Gregory P. Nelson

View Original

How To Stay Centered and Grounded in a Time of Upheaval, Stress and Anxiety

We are living in such high emotion and intense feeling times! I read today that crises go through three stages: emergency phase, regression phase, and recovery phase. Specific emotions are involved with each phase; and we all tend to go through the phases sometimes at different times. No wonder it's so challenging to navigate our relationships not just with the people we know but with people we meet along the way, whether on Facebook and social media or beyond. Tempers rise, anger increases, anxiety and uncertainty increase our stress, and we can invariably lash out - we're feeling caged in, sometimes attacked by others, feeling misunderstood by some, violated or judged or diminished. Our feelings these days are intensified! We're all experiencing this.

We have to make use of the tools at our disposal in order to manage our stress, anxiety, and big feelings! If we don't manage, we will be managed. Just look around our society these days and see the glaring results. 

I've been thinking a lot the last few months about what practices and tools we can access to help us manage our feelings proactively and effectively. I put together a playlist in my youtube channel of 5 simple practices we can leverage - breathing, body movement, gratitude, meditation, and taking one day at a time. I'm getting good response from people about these short videos. These are really useful, scientifically-proven ways to manage our stress and anxiety. I'd love to have you access them and let me know what you think and feel with them. Hope you enjoy it!

And let's all be as intentional as we can to lower the emotional temperature all round us, including inside of us. We can do it. And we can encourage each other toward that place of groundedness in more peace and calm.