Feel Worse Doing Simple or Normal Tasks

Treatment

When other factors cause or aggravate this anxiety symptom, addressing the specific cause can reduce and eliminate feeling worse doing simple or normal tasks.

When an active stress response causes this symptom, ending the active stress response will cause this acute anxiety symptom to subside.

Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and needn’t be a cause for concern.

When hyperstimulation (chronic stress) causes feeling worse doing simple or normal tasks, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.

You can eliminate hyperstimulation by:

• Reducing stress.
• Containing anxious behavior (since anxiety creates stress).
• Regular deep relaxation.
• Avoiding stimulants.
• Regular light to moderate exercise.
• Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
• Passively accepting your symptoms until they subside.
• Being patient as your body recovers.

Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.

Recovery Support members can view chapters 5, 6, 7, 14 and more for more detailed information about recovering from hyperstimulation and anxiety disorder.

As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms, including this one.

Symptoms of chronic stress subside as the body regains its normal, non-hyperstimulated health.

However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected.

As long as the body is even slightly hyperstimulated, it can present symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including this one.

Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with recovery.

Passively accepting your symptoms – allowing them to persist without reacting to, resisting, worrying about, or fighting them – while doing your recovery work will cause their cessation in time.

Acceptance, practice, and patience are key to recovery.

Short-term strategies

Even though eliminating hyperstimulation will eliminate chronic anxiety symptoms, including feeling worse doing simple or normal tasks, some people have found the following strategies helpful.

However, keep in mind that each person can have a unique symptom experience since each person is somewhat physically, chemically, psychologically, and emotionally unique. What might work for one person might not for another.

• Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing – can relax the body and nervous system so that they aren’t as reactive. Relaxed diaphragmatic breathing, when done properly, causes the body to produce a rest response, which counteracts the effects of the stress response.

• Regular deep relaxation – routinely practicing a deep relaxation technique can help soothe the nervous system and body. As the body’s stimulation diminishes, simple tasks have less impact. Remember, the nervous system does its best repair work when the body is at deep rest. The more deep rest you give your body, the more opportunity it has to recover.

• Avoid stimulants – stimulants, such as caffeine, stimulate the nervous system and body, which is counterproductive to recovery from hyperstimulation. Avoiding stimulants will also give the body the opportunity to recover.

• Regular good sleep (between 6.5 – 8 hours per night) – sleep deprivation and accruing sleep debt can cause the body’s cortisol levels to rise. Since cortisol is a stress hormone, as cortisol rises, so does the body’s level of stimulation. Getting regular good sleep can keep cortisol levels from elevating, which can also foster recovery from hyperstimulation.

• Identifying and addressing the underlying factors of your anxiety – the underlying factors of anxiety are the reasons the body pays such a high-stress price. Identifying and addressing your underlying factors can reduce and eliminate your invisible stressors. As stress diminishes, the body has more time to recover from hyperstimulation. As stimulation diminishes, so do symptoms of hyperstimulation, including feeling much worse when doing simple tasks.

• Have fun – having fun reduces stress. As your stress diminishes, you will feel better and regain your normal energy…making simple and normal tasks less taxing.

• Laugh – laughter is a proven stress reducer.

• Rest and relax – taking things easy calms the nervous system and body. For example, having a scented bath, doing some light reading, and enjoying a fun movie can help the nervous system and body reduce its level of stimulation.

• Avoid overly dramatic movies, plays, concerts, sports events, and other events – engaging in an overly dramatic activity can stimulate the nervous system. Once your nervous system is healthy, you can resume these types of activities. But in the meantime, engaging in overly dramatic events can be like adding fuel to the hyperstimulation fire.

• Reduce stress – chronic stress, and the stress hormones it produces, is the cause of hyperstimulation and its symptoms, including this one. Reducing stress is the antidote to stress-response hyperstimulation and its sensations and symptoms. The more stress you can reduce and eliminate, the faster your body can recover and return to normal, non-hyperstimulated health.

• Slow down a hectic lifestyle – the body produces stress hormones to help you keep up with a hectic pace. Slowing down your pace can reduce stress hormone production and, therefore, stimulation. Adopting a slower-paced lifestyle can eliminate unnecessary stress responses, helping your body calm down and return to normal stimulation and health.

• Contain your apprehensive behavior – apprehensive behavior is one of the main drivers of chronic stress. Containing your apprehensive behavior can reduce and eliminate unnecessary stress responses. Containment is one of the key principles to recovery and lasting anxiety disorder-free success.

Remember, distressing, fretting, and worrying about stress-caused sensations and symptoms INCREASES stress. To succeed, you want to eliminate your distressing, fretting, and worrying so that your body CAN calm down and return to normal health in time. Containment, practice, patience, and passive acceptance are keys to recovery. The better you are at these, the more opportunity your body has to recover.

Therapy

Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.

Addressing your underlying factors (Level Two recovery) is most important if you want lasting success.

Addressing Level Two recovery can help you:

• Contain anxious behavior.
• Become unafraid of anxiety symptoms and the strong feelings of anxiety.
• End anxiety symptoms.
• Successfully address the underlying factors that so often cause issues with anxiety.
• End what can feel like out-of-control worry.

All our recommended anxiety therapists have had anxiety disorder and overcame it. Their personal experience with anxiety disorder and their Master's Degree and above professional training give them insight other therapists don't have.

If you want to achieve lasting success over anxiety disorder, any one of our recommended therapists would be a good choice.

Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to treat anxiety disorder, especially if you have persistent symptoms and difficulty containing anxious behavior, such as worry [7][8][9].

In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.

Research has shown that therapy is the most effective treatment for anxiety disorder, and distance therapy (via phone or the Internet) is equally, if not more effective, than face-to-face in-person therapy [10][11][12].