What works best for you to calm down your nervous system, and reduce stress & anxiety?
With so many external stimuli and input we get overwhelmed easily as highly sensitive/deep sensory processing persons.
There are so many options to calm down our nervous system, and reduce distress and anxiety. Which methods do you prefer? Which technique works best for you?
Emotional freedom technique (EFT) – Tapping – By tapping on specific points on your body you can lower your cortisol, distress and anxiety levels in a relatively short time. There are many instructions out there on YouTube, or written guides, easily findable via Google or other search engines (I love DuckDuckGo!)
Meditation – I prefer the most simple meditations: sitting with the spine straight up, focusing on one point, observing the thoughts and not actively being engaged with the thoughts, trying to not think about anything, while focusing on my breath. Lots of guided meditations can help, when I’m so out of balance that a voice is helping. Still, voices give another external stimuli to analyze with my HSP supercomputer brain, so I prefer the most simple type of meditation as described above.
Experiencing nature & looking at natural patterns – Not only walks in the forest or on fields help me. Of course, walking around in nature adds some oxygen input and movement. But also simply looking at natural patterns can help me, reducing stress and anxiety or getting back into internal balance. Looking at a plant or observing an animal alone can help a lot as well. There are even scientific analyses supporting this.
Looking at fractals and other natural patterns reflecting in artworks can have a similar effect. One of the most famous examples for this are the painting of Jackson Pollock:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-fractals-are-so-soothing/514520/
Also, some people report this works with Sacred Geometry (Flower of Life, Sri Yantra, Seed of Life, etc), as they represent the underlying patterns found everywhere in nature.
Cutting out or reducing caffeine
I try to drink as little caffeine or no caffeine at all. Did you know cacao has a bit of caffeine? 😀 Especially we HSPs with our mirror neurons working differently react more intensely, cortisol levels rise, etc… Always better to get another push of energy from within, than from yet another coffee, or even energy drink…
Havening (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havening) Havening, is an alternative therapy developed by Ronald Ruden and his brother Steve Ruden; it relies on “amygdala depotentiation” that purportedly can help people with psychological problems, particularly those related to phobias, post-traumatic stress and anxiety.
EMDR (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing)
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the patient in one type of bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye movement or tapping either side of the body