How To Calm Down

Have you ever had that experience when you’re looking for something important in your house or office and you can’t find it? And then you start to panic and can’t calm down?

That happened to me a week ago. I was looking for a very important file that contained information that could not be replaced.

I work at home, so I started to rush around the house, looking in places where I thought the file would be but not finding it. Thoughts of all the problems I’d have if I couldn’t find it flooded my mind. I went back to the same places over and over again to see if I’d overlooked the file somehow, but it still wasn’t there.

I began to panic. My heart was pounding. My mind raced and my thoughts spun me into increasing anxiety.

“Where the h… is the d… thing? Why is this happening to me? I don’t have time for this! What am I going to do if I can’t find it? Why isn’t it here?” And so on…

In the old days, before I learned how to calm down, I would have gone into a frenzy of activity and torn the house apart looking for that file, all the while feeling like I was running a marathon at gun-point. I might or might not have found the file, but I definitely would have exhausted myself physically and emotionally looking for it.

Fortunately, now that I’ve had a few years of education about how the brain works, I realized that my amygdala, the alarm center of my brain, was going haywire and that it was over-reacting. I mean, come on, it was only a misplaced file confronting me, not a sabre-toothed tiger!

But my limbic system was reacting as if there really was a tiger. When this happens, the blood flows away from your forebrain, which is the part of your brain that allows you to make rational decisions. Instead, as the emotional limbic system takes over, the blood goes to your muscles so you can fight or flee, because your amygdala mistakenly believes your survival is at stake.

Result? Panic or, at the very least, extreme anxiety.

Can you do anything to calm down? YES!

Here’s what I did…

I stopped zooming around the house and made myself stand still. Then I put my hand across my forehead and held it there for a minute or so.

Well, that sounds pretty useless, doesn’t it?

Ah, but there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Here’s the secret: There’s a bony ridge on your forehead that curves out about an inch above your eyebrows. Under that ridge are some neuro-vascular points (neuro – nervous system, vascular – vein). When you hold those points by putting your hand or fingers on them, the blood is drawn back into the front of your head.

What does that do? It reactivates your forebrain and allows you to think clearly again, instead of being caught in the emotional limbic system panic reaction.

So, when I put my hand on my forehead on that fateful day, after maybe 30 seconds or a minute, I started to calm down and the panic subsided. It was like my brain woke up again. Then I was able to reconstruct what had happened the last time I handled that file, and I went straight to the place where it was “hiding.” (Which was none of the places I’d already looked!)

I learned this technique on how to calm down from Donna Eden who is a well-known energy healer and author. Quite frankly, I was surprised at how well it worked.

Anyway, now it’s your turn. The next time you feel yourself going into that frenzied spiral of panic, put your hand gently across your forehead above your eyebrows and hold it there while you take some deep refreshing breaths. Keep holding your forehead until you feel calmer. Then leave me a comment below and let me know how it worked out for you.