How to Reframe Your Nervous System

Feelings of stress and anxiety are sadly all too common for most of us and so pervasive are they in our everyday lives that we, or more accurately our nervous systems, have become very familiar with them. It might explain why it often feels easier and more comfortable to exist in a perma-stressed state than it does to relax and switch off. If that sounds like you, you’ll be pleased to know that there is something you can do about it. Read on to find out three ways to begin to reframe your nervous system and give stress the cold shoulder.

Acknowledge your stress

The first step in retraining your nervous system is to get comfortable acknowledging the stress you’re exposed to, and the easiest and more effective way to do that is to write it down. Getting it down on paper also eliminates the chance of you avoiding dealing with stressful or anxious thoughts and allowing them to fester, a habit which can often make a bad situation worse. Acknowledging your stresses and stressful thoughts will also help future-proof your anxiety by helping you spot any patterns that crop up.

Seek truth

It’s all too easy to let one negative thought spiral out of control and indeed, for the initial anxiety to quickly magnify ten-fold. One way to avoid this happening is to seek to get the truth out of your anxious feelings. Taking a more objective approach can help you take a step back and assess whether your worries are rooted in actual truth or whether it’s simply a perceived threat that you have made bigger. Demanding proof of yourself can take practise but once you do get into the habit, your constantly on-edge nervous system will thank you for it.

Find the “gift”

If our brains are wired to recognise stress ore readily than joy or positivity, then it’s little wonder that we automatically get into an anxious or negative headspace whenever we’re confronted with a threat. Although it takes time and practise, trying to find the gift or at the very least the challenge, in what you perceive to be stressful situations is a really useful tool in the reframing process. It doesn’t mean you need to be relentlessly and doggedly upbeat about every issue that comes your way, but it is amazing how this simple act soon becomes a habit that can drastically change how you respond to stress in your life.