What’s coffee got to do with anxiety?

Put simply…

Coffee puts the body into a low level state of anxiety.

You see, coffee is a stimulant.

Maybe you’ve noticed after a coffee or three you feel a bit jittery?

Or perhaps it only happens when you have a really strong coffee.

Or maybe coffee has become such a regular in your life, that you don’t even notice the jittery effect it has on your body any more.

Even if you’re totally unaware of how it effects the body – even if you’re numb to that feeling – it’s still putting the body into a state of anxiety.

That’s because caffeine stimulates your ‘fight or flight’ response, and studies now show that this can trigger anxiety and even an anxiety attack.

Anxiety itself comes about from our subconscious conditioning; our beliefs and subsequent thought patterns.

We believe things about ourself and our life that cause us to worry about what might or might not happen next.

You can learn all about how our subconscious programming works in my free 1-hour audio lesson called The Art of Self-Love.

So while coffee is not responsible for creating the type anxiety most people experience – our subconscious programming is – coffee can trigger it or make it worse in people who are prone to experiencing anxiety.

Coffee can also make you feel anxious even when you have nothing to feel anxious about!

This is a problem, because when the body’s in an anxious state – whether you’re consciously aware of it or not – it doesn’t work properly.

Your body is too busy pouring its energy into firing up your adrenal system – your ‘flight or fight’ mode – that there’s little energy to keep your immune system firing.

And because your body’s on alert, quality sleep – the type that keeps the body in pristine condition – goes out the window.

If you’ve read my blog Quality Sleep = Better Immunity you know that sleep is vital for a healthy body.

What’s worse, is because a person then feels tired, they tend to drink more coffee to help pick them up.

Sure, it gives them a little kick, but that little kick is the flight-or-fight response being activated, at the expense of the immune system.

Thus, keeping your body in survival mode.

I don’t know about you, but in the current climate with the situation with the Coronavirus, I certainly don’t want my immune system compromised!!!

The more we live from this anxious state, the more the body tenses up to reflect this.

The more tension we store in the body, the less blood flow there is, and the more our organs become constricted.

We essentially suffocate our body into illness and disease.

The truth is…

Anxiety hurts the body.

A very rare bout of anxiety in a resilient body is fine.

Our body has built-in mechanisms to support this, and help us bounce back.

But when anxiety is your base-line state or you dip into anxiety on a regular basis, you are building up holding patterns in your body that will cause other issues further down the track.

Ok, so we know coffee wreaks havoc on the physical body.

Enough said!

But it’s not just the physical body that is negatively effected by drinking coffee.

The spiritual body cops it too!

When we drink coffee – because it puts us into a low-level state of anxiety – it disconnects us from our inner voice; or as I like to call it, our True Self.

What this means, is that when you’re drinking coffee it’s far more difficult to tap into your intuitive all-knowing inner guide, meaning that you’ll be guided not from a place of love, but from a place of fear.

Yes, your ego will be the one running the show, helping you make all sorts of unhelpful decisions for yourself.

Decisions that don’t serve you or your loved ones.

In the The Way of Self-Love course and the Remarkable Relationships course I run, I encourage the participants to get off coffee, because if they don’t, they find it far harder to get a clear line of communication with their True Self.

And because of this, clearing limiting beliefs and gaining insight into their lives, just becomes foggy and complicated.

You can make it easy to listen to your inner voice, or you can make it hard by drinking caffeine-rich substances, that disconnect you.

Every person I work with as part of my One-on-One Intensive is guided to get off the coffee.

This is one of the first things we work on!

And while there is ALWAYS resistance to begin with, every person is so grateful afterwards.

What’s super interesting is, when a person comes off coffee, if they do have one – after being coffee-free for at least a month – they notice the effects immediately!

It’s really common for one of my clients – who has stopped drinking coffee – so say to me:

‘I’ve been feeling so good, and then on the weekend I started to feel really anxious again’.

I always ask: ‘What were you doing half an hour before you started to feel anxious.’

99% of the time the answer is: ‘Oh I met up with my friend for coffee!’

The proof really is in the pudding.

Once you get off coffee, because anxiety is no longer your base-line, as soon as the coffee enters your system, you feel its effects instantly.

You become more sensitive to how things affect you.

Which is a good thing, because that extra sensitivity helps you know how to better treat your body.

So instead of always feeling a little anxious, and a little tired, and using coffee to keep picking you up, you start to feel what it’s like to feel alive and energised and, shall we say, ‘normal’!!

But I need my coffee to wake me up of a morning!

Really?

If this is the case, it means that you’re not giving your body the sleep or nutrients or love it needs, because you should NEVER need anything to wake you up.

A healthy functioning body wakes up feeling vitally alive and energised.

And if that’s not how you feel most mornings, then that’s an indication that a few things in your life need to shift to support your body in functioning as it was designed.

How do I get off coffee?

Firstly, you need to decide that giving up coffee is worth it!

Without that initial decision – for it is a decision – you won’t commit to going coffee-free for any length of time.

Once you make that decision, then you need to do it gradually, otherwise you’re likely to be met with some uncomfortable side-effects like headaches and so forth.

When I guide my client’s off coffee, I get them to start by halving the amount they’re having.

So if you’re drinking two cups a day, take it down to one, and do that for a couple of weeks.

If you’re only having one coffee per day, either have half a coffee a day, or one coffee every second day.

After a couple of weeks – once you find your groove – halve it again.

Then a couple of weeks later halve it again, and keep doing this until you’re not having any coffee at all.

The other thing you need to do, as you go through this ‘halving’ process, is substitute the other coffee’s you would usually have, with something else.

It’s not just the caffeine addiction we need to overcome, it’s the habit or ritual of drinking coffee.

Maybe you switch your coffee for a green or herbal tea.

That would be the best approach.

But if that’s just too far of a reach for you, switch it for a black tea or chai.

Yes, black tea has caffeine in it, although it interacts with the body slightly differently, so in most cases it won’t have the same effect on your body.

That said, once you get off coffee, you’ll become far more sensitive to what you put in your body, and with time you may find that black tea also has a more subtle effect on your body.

That was certainly the case for me.

Either way, black tea is far better than coffee.

And the reason for this, is because the caffeine from tea interacts with the body differently to the caffeine in coffee.

How?

Because tea leaves contain built-in relaxants and antioxidants that work in harmony with caffeine to give you energy, as well as provide relaxing effects that benefit health.

So do what you need to get off the coffee!

Ok… over to you.

Are you willing to sit with the idea of giving up coffee?

Ponder it.

Feel into it.

And if you’re willing to make that decision to get off the coffee, please share your experience in the comments below.

Let’s support each other in living a coffee-free – and anxiety-free – life.

And please know this….

There is life after coffee!!!