Welcome to Calm Technologies

Calm Technologies is a synthesis of outcome driven, leading edge natural therapeutic techniques developed to alleviate stress related conditions such as; anger, anxiety, panic attacks, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and phobias.

With the mind body energy medicine model as its basis, calm technologies does not prescribe, diagnose, treat disease or emotions nor are they a form of psychotherapy. The conults addresses the mind-body connection which may include identifying 'stuck' or 'fixed' emotions called 'neuro emotional complexes' and focuses on bio-energetic imbalances often stimulated by emotions or stress and via these protocols promote the innate healing potential within each individual.

The Calm Technique methodologies draws on the science and common thread in all stress and anxiety related disorders (the fight flight response) with the science of how the brain works and its ability to create new neural pathways called neuroplasticity; the involvement of the human bio-energetic anatomy and how it can influence feelings and behaviour; and various assessment protocols to determine hidden contributing factors whether they be physical, mental or emotional with complementary medicine.

With two decades of experience and expertise in various natural therapy modalities and personal development interventions and acheiving outstanding results Lyn can assist you to transform counter-productive patterns and facilitate positive behavioural and psycho-emotional change.

To book an appointment or for a free no obligation chat call 02 9437 3373

The physiological reactions of the fight flight reflex

Blood is shunted to the brain and large muscle groups, and away from extremities, skin, and organs that are not currently serving the body. An area near the brain system, known as the reticular activating system, goes to work, causing a state of keen alertness as well as sharpening of hearing and vision. Energy-providing compounds of glucose and fatty acids are released into the bloodstream. The immune and digestive systems are temporarily shut down.

The body’s stress responses can be explained in three stages with acute stress affecting individuals in the short term and chronic stress affecting individuals in the long term.

Alarm - How the body reacts to a stressor (a stimulus that causes stress) real or imagined the body goes into a state of alarm. During this stage adrenaline is produced which brings about the fight-or-flight response which in turn produces a hormone called cortisol.

Resistance - If the stressor persists, physiologically the body attempts to adapt to the stress of the strains or demands. The body cannot keep adapting indefinitely, therefore its resources are gradually depleted.

Exhaustion - At the final stage the body’s resources are depleted and are now incapable of maintaining its natural functions. The initial symptoms may reappear (muscle tension and pain, raised heart rate etc.). If the final stage continues long term damage may ensue as the immune system is depleted and function is impaired resulting in further deterioration.

The result of chronic stress can manifest itself in illnesses such as ulcers, depression and diabetes, trouble with the digestive system or even cardiovascular problems, along with other mental illnesses.

The pyshiological symptoms of the fight flight response

• Palpitations, or accelerated heart rate
• Sweating
• Trembling or shaking
• Muscle tension
• Blurry vision
• Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
• Feeling of choking
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Nausea or abdominal distress
• Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint
• De-realization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
• Fear of losing control or going insane
• Fear of dying
• Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations)
• Chills or hot flashes
• Weakness in the knees
• Confusion
• Tunnel vision
• Blank mind
• Sensing time going by very slowly
• Feeling the need to escape
• Feeling of warmth inside, expanding from within
• Head pressure, unlike headache

Anxiety

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioural components.   It is a generalized mood condition that can often occur without an identifiable triggering stimulus. As such, it is distinguished from fear, which is an emotional response to a perceived threat.  Anxiety may also be a symptom of underlying health issues such as; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, or heart arrhythmia.

Physical effects of anxiety may include heart palpitations, muscle weakness and tension, fatigue, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches. External signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation.

Emotional effects of anxiety may include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching (and waiting) for signs (and occurrences) of danger, and, feeling like your mind’s gone blank, as well as nightmares/bad dreams, obsessions about sensations, deja vu, a trapped in your mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary. Behaviour can be affected in the form of withdrawal from situations where unpleasant effects of anxiety have been experienced in the past.

Test and Performance Anxiety

Test anxiety is an uneasiness, apprehension or nervousness felt by students who have a fear of failing an exam. Test anxiety may include any of the following symptoms; the association of grades with personal worth; fear of embarrassment by a teacher; fear of alienation from parents or friends; time pressures; a feeling a loss of control; sweating, dizziness, headaches, racing heartbeats, nausea, fidgeting, and drumming on a desk are all common.

While the term “test anxiety” refers specifically to students, many workers share the same experience with regard to their career or profession. The fear of failing at a task and being negatively evaluated for failure can have similar negative effects.

Social Anxiety

Anxiety when meeting or interacting with unknown people is a common stage of development in young people. For some it may persist into adulthood and become social anxiety or social phobia. “Stranger anxiety” is a developmentally appropriate fear by toddlers and preschool children of those who are not parents or family members. In adults, an excessive fear of other people is called social anxiety. People who are socially phobic do not fear the crowd; they fear that they are being judged negatively by the crowd. Social anxiety varies severity; some people experience discomfort or awkwardness during physical contact such as embracing or shaking hands, in other cases it is experienced as a fear of interacting with unfamiliar people altogether in which case the condition may restrict their lifestyles to accommodate the anxiety, minimizing social interaction whenever possible.

Choice and Decision Anxiety

Anxiety induced by the need to choose between similar options is increasingly being recognized as a problem throughout society. Today we are faced with a great deal more choices, more competition and less time to consider our options or seek out the right advice.

Stress

Stress is a term used in both psychology and physiology with signs of stress being cognitive, emotional, physical or behavioural. The signs of stress may include poor judgment, a general negative outlook, excessive worrying, moodiness, irritability, agitation, inability to relax, feeling lonely, isolated, aches and pains, diarrhoea or constipation, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, eating too much or not enough, sleeping too much or not enough, social withdrawal, procrastination or neglect of responsibilities, increased alcohol, nicotine or drug consumption and nervous habits such as pacing about or nail-biting.

Workplace stress-related disorders may included the above mentioned symptoms and encompass a broad array of conditions, including psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and other types of emotional strain such as dissatisfaction, fatigue, tension and maladaptive behaviours such as aggression and substance abuse and cognitive impairment such as concentration and memory problems. In turn, these conditions may lead to poor work performance or even injury.

Stress is a prevalent and costly problem in today’s workplace. Problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than are any other life stressor more so than even financial or family problems. About one-third of workers report high levels of stress. One-quarter of employees view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives. Three-quarters of employees believe the worker has more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. Evidence also suggests that stress is the major cause of turnover in organizations.

Some common categories and examples of stressors include: sensory input such as pain, bright light and lack of control over environmental circumstances such as food, housing, health, freedom, or mobility. Social issues such as struggles with difficult individuals, social defeat, relationship conflict, deception, break ups, births, deaths, marriage and divorce. Issues with work or studies such as exams, project deadlines and workplace bullying.  Life experiences such as poverty or unemployment and behavioural problems such as addictions and functional problems such as insufficient sleep and poor diet and nutrition.

Prevention of work place stress is always the best medicine

A combination of organizational change and stress management is often the most useful approach for preventing stress at work. How to prevent and change the organization to prevent job stress:

• Ensure that the workload is in line with workers’ capabilities and resources.
• Design jobs to provide meaning, stimulation, and opportunities for workers to use their skills.
• Establish work schedules that are compatible with demands and responsibilities outside the job.
• Clearly define workers’ roles and responsibilities.
• Give workers opportunities to participate in decisions and actions affecting their jobs.
• Improve communications-reduce uncertainty about career development and future employment prospects.
• Provide opportunities for social interaction among workers.
• Combat workplace discrimination (based on race, gender, national origin, religion or language).
• Bringing in an objective outsider such as a consultant to suggest a fresh approach to persistent problems.
• Utilising a Calm technologies consultant to assist individual staff members overcome and manage their stress.

Panic Attacks

The range of symptoms of a panic attack most often begin with the sudden onset of fear with minor and sometimes un-obvious provoking stimulus either real or imagined. These feelings may provoke a strong urge to flee the location of the ‘perceived’ attack. Often those suffering from panic attacks will experience significant anticipatory anxiety in situations where attacks have previously occurred or in similar circumstances.

A panic attack is a physiological response of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) triggered by the fight-or-flight response where the body prepares for strenuous physical activity or perceived attack. This leads to a release of adrenaline (epinephrine). This then leads to an increased heart rate (tachycardia), rapid breathing (hyperventilation) which may be perceived as shortness of breath (dyspnoea) and sweating.  Given that strenuous activity rarely ensues, the hyperventilation leads to a drop in carbon dioxide levels. This leads to alteration in blood pH (respiratory alkalosis or  hypocapnia), which in turn can lead to many other symptoms, such as tingling or numbness,  dizziness, burning and light-headedness.   In addition, the release of adrenaline causes slightly less  blood flow to the head (vasoconstriction) which produces dizziness and light-headedness and causes  blood sugar to be drawn away from the brain and towards the major muscles.

Panic attacks comprise a period of intense fear or discomfort in which four or more of the following symptoms develop abruptly, reach a peak within approximately 10 minutes. Sufferers of panic attacks often report feelings of fear, trembling, feeling faint, (shortness of breath), heart palpitations, chest pain or tightness, cold flashes, burning sensations (particularly in the facial or neck area), sweating, nausea, dizziness (or slight vertigo), light-headedness, hyperventilation, tingling sensations, sensations of choking or smothering, de-realization and tunnel vision which is mostly due to blood flow leaving the head to more critical parts of the body in defence.

Anger Management

Anger is a normal emotion that involves a strong uncomfortable and emotional response to a perceived provocation.    If not managed anger can be like a pressure cooker; we can only ignore or deny our anger for a certain amount of time before it explodes. Anger may have physical correlations to increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline and has been linked to the fight or flight response due to the perceived threat of harm.

Most  people would explain anger as a result of "what happened to them," and when out of control an angry person can experience a loss in their self-monitoring capacity and be limited in their ability to be objective or empathetic. With uncontrolled anger negatively affecting personal and social well-being by impairing one's ability to process information and to exert cognitive control over their behavior.  Even though they mutually influence each other, there is a clear distinction between anger and aggression; verbal or physical, direct or indirect.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder  (PTSD)

Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.  The symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder include: Avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, such as certain thoughts, feelings, places, people or talking about the event(s); inability to recall major parts of the trauma(s); difficulty falling or staying asleep; re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares; hyper-vigilance; decreased involvement in social, occupational, significant life activities; decreased capacity (down to complete inability) to feel certain feelings and/or over reactive emotional responses such as increased anger; expectations that one’s future will somehow be constrained in ways not normal to other people; its characteristics persist for longer than 30 days.

PTSD displays biochemical changes in the brain and body that may result when the traumatic event causes an overactive adrenaline response creating deep neurological patterns in the brain. These patterns can persist long after the event that triggered the fear, making an individual hyper-responsive to future fearful situations

Phobias

A phobia is an intense persistant felt irrational fear of almost any object,  situation, activity, thing, animal or people regardless of knowing that the fear is irrational. Despite this awareness, any exposure to one’s feared object or situation, or even anticipating it can bring on feelings of anxiety or a panic attack.  The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus.   If the stimulus is difficult to avoid, some individuals can experience constant discomfort and distress. The avoidance itself may impede on normal functioning in relationships, work and life in general.

For example; if a person was attacked by a dog they would respond with an unconditioned response. If the occurrence had enough of an impact on this person then they could develop a fear of that dog, or in some cases, an irrational fear of all dogs; they would then respond with a conditioned response and continue to avoid the feared stimulus.

Phobias can also occur when fear produced by a threatening situation is transmitted to other similar situations, while the original fear is often repressed or forgotten. For example the excessive, unreasoning fear of water may be based on a childhood experience of almost drowning. The individual attempts to avoid that situation in the future; such as learning to swim or sailing, a response that while reducing anxiety in the short term, reinforces the association of the situation with the onset of anxiety and in turn results in a full blown phobic response.

Most phobias are irrational, in the sense that they are thought to be dangerous, but in reality are not threatening to survival in any way.  Although most individuals understand that they are suffering from an irrational fear they feel powerless to override their initial panic reaction.

Specific phobias

Types of phobias include; fear of a single specific panic trigger such as spiders, snakes, dogs, water, heights, confined spaces, flying, catching a specific illness, etc. Agoraphobia – a generalized fear of leaving home or a small familiar ‘safe’ area, and of possible panic attacks that might follow.  Agoraphobia may also be caused by various specific phobias such as fear of open spaces, social embarrassment, fear of contamination such as fear of germs, or post traumatic stress disorder PTSD related to a trauma that occurred outdoors.

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