How to: Replace anxiety with relaxed vigilance (parasympatchetic activation)

Root Cause

Being stuck in “fight or flight” response. Body/mind builds a reflex habit to react from a place of fear/worry/stress instead of calm

Approach

We can retrain/replace our habit of dealing with stress/anxiety with relaxed vigilance – nervous system self regulation.

We accidentally train ourselves to hold stress in difficult situations. Instead, we just need to train ourselves to maintain a calm nervous system in difficult situations. It’s what medical professionals and emergency responders train to do. 

When you calm your body, you send a message through your vegus nerve to the brain to calm your mind as well. 

Another pro-tip: Retrain to recognize being “nervous” to being “excited” instead. It’s easier to recognize and have the positive frame of excited, and drop it quickly too.

What we want: Parasympathetic response as our primary response. Our parasympathetic response slows things down and calms the mind and body, otherwise we get stuck in fight or flight. When stuck in fight or flight relaxation doesn’t resolve the underlying issue, it just distracts us but issue stays there and causes us anxiety. 

Tips to default to parasympathetic response

A paramedic commented that the best advice he received in paramedic training was: “Your patient’s emergency is not your emergency. Skill saves, not emotions.”

Keep that in mind, avoid getting wrapped up in other people’s stressful situations and avoid taking the emotions on personally. You’ll be far more able to help from a place of calm and steadiness.

Watch the video below from Emma McAdam, LMFT. There’s a great practice at the end as well. Then come back and read the rest of this article.

Practice:

Use a grounding skill. Willingness. Be present. Be open. Ground yourself on acceptance first – not force. 

Practice/check-in every 15 minutes for first week until it becomes habit:

Reflection

As my close friend John reminds me: “Stress is a choice.” We have a false view that if the outside situation is stressful, then we must be stressed internally. But is that actually true? It’s not. We generate a stress response inside our own bodies. And that’s where we have power and control. And if it feels like we NEED to be stressed, or it’s dangerous not to be. Know this:

It turns out we generally perform better if we’re relaxed. We make better decisions, and can even respond faster.

World-class athletes perform best by being as calm as possible. I heard about an interview with olympic gold-medalist and champion runner Florence Joyner (AKA “Flo-Jo”). Flo-Jo was asked what she’s thinking when she’s in the lead and needs to keep out front of the runners right behind, breathing down her neck. Turns out, it wasn’t stress keeping her in the lead. She was thinking: “Lord help me stay relaxed!”

Stressing would have caused Flo-Jo to lose her lead. Relaxation helps us perform at our peak.

We don’t need to take stress inside of us. Be busy and vigilant while maintaining a calm nervous system. Practice relaxed vigilance. 

For more on relaxed vigilance, check out The Essential Skill to Regulate Your Nervous System – Relaxed Vigilance vs. Hypervigilance 21/30 by Emma McAdam, LMFT.