Anxiety can be paralysing, and can range from a general feeling of uneasiness to a full blown panic attack where someone can hyperventilate and pass out. Now before we get started I’m not going to sit here and talk about how I get it and everyone needs to accept mental illness and you should feel sorry for me blah blah blah, like so many people do on the internet, because guess what? Everyone gets scared, every one doubts themselves.

What I am going to do though, is talk about the physiology and psychology of anxiety and talk about methods for moving past it. This article is based off the knowledge I have gathered through my studies of psychology both formal and informal as well as my own personal experiences and those of others, which I have observed over the years. Keep in mind this is a fairly brief overview and I could write a book on this topic alone but have had to condense it into a blog piece.

Let’s start out with what fear actually is. Fear is being scared of something that has not happened yet and possibly won’t. It could be a real danger, but often is one that you have conceived within your mind’s eye. I shall give you two examples, one is a real rational fear and one is not.

The first is, you have fallen from a tall building and with the ground rapidly approaching you become terrified that your life is about to end. Fair enough, it more than likely is, or you will at least break every bone in your body and spend the rest of your life feeding from a tube in a care facility.

The second is you are standing on a very tall observation platform which is completely enclosed but has a glass floor, terror overcomes you but this is completely irrational and that fear is based purely on an over active imagination because the reality is that you are at no actual risk.

The second is the fear that is played on with thrill rides at theme parks; they are essentially safe but scare the living crap out of people on a daily basis.

What happens though when this irrational fear creeps its way into other aspects of our life that hold even less risk? This is where the term anxiety[1] comes into play, fear of elevators, birds, talking to the opposite sex, going for a job interview, or public speaking? All of these have minor repercussions or miniscule risks involved, but fear arises from the little voice in your head that says ‘what if?’ and if you don’t have an acceptable answer then that fear will manifest and grow.

I will refer to this little voice as self talk as it is described by NLP developers Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Self talk is essentially the little voice that helps you decide to or not to do things, and when it is not aligned with your conscious desires then doubt is created which can then manifest in fear depending on the situation.

Fear is both a psychological and physiological response combined; this is both good and bad. Bad because it can become paralysing as one begets the other and it becomes an uncontrollable response. However, it is good because if you are aware of certain mental techniques you can prevent it from manifesting by controlling the psychological component and stopping the physiological response.

Physiologically fear is a hormonal stress response that is triggered by mental stimulus (stress can be caused by other internal and external stimuli that are not a function of thought). A fight or flight reaction to ensure the preservation of life in a dangerous situation. Anxiety though, lends itself towards being an imaginary manifestation of fear based upon negative thought patterns surrounding a particular subject or event. The problem is that, physiologically, your body cannot tell if the danger is real or imagined once the fear has manifested in your mind.

So what can we do about this? Well the first is to ensure the body isn’t overly stressed to begin with. Think about stress levels as a bucket with a small hole in it. Typically the bucket is relatively empty, something negative happens some water goes in, the bucket fills up a little but it’s all good and the level comes back down as it runs out. Now let’s say the hole is clogged up and the bucket it almost full, a negative though occurs and a bit of extra water flows in then BOOM next thing you know the bucket is over flowing and you are having a panic attack!

The reality is that lots of people live like this so no matter what you do mentally you are fighting a losing battle. Stress can be caused by a plethora of things both internally and externally so you need to gear your body up top deal with it. I have talked about this before in my stress and sleep blog. But essentially you want to make sure you have adequate vitamins and minerals in your diet like Vitamin D3[2], Magnesium[3] and ensuring your gut health is up to shape by taking a high quality probiotic.

However, let’s say your body is in order but your mind is running riot, what then? This is where mental training comes into it, learning how to think and using mental anchors to prevent negative thought patterns. You might be saying ‘I know how to think Cam’, and yeah you probably do but not how to do it properly or understand the power of thought and its ability to change physiological response. Most people think they know how to walk, run, throw and jump but they don’t, sure they can do it but they do it poorly. Just like most people think poorly.

When I worked with Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street) he taught me his anchoring technique he uses to manifest positive emotions before he would go on stage or make sales calls. This was very similar to a technique I used to use when I was competing in FMX, something I learned from reading Richard Bandlers work and one that I have seen many other athletes use a variation of over the years.

In short you need to decide on a trigger, be that sniffing a nasal inhaler (Jordan Belfort), hitting yourself in the thigh 3 times (me) or any other physical action that is unique and can be easily done. Smell is the strongest stimulus for anchoring but often athletes don’t have a luxury of carrying smelling salts when they need a kick of motivation so a physical action is the next best thing. Now, to begin securing your anchor manifest a positive memory, imagine yourself there in the moment and feel all the happiness and glory that came along with it. See the image in your mind’s eye and return to that moment thinking, feeling, smelling, and, seeing everything that happened. Now amplify that memory and make it bigger and brighter than before, now amplify it again and multiply all the feelings and sensations that come along with it. At the peak of the emotion perform your trigger action and open your eyes. Now repeat this 10 times daily for a week and you will have a super strong positive mental anchor to overcome adverse situations at your beck and call. In fact, years on from my riding career I can still slap my thigh 3 times and feel a euphoric excitement come over me.

This is just one of many tricks I have used with myself and my athletes to manifest positive mental thoughts to overcome fears and anxieties associated with, not only their sports, but lives in general. If you want to take your performance to the next level both physically and mentally then Actionsport Performance has the solution. To discover how you can join the success contact me here.

Train hard and be safe.

Your strength coach,

Cam

References

[1] Steimer, T. ‘The biology of fear- and anxiety-related behaviours’ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181681/

[2] Sepehrmanesh, Z, et al. Vitamin D Supplementation Affects the Beck Depression Inventory, Insulin Resistance, and Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26609167

[3] Tarasov E, et al. Magnesium deficiency and stress: Issues of their relationship, diagnostic tests, and approaches to therapy, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26591563