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I can stop stress wrecking your life: Paul McKenna reveals how to manage your anxieties

As a therapist for more than 20 years, I've worked with all kinds of people with all kinds of problems.

And if I could help people make only one change, it would be to give them the ability to control stress - this would be the most significant long-term improvement in their lives.

So I've developed a unique stress-control system to help manage it more effectively.

If you follow it over the coming days, you'll learn to change your response to stress and worry, you'll have more energy, become more efficient, more effective, your levels of happiness will go through the roof - and you'll even look younger.

Stress is an over-used word, but a misunderstood condition.

It's supposed to be the body's natural response to threat, but actually it's an increasing cause of illness in modern life.

It's the reason behind half of the visits to the doctor. We all experience it, but hardly anyone has the skills to deal with it.

WHY DO WE FEEL STRESSED?

Our body's stress response works like a car alarm. It is designed to keep us safe by alerting us to the presence of danger in our immediate environment.

Instead of using a noise, our internal alarm system lets us know that something is wrong by creating changes in our neurochemistry.

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) pumps extra cortisol and adrenaline into our heart, and extra blood and oxygen to our arms and legs, for the 'fight or flight' reaction that allows us to challenge or escape danger.

We can't live without it because it would be impractical and dangerous - like walking through the jungle without any fear signal in the presence of predatory animals.

However, if the alarm goes off too often or too easily, not only do we stop paying attention to it, but it begins to drive us and everyone around us a little bit crazy.

It should be balanced by the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which helps you to 'rest and digest' - your blood pressure drops and the food in your system begins to digest.

This 'natural relaxation' is the sweet, soft feeling you get in your muscles when you have finished heavy work or vigorous movement. You feel a natural high caused by the release of endorphins, the body's natural opiates.

It would be virtually impossible to function if that's how you felt all the time, so both systems work together.