Restless: How do you calm down?

Always feel like you need to do something different? If you sit still you need to move. If you meet up with a friend you actually need to meet up with another friend, or even find new friends. You've started the garden, then suddenly decide to paint your window frames. You scurry from place to place and there is no string to your behavior. Even lying in bed and falling asleep peacefully is a big task.

Are you always restless? Then continue reading this blog to see the ways you can calm down

Being restless: what is that?

Being restless often means feeling like you need to do something different, but you don't always know what.

Therefore, being restless can be incredibly annoying because you don't have a clear goal to move toward. This can also cause you to shoot off in all directions as described in the introduction to this blog.

In some cases, agitation can also be noticed by those around you. Your partner, friends or family may then report to you that you have been acting so restless lately. Especially when people around you notice that you are restless, it is time to take steps. In fact, according to some scientists, this is 1 symptom of a mixed anxiety and depression disorder. This can be a precursor to a true anxiety disorder or depression. So if you can intervene even then you will prevent bigger problems.

In addition, your restlessness can also be more internal. Your thoughts are flying in all directions and you have the restlessness more in your body. For example, you feel the need to move. In many cases, you then start moving your foot or sit all the time tapping on a pen or something similar.

Causes of restlessness

Unrest can be caused by many factors, including:

• Stress
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Concerns
• Open Narcissism

Unrest and stress

Stress is a state in which your body produces all kinds of chemicals to do something, such as fight, freeze or flee. This can make you very restless, especially if, for example, you have a sedentary job in which actual fighting or running plays no role while you get that signal from your body.

Restlessness and anxiety

Anxiety is a trigger for stress and therefore causes the same reaction as stress. Especially with social anxieties, such as agoraphobia, fear of public speaking, or similar conditions, you may experience increased restlessness. This is because, while you can often rationally realize that your fear is unfounded and that you can simply do what you need to do, your subconscious mind holds you back. You become, as it were, blocked, and this causes a feeling of restlessness.

Restlessness and depression

As you’ve read, restlessness can be a precursor to depression. In this case, the restlessness may be your body’s way of signaling that you need to approach things differently than you currently do. Do you do a lot of things that actually make you feel bad? If so, the restlessness may be your body’s way of telling you to prioritize yourself and to listen more closely to your feelings.

Restlessness and Worry

Do you have a lot on your mind? That can, of course, cause a great deal of anxiety. When facing financial problems, people often work overtime, but if there simply isn’t any work available, that can be incredibly frustrating. Someone in your family has a problem, and you’d love to solve it for them, but ultimately, that person really has to tackle the problem themselves. The result is that you start worrying about someone else’s future and can’t fall asleep because of it.

Unrest and open narcissism

Restlessness can also be a symptom of overt narcissism. In this case, you’re someone who is narcissistic and extroverted. There are also introverted narcissists, but they’re often not restless. The restlessness may stem from the fact that you want to achieve certain goals, but progress isn’t happening fast enough. For example, the people you need to help you achieve these goals are taking too long. This makes you extremely impatient and restless.

What to do about anxiety?

There are several ways to banish restlessness from your life. You have techniques for this that are very practical, but it's best to start by removing the cause.

Removing the cause of anxiety

Anxiety, stress, and worries all have a trigger rooted in how you view the world and how you think the world thinks. Anxiety, stress, and worries arise when something in your life doesn’t align with those beliefs about how the world works.

Therefore, it is important to find out why you are getting anxiety, stress or worry from that situation and whether it makes sense.

A hypnotist can help you with this. During hypnosis, you can find out what triggers fear, stress and worry. This can be done, for example, with a Socratic Conversation in which the why question is repeated several times. This allows you to go to your deepest beliefs and find out what these beliefs are based on.

This knowledge alone can cause beliefs to change and reduce your anxiety, stress and worry.

Is this alone not enough? If so, the hypnotherapist can help you with various techniques to become less troubled by beliefs that block you from getting rid of the restless feeling. This can be done, for example, through hypnotic suggestions that you can repeat at home or through visualizations on how to deal with stressful/anxious/worrying events.

Hypnosis also has a supportive role in the treatment of depressive symptoms. This is because in depression, the focus is often on everything that is not fun and stupid or annoying. Hypnosis helps you to shift your attention to what is going well, and that will be more than you think.

Hypnosis can also help narcissists feel less agitated. Achieving goals is very important if you are openly narcissistic, but often you turn to other people to do this. The hypnotist can help you strengthen self-esteem and self-empowerment. This allows you to achieve your goals with less help from others. In doing so, you can also adjust your goals to what you want to achieve in your life, rather than what success is according to the social ladder.

Techniques for calming down

In addition to addressing the root cause, there are also more direct ways to alleviate anxiety. Research on stressful medical professions shows that dentists use exercise and socializing as techniques to alleviate feelings of anxiety.

Sports against anxiety

Unrest caused by anxiety and stress creates a physical sensation that makes you have to move. After all, you have to fight or flee. One way to get rid of that physical feeling of restlessness is to start moving, such as in the gym, in the woods or in the swimming pool. By moving, you burn, as it were, the substances that tell you to move.

In addition, you produce happy chemicals in your brain that allow you to hang out on your couch or sleep soundly after exercising with a satisfied and peaceful feeling.

Socializing against anxiety

Distraction can also help well against agitation. Meeting with friends and family can distract you from feeling restless. In doing so, friends and family can help you relax and even help you find a solution to your restlessness; after all, they know you best.

Mindfulness against restlessness

In addition to exercise and socializing, mindfulness can also be very helpful in combating restlessness. For example, if you’re doing something and suddenly feel that sense of restlessness creeping up on you, you can use mindfulness to stay aware of it.

Mindfulness is a technique that needs practice, though. Therefore, it is wise to start with mindfulness meditation. With mindfulness meditation, for example, you engage in folding laundry and as you do this you focus on the input your senses give you, the feel of the laundry, the smell, the warmth around you. When you notice your thoughts wandering you focus back on the here and now.

Practicing this form of meditation makes it easier to do it consciously in addition to meditating, giving you more peace of mind.

Mindfulness, socializing and exercise are techniques that temporarily eliminate agitation and thus are especially helpful if you have not yet eliminated the cause of agitation. If you have not found a clear cause of your restlessness, a hypnotist can help you with this. This is ultimately the best route to get rid of it.

Would you like to learn more about mental techniques for self-influence? Then come to a workshop and check out the other events offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

Sources:

http://www.jeed.in/article.asp?issn=0974-7761;year=2016;volume=6;issue=2;spage=61;epage=66;aulast=Vinson

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00406-016-0684-7

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656697921760