How to Overcome Anxiety: Utah’s 5.7 Earthquake

I woke from a sound sleep as the whole house shook, it was like the walls were liquid, shaking with  fear. The seconds seemed endless in the moments of it. Then the shaking of the walls stopped and there was silence. And in the silence an air of uncertainty.

Then another rumble, not as intense but enough to re-activate the nervous system with another shot of adrenaline. A few more milder shakes and the house stopped moving.

I suddenly have more empathy for people living in California and earthquake zones.

So in Utah not only is there a virus scare, global quarantine that we’ve never seen before, but also Utah had its big quake that people have been talking about “the big one” for years.

WoW! When a global crisis hits, Utah be like – “hey its crisis time – let’s add an earthquake just for good measure.” It was a 5.7 earthquake, my house was 3 miles from the epicenter.

Each aftershock sent a spike of adrenaline back to my nervous system. Even though at the conscious level I knew aftershocks are part of the aftermath, my nervous system responded automatically.  This recurrence of stress or anxiety are the triggers.

Triggers are the people, events or anything in your environment that causes a resurgence of the fear response and puts the body into the fight or flight mode.

Anxiety is more intense than your average stress response.

The body is getting the signal that we are in immediate danger and it responds with the fight or flight response.

  • Heart rate increases
  • Blood pressure increases
  • We have shallow breathing
  • Our logic shuts down as blood moves from the brain to skeletal muscles
  • The body releases stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol

If you’ve had a strong anxiety response or PTSD symptoms, you’ll need to take extra care of your emotional system and nervous system. Fortunately there are processes developed by the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming to change how the brain codes this response, overcome traumas and even PTSD.

In fact recent research has approved through double blind studies, the core 5 NLP Processes for use with veterans of PTSD, check out the NLP Research and Recognition Project. Master NLP Practitioners have been using these methods for years in helping people through deeply ingrained anxieties and traumas. Its wonderful when research catches up and validates what we already know what works.

In response to the high levels of anxiety and stress during these uncertain and chaotic times, I’ve been adding strategies and videos to my Youtube Channel.

On my Youtube Channel, hit “subscribe” so you get all the updates, click here

For those of us with past history of PTSD our nervous systems are a bit high strung – as well as with the global environment as we wait out the virus.  Check out the Hypnosis Meditation The Centering Tree on my Youtube Channel