Anxiety and Tension Part #1 by Jessie Casteel

Anxiety and Tension blog by Jessie Casteel

Where are my keys? I am late for work, Timmy can't find his homework and I have 5 minutes to drive across town in rush traffic to get him to school. My boss is a jerk and I can't find my keys. Does this sound like a typical morning in your home?

We have more stressors now than ever before and with nearly everyone that surrounds us on a daily basis being stressed out and an anxiety time bomb we pick up on this negative energy and it affects us even when the stress and anxiety isn't directed at us. Why is it that we can't learn to live a more rewarding life of being grateful for our blessings and substitute the negative stress and anxiety for the good stress and anxiety?

What? Good stress and anxiety you say. Allow me to explain further. You remember the times when you and your friends would be out since daybreak playing basketball or kayaking? How about yard work all day. You get home and your "Beat" but it was a good tired. Your exhaustion was a strange kind of sensuous pleasure that seemed to fill the whole body with a sleepy warmth, a sensation of really having lived.

For most of us that good tired feeling has become all too rare an experience. Now when we feel tired its just plain tired, worn out, dragged down and done in. That's mostly because of all the many causes of fatigue, physical exertion is the least common. Exhaustion due to stress and tension caused by mental and emotional pressure is far more common in today’s world than physical fatigue. The good news is that tension fatigue responds very well to one simple antidote: exercise.

Our ancestors long ago began to develop a complex response to impending danger known as the fight or flight (andreneric) response. Noise outside of a cave entrance put the cave dwellers body on instant emergency alert. He was ready to take on whatever was out there or in the case of a larger animal that was too big tuck tail and run. Whatever the case all that built up tension would be completely drained out of his system by the time his actions where completed.

Today the world is a different place and with a shortage of T-Rex's along side the fact that most of us aren't as active as we should be. So today’s working moms and desk jockeys has to make do with a chronically alerted fight or flight response. The physiological solution is exactly what the cave folks did: exercise. The benefit of a short exercise break is probably as much psychological as it is physiological. It can rejuvenate and revitalize by giving you a new perspective on things. Just by breaking up your day it will help you get through the day and offer a much needed good uninterrupted nights sleep.

Part two of this blog will talk about sleep further.