The Four Options for any Problem (Linehan, 1993)

Managing moderate to intense anxiety often involves a combination of techniques that address both the mind and body. Here are some effective strategies:

1. Breathing Exercises: Practice slow, deep breathing to calm your nervous system. For example, inhale for a count of four, hold for four, and exhale for four.

2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Tense and then relax each muscle group in your body, starting from your toes and working upward.

3. Grounding Techniques: Use the 5-4-3-2-1 method to focus on your senses—identify 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, and 1 you taste.

4. Mindfulness and Meditation: Engage in mindfulness practices to stay present and reduce anxious thoughts. Apps like Headspace or Calm can be helpful.

5. Physical Activity: Exercise, even a short walk, can release endorphins and reduce anxiety levels.

6. Cognitive Behavioural Techniques: Challenge negative thoughts by questioning their validity and replacing them with more balanced perspectives.

7. Healthy Lifestyle Choices: Maintain a consistent sleep schedule, eat nutritious meals, and limit caffeine and alcohol intake.

8. Journaling: Write down your thoughts and feelings to process them and identify triggers.

9. Social Support: Talk to trusted friends, family, or support groups to share your experiences and gain perspective.

10. Professional Help: If anxiety persists, consider seeking therapy or counselling. Techniques like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or medication prescribed by a professional can be highly effective.

When traditional strategies don’t seem effective for managing intense, chronic anxiety, there are additional approaches you can explore:

a. Therapeutic Modalities:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Focuses on accepting anxious thoughts rather than fighting them, while committing to actions aligned with your values.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): Combines mindfulness with skills for emotional regulation and distress tolerance.

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR): Often used for trauma-related anxiety, it helps reprocess distressing memories.

b. Medication:

Anti-anxiety medications or antidepressants may be prescribed by a psychiatrist. These can help manage symptoms when therapy alone isn’t sufficient.

c. Lifestyle Adjustments:

Explore dietary changes, such as reducing sugar and processed foods, which can impact mood and anxiety levels.

Incorporate consistent physical activity tailored to your preferences.

d. Support Groups:

Joining a group for individuals with anxiety can provide a sense of community and shared understanding.

e. Intensive Programs:

Consider enrolling in an intensive outpatient program (IOP) or residential treatment program for anxiety, which offers structured and comprehensive care.

f. Emerging Treatments:

Research into treatments like ketamine therapy or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) shows promise for treatment-resistant anxiety.

g. Alternative Therapies:

Practices like acupuncture, yoga, or tai chi can promote relaxation and reduce anxiety.

Biofeedback and neurofeedback can help you gain control over physiological responses to stress. They are techniques that help individuals gain control over certain physiological and mental processes. Here’s a breakdown:

i. Biofeedback is a mind-body therapy that uses sensors to monitor physiological functions like heart rate, muscle tension, breathing, or skin temperature. The goal is to provide real-time feedback to help individuals learn how to regulate these functions consciously. For example:

Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback: Helps manage stress by teaching control over heart rate.

Muscle Tension Biofeedback: Useful for conditions like chronic pain or tension headaches.

By practicing biofeedback, people can develop skills to manage stress, anxiety, and other health conditions2.

ii. Neurofeedback, a specialised form of biofeedback, focuses on brain activity. It uses electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor brainwaves and provides feedback to help individuals regulate their brain function. For instance:

It can help with conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

During a session, individuals might watch visual cues or listen to sounds that reflect their brainwave activity, learning to adjust their mental state for better focus or relaxation4.

Both techniques are non-invasive and can be effective tools for improving mental and physical well-being.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s necessary to consult with a mental health professional or medical doctor to tailor these options to your specific needs.

I would infer that you may be depleted in some area of your life. Generally, when I am having any of these experiences I can recognise that my basic needs, and possibly even transformative, needs are not met. My basic needs are food and water, adequate sleep, shelter and safety, social connection (belonging), and esteem needs (e.g., self-respect, self-worth, self-competence, mastery and achievement, integrity, sense of freedom and independence etc.). Perhaps only when all my deficiency needs are met, and I’m experiencing dissatisfaction with my growth needs, do I feel Restless, Irritable, and Discontent in this area of my life – however I assume some would argue that if I am feeling that way when attending to my growth needs, then I may have slipped back to Esteem Needs. You can look up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for a visual representation if you like, using a search engine. Below is a GIF that I created to educate people on how we can buffer ourselves to vulnerabilities. It’s very telling to go into the body when we haven’t eat for a while, may be we’re running on caffeine, and you can feel the restlessness in the body. We have to fuel up when we’re hungry to buffer ourselves from becoming irritable and restless. If you’re feeling discontent with life, I would suggest a social activity, play time with friends, working on a project of some kind, or getting involved in your community.

Hello readers. I hope you are well. I imagine some of you are struggling and some of you are flourishing. Life consists of both. As humans, we relish pleasurable feelings and experiences and we tend to dislike uncomfortable emotions and experiences. I get it. I am just like you. We share this. I hope that provides some comfort.

What is human development?

Human development can be described as “systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception and death, or from “womb to tomb”” (Sigelman, De George, Cunial, & Rider, 2019, p. 3).

Human development involves the continuities (i.e., what remains consistent across time) and the systematic changes (i.e., patterns of change that are expected to come in order across time) that one experiences throughout the lifespan. Based on my education, there are three domains of continuity and change: 1. The physical and biological, 2. Cognitive (i.e., mind processes/thinking), and 3. Psychosocial and emotional. Let’s open these one at a time.

Physical development includes:

• Physical and biological processes (e.g., genetic inheritance).
• Growth of the body and its organs.
• Functioning of physiological systems (e.g., brain).
• Health and wellness.
• Physical signs of ageing and changes in motor abilities.

Cognitive development includes:

Perception: the sensing of stimuli in our environment (internal and external), sending that information to the brain to be identified and interpreted in order to represent and understand our experience of the world and give it meaning. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system.

Attention: the ability to actively (and often, involuntarily) process specific information in the environment while tuning out other details. Attention is a very interesting cognitive process because when we bring mindfulness to our thoughts we become open to the direction and attention of our mind. Remember this: where attention goes, energy flows.

Language: very broadly, Language is a communication system that involves using words (i.e., sounds arranged together) and systematic rules to organise those words into sentences and meaning, to transmit information from one individual to another. I was never very interested in language when I was studying at university however that has changed. We used language and concepts to talk to ourselves, about other people, and it is open to misinterpretation, error, and oftentimes language can be used as a means to hurt people or … bring us closer together.

Learning: very broadly defined as a relatively permanent change in behaviour, thinking, and understanding as a result of experience. Experience is everything from formal education to unique personal experience. We learn from each other, the world around us, books, movies, self-reflection and education etc. All of which are experiences.

Memory: Memory refers to the processes that are used to gather, organise, store, retain, and later retrieve information. I’m sure you’ve all seen a tv show or read a book about a person with Amnesia or Alzheimer’s disease. Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t have the function of memory. I wouldn’t be able to type this very well, I don’t think. I wouldn’t remember my loved ones or what was dangerous in my environment. I know we all have unpleasant memories too and that may feel like a negative evolutionary by-product – however it is actually designed to protect us. Memory is finite – we actually forget a lot of stuff, or perhaps more accurately, we do not have the capacity to store and recall everything we experience.

Intelligence: I would like to reframe intelligence from what might be a common belief. Intelligence does not mean academically gifted as is considered valuable in Western society. I think Olympians and caregivers/parents have an intelligence that I do not because I haven’t learned their skills. Intelligence involves the ability to learn (i.e., sport, academics, the arts, swimming, survival, interpersonal skills), emotional knowledge, creativity, and adaptation to meet the demands of the environment effectively

Creativity: I consider creativity to be an evolutionary gift of our imagination, providing humans with the ability to generate and recognize ideas, consider alternatives, think of possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. Creativity can be stunted when we are struggling or caught in reactivity to external pressures or perceived stress.

Problem solving: is a process – yes, a cognitive one but also a behavioural process. It is the act of defining a problem; determining the cause of the problem; identifying, prioritizing, and selecting alternatives for a solution; and implementing a solution. Problem solving can be both creative or stress driven. I like to say whenever I am solving a problem I am also making a decision. A decision of mine is a choice. At university, our problem solving lessons were coincided with decision making which is why I think of it that way.

Psychosocial development involves:

Aspects of the self (i.e., your identity – which may change over time), and social and interpersonal interactions which include motives, emotions, personality traits, morality, social skills, and relationships, and roles played in the family and in the larger society. This is a huge area to be explored. I will endeavour to elaborate on our psychosocial development in later blogs.

In the late 1950’s, a German-American developmental psychologist named Erik Erikson created a theory for human psychosocial development across the lifespan. His theory suggests that human personality develops in a predetermined order through 8 stages of psychosocial development. See the table below: