. For example, imagine a situation. Your boyfriend (girlfriend) should have called you, but a lot of time has passed and there is still no call. The event itself is neutral - there is no call. But depending on the thoughts with which we surround this situation, our physical and emotional state will differ. Option 1. You thought that he (s) had simply forgotten about you. Depending on personal traumas, such a thought can cause a different thought stream: Well, he (she) is just an irresponsible bastard, he (she) always doesn’t care about me, he only thinks about himself. These thoughts will cause inner feelings of anger and aggression. And they will be reflected in the body accordingly - breathing may become faster, fists will clench, the heart will begin to beat faster, etc. That is, all signs of anger will appear. Option 2. You thought that he/she was cheating on you. This can cause a stream of thoughts associated with self-doubt, fear, and anxiety. Physically, this can manifest itself in the form of heaviness in the stomach, rapid heartbeat, heat on the face, etc. Option 3. You thought that something had happened to him/her. This will cause restless thoughts and worries about life. The same fear, aching sensation in the stomach, nervous obsessive movements, etc. Option 4. You decided that he (she) decided to surprise you and come in person. This can cause a surge of joy, a feeling of anticipation of the holiday. Physically, this will manifest itself in the form of lightness in the body, “butterflies” in the stomach, energy. In these examples, you saw that the events themselves are relatively neutral. The main role in the emotional reaction is played by our thoughts in connection with current events. Our thoughts are very strongly connected with experiences experienced in the past, often traumatic ones. So, if you have often been cheated on, then, most likely, the first thought will be one that is associated with betrayal and this will trigger the experience of the emotion that you experienced before. If there have been losses, then the first thought will be about something terrible. There are two options for working with changing your emotional state: 1. This is work on thoughts. You must try to track your thoughts, pay attention to how certain similar patterns of thoughts are formed, determine where they came from and experience those feelings that were not responded to in the past. In fact, almost every type of psychotherapy works with these mental beliefs in some way. Working with thoughts is always a long process, because over the course of one’s life a sufficient number of different attitudes, beliefs and patterns have accumulated.2. Work with the body. This work will be fastersolution for relieving acute emotional experiences. I suggest you do one exercise. It will take a couple of minutes. Now try to fully tense your body. Try to squeeze, twist your shoulders as much as possible, squeeze your abs, start breathing quickly, try to clench your teeth, clench your fists. Feel yourself in this state for a while. How easy and confident do you feel? How calm and joyful? I am sure that the condition is more than uncomfortable. Now turn around completely, lie back on a chair as comfortably as possible, start breathing slowly and measuredly. How much do you want to worry, get angry and fight in this state? Most likely, you feel a little calmer and easier. This simple demonstration shows how our body is a good tool for changing our emotional state. If a person is angry, it may take a long time to change his mental attitudes. But it will take just a couple of minutes to change your breathing and body position so that he can calm down and come to his senses. When you give your body the shape and postures characteristic of some emotions, the body begins to reproduce these emotions from memory and introduces you to corresponding state. The key to control will be awareness of the emotional state that you are experiencing now and changing your bodily position and state to another, desired one. Many acting techniques are built on this principle, which help the actor get used to the state of his character. Let's return to anxiety. Anxiety is a very insidious feeling. It is insidious because it is very subtle and elusive. If anger, fear, joy are vivid emotions and have vivid physical and emotional manifestations, then anxiety is more hidden and unconscious. It can manifest itself in an internal “buzzing”, some mild irritation, loss of concentration, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite. That is, anxiety may manifest itself more as symptoms than as a specific experience. Therefore, simply changing your body position will not be enough here. Anxiety affects small muscle groups that create general tension in the body, but is not clearly expressed. How to work with anxiety at the body level. If you try to analyze what is behind the anxiety, you can see , that basically it is still fear. And most fears “live” in our stomach. The stomach is the place that is responsible for human life. In the Old Russian language, the word “stomach” meant “life.” If you remember your experiences of fear, then, most likely, these will be various kinds of sensations in the stomach: emptiness, compression, the feeling that everything is falling through, etc. Therefore, when working with fears, an effective way would be to work starting with relaxing the internal abdominal muscles. With anxiety, these sensations may not be as pronounced as with obvious fear, but the stomach still remains tense. This is a background tension that will always create a feeling of internal anxiety. I want to offer you two main options for relaxing such chronic anxious tension. In general, these methods will also help when working with other strong emotions.1. Abdominal breathing. It is also called diaphragmatic breathing. To do this, you need to lie down (on the bed or floor). The main thing is that the whole body is horizontal. Place one hand on the sternum, the other on the stomach. The main task when breathing is to breathe from the stomach. You should make sure that when you inhale, the hand lying on your chest remains motionless, and the hand lying on your stomach rises when you inhale (when air enters the stomach), and lowers when you exhale (when air comes out of the stomach). Usually people breathe using only the chest. If your chest rises and your rib cage expands when you breathe, this means you are doing chest breathing. More resourceful, and rather more correct, is belly breathing. In this case, the chest is practically not involved, and inhalation occurs through the use of the diaphragm, expansion of the abdomen and.