Rewiring Anxiety: How to Use Neuroplasticity to Ease High-Functioning Anxiety

“Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed at work. Maybe you’re struggling with racing thoughts at night, or you’re experiencing a kind of a temporary moment of even like panic. 

It feels like, hey, just take a few minutes, pass an object between your hands. It can provide a much needed sense of relief and control.” ~Dr. Lisa Hartwell

Aloha and welcome!

What if managing anxiety was as easy as playing with a pen?

In this episode of Anxiety Ease, we’ll explore the mind-calming power of bilateral stimulation. It's a simple act that rewires your brain towards relaxation.

Next time you feel overwhelmed, try this technique. It’s empowering to know such simple actions can significantly impact your well-being.

Over time, with consistent practice, this simple tool can lead to lasting changes in your brain’s response to stress.

Ready for calm? Let’s do this!
Lisa

Transcript

"Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed at work. Maybe you're struggling with racing thoughts at night, or you're experiencing a kind of a temporary moment of even like panic. It feels like, hey, just take a few minutes, pass an object between your hands. It can provide a much needed sense of relief and control." Dr. Lisa Hartwell

Aloha and welcome. You're listening to the Anxiety Ease podcast and I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hartwell. I'm a Hawaii licensed clinical psychologist, anxiety.
Coach, and retreat facilitator.
In this podcast season, I'm going to be sharing mine and other human stories lessons for my fellow brain nerds who love science like I do and our.
Own life's journey to live life with more ease. I hope to give you doses of.
Inspiration and let's just have a whole lot of fun together.

The show notes and complete transcripts can always be found on my website, drlisahartwell.com, or directly through the link of Anxiety-ease.com. I greatly appreciate any reviews on itunes.

And please share this podcast. I look forward to spending this season with you. Aloha. Aloha, everyone.

Lisa Hartwell:
Welcome to Anxiety Ease podcast. I'm Dr. Hartwell and today I want to talk about rewiring anxiety in a way that really explores neuroplasticity and a simple tool for calming high functioning anxiety. I thought this would be an interesting quick little tip to give you and a tool of something that works for everyone, but kind of the underpinnings, you know me, my science nerd brain really enjoys the idea of understanding two things. One, that there's really science behind some of these very simple interventions. But more importantly to idea. Once you have knowledge, you have, you're really empowered to understand why the tools are working for you. And there is nothing more empowering than education and the knowledge that there's a brain behind the process, especially behind high functioning anxiety. I always think that this idea of it's a fascinating concept anyway, of neuroplasticity.

And we don't even know an nth of what our brains can do after all these years, of course. But we're learning more, right, because they hook up people to functional mris, which is really about, let's take a picture of your brain on what it's doing while you're actually doing an activity or having thoughts. And it's really an awesome, powerful tool that helps us learn how we can better lower and manage our anxiety levels so they can be more functional for us. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's really remarkable ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout our life. And what this really means is that our brains are not fixed or hardwired, but they're really rather adaptable and malleable. And for those of us with high functioning anxiety, understanding neuroplasticity offers hope and truly empowerment. It means that we have the capacity to change the way our brains respond to stress and anxiety through intentional practice and repetition, which is really the underpinnings of any type of learning. Right.

I always say when folks come in and, and they want to get the tools and the tips and the tricks of how they can feel better, I always say, well, actually, if you're going to do this, how about if you go sign up for, you know, a language that you know nothing about and say you're straight up english speaking person and you want to, I'm going to send you to go take a chinese class? Well, the first thing they're going to teach you is probably the basic characters, and then how those basic characters form words, and how those basic words form sentences. Then after you learn the basic concepts, you have to practice. And when you practice with intention, you have to do it over and over and over again until it becomes automatic. It is really no different than learning any other skill set. When we talk about neuroplasticity as it comes to learning, it's really no different when it comes to emotions. And we just have to learn tools and practices and learning theory behind making that happen. One practical tool that leverages this principle of neuroplasticity to calm anxiety is the simple act of passing an object between your hands. The technique is actually often referred to as bilateral stimulation, and it works by engaging both hemispheres, the brain, simultaneously, which promotes relaxation and stress reduction.

Obviously, you know why that works. Because our brains operate the opposite side of our bodies, right? So your right side of your brain operates your left side of your body and vice versa. So we call that sort of this integrative process. We want both sides of our brain to be working together, right? Both hemispheres is what they're called. So this is really the crux of how it works. You can find any small object to hold in your hands. Anything could be, you could pick up a stone off the ground. It could be a stress ball, it could be a water bottle, could even be your pen.

It doesn't really matter what the object is, but the idea is that you sit comfortably, you take a really, a few deep breaths to center yourself, get grounded, and then you just begin passing the object back and forth between your hands, focusing your attention on the sensation of the object of your palms in your palms, and the rhythmic movement of your hands. Now, what you might want to do right before this is think about if you're doing it, you can do this anyway, even if you're not anxious. But say you're having an anxious moment and you're just really, you know, over the top. What you can do is just rate your anxiety from zero to ten, and you can engage in this process. And as you continue this motion of passing this object from palm to palm, you may notice a gradual shift in your level of anxiety. But really what you're focusing on is the object passing back and forth in your hands. The repetitive action of passing this object between your hands. Not only does it help distract your mind from anxious thoughts, but it brings your focus into the present moment.

Additionally, the bilateral stimulation activates the body's relaxation response. This leads to a sense of calm and groundedness. But why does this actually work? Why does this simple technique work? Well, it really comes down to the brain's response to sensory input. By engaging multiple senses and stimulating both sides of our brain, both hemispheres of the brain, bilateral stimulation disrupts that pattern of anxiety and activates neural pathways that are associated with relaxation and well being. Isn't that cool? Over time, with consistent practice, this can lead to lasting changes in the brain's response to stress. After you maybe do this for a few moments, maybe three, four, five minutes, rate your anxiety again. See how it feels. Once you incorporate this practice into your daily routine, it really can be a powerful tool for managing your high functioning anxiety.

Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed at work. Maybe you're struggling with racing thoughts at night, or you're experiencing a kind of a temporary moment of even, like, panic. It feels like, hey, just take a few minutes, pass an object between your hands. It can provide a much needed sense of relief and control, convincing your brain that everything is calm and okay, and you're giving it biofeedback in the moment for basically rest, relaxation, and intentional groundedness. Remember, managing anxiety is really an ongoing journey. It's really essential to explore different types of techniques and what works best for you. But by harnessing the principles of recognizing that there's neuroplasticity going on behind the scenes and incorporating really simple yet effective tools like this one of bilateral stimulation, you really can empower yourself to take control of your anxiety and cultivate a greater peace of mind. It's really exciting to think that we have these things at our disposal in a way that allows us to really harness, really harness our minds, really harness our ability to manage ourselves in a way that serves us.

So I hope you found this exploration of neuroplasticity and, you know, a different way to look at how to get some anxiety relief in the moment when you need it. And until then, take care of yourselves and remember that we all have the power to rewire our own brains and rewrite our stories. I'll see you next time. Ahui ho. And you have a wonderful day. Aloha. Okay, that's a wrap for this week.

The Anxiety Ease podcast is produced by myself and the music is provided by Pixabay.
For more episodes or to get in touch anytime, you can visit my website, drlisahartwell.com. And if you do like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes. It really helps us out a lot. Also, if you want to see where you fall in the continuum of your high functioning anxiety, head on over to the link that's found in the show notes heartwellanxietyassessment.com.