How To Overcome Anxiety
I AM NOT Anxiety
We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for anxiety. Anxiety kept us alive and geared us to survive as primitive humans. John Medina in his book Brain rules how usual anxiety has been in our evolutions as humans. He says most of us have no idea what’s really going on in our heads. Anxiety alerted us when to fight or flight or be killed. Now, in our suburban lives it’s not something we necessarily need or serves us but we are still having the same response to it. Most of the time it happens we feel like “oh something is wrong” and we don’t know what it is we are anxious about. It is usually vague and generalized worry, fear or apprehension. It is not because we are in a life or death situation.
Anxiety is a feeling and all feelings are vibrations. When you think about it. Really think about it. What is the worst thing that can happen if I allow myself to feel this vibration? Anxiety is not the issue. Anxiety itself is harmless. It is the way we think about it.
It is when we react or resist anxiety that causes problems. Consider this: If I were to inject you with anxiety and ask you to tell me what it was like. It might feel a little uncomfortable. It’s not supposed to be fun and calm. It’s original purpose was quite serious, to keep us alive as a species. However, if you get to experience the feeling without fear or worry you might describe it as simply uncomfortable because you know I injected you and you are aware.
We are still evolving this awareness as humans. We are no longer being attacked or fighting for survival but we still feel anxiety at times. For example, when we have work due or try to please our boss. Our body still gets tensed up, ready to run or freeze.
Fortunately, anxiety is just and uncomfortable feeling. But how do we manage this uncomfortable feeling. As humans we want to feel happy and good all the time. The most empowering and enlightening moment I had just recently was when I realized we don’t need t feel Happy all of the time. The human experience is 50:50. 50% is happy and 50% is crap. And this is OK. There is no feeling that I cannot do. In fact, I evolve as a human as I allow and observe all the feelings. I become more of the best version of myself.
If we can have anxiety and know it is just an uncomfortable feeling we can learn to treat it. I treat it by breathing and getting myself comfortable, breathing and connecting. NOT fighting or fighting
WOW! Be careful not to add worry about feeling anxiety. This would be like fuel to a fire. Let’s do the opposite and move in the other direction.
Step 1: Recognise it and name it.
This step is crucial because anxiety thrives on vagueness and this increases tension.
NOW
You have 4 OPTIONS
1. RESIST or fight it. Most of us do this. We resist, push it away and get mad at ourselves for having it. Put it his way if someone wants to fight you, do you yell and fight back or walk away. Do you choose to feed the energy or not?
Other option is to walk away.
2. REACT to it. This is when we do things like rush around, yelling, running with it, trying to get things done. We might stay up all night. It’s like we are acting it out.
3. AVOIDing it. We avoid anxiety and other unpleasant feelings by drinking, watching porn, playing video games, taking drugs, over eating. This works for a while but the anxiety creeps back once the buffer has worn off.
4. ACTIVELY ACCEPT IT
Key word is actively. It’s not giving up. You own it and have all the power to change it.
This requires you to quietly witness it and observe it. When you go to the watcher place you can take control.
It doesn’t make the anxiety go away. When you allow it you will see it’s really quite harmless. You may even feel relief and perspective. It simply pretends ot be necessary.
Naming and describe it!
Imagine you are describing the feeling Anxiety to an alien who cannot feel it and has no idea what it feels like. Describe it right from your toes up to the top of your head. Is it fuzzy? Is it buzzing? Where is the feeling? What is the feeling? Does it have a colour?
Explanation of Anxiety could sound something like this:
‘My heart’s racing. It’s that terrible, full-body sort of beat that makes your whole body shake and occasionally flutters from time to time from over-stimulation. For a second it almost feels like excitement, until the belly flips start, my face heats up, and my neck starts to hurt and I feel a little dizzy. My breathing’s heavy and my palms and scalp are starting to sweat for reasons unbeknownst to me.’
When you understand the cause of something you are a zillion times closer to relieving it. In this case it is an emotion. An emotion is always caused by a thought. Get curious. When you feel anxious ASK yourself what am I thinking. Thoughts are not facts. They are just thoughts. Thoughts are not reality. Fact is when the whole jury agrees. When I hear a noise outside and it is dark. This is fact. I feel anxious and scared because I have a thought, ‘Someone is out there and they will hurt me’. This is not fact and the jury would not all agree. My husband might say, ‘It’s just the wind”. My son might say ‘It’s the cat”. We all have a different thought and therefore a different feeling. The best thing is we can’t change the Circumstance (e.g. What others say and do), which is the noise outside, but we can change our Thought (the sentence in our head), which causes the Feeling that serves us best.
Write down the thoughts that are causing you to feel anxiety. So many times what is going on in our heads is pretty crazy stuff. I have thoughts that make no sense at all and are completely irrational.
Try these strategies on for Size
1. Put your hand on your belly. As you breathe in count to 5 and fill your belly. Slowly exhale the air and count to 5, allowing the negative emotion and stale air to flow out. Give yourself 10 breaths. You may not feel amazing but you are more aware and in control now.
2. Allow worry time. For example set aside 10 minutes a day before an anxiety attack and just allow yourself to be anxious. Allow yourself the worst-case scenario. Allow yourself to increase your anxiety at this time. Can you make the anxiety bigger during this time? By practicing increasing your anxiety in this time, does it allow you to get a hold of it and stop resisting if you are a resister? This allows control, because if you can make it bigger you can also make it smaller. Play with it. Sit down and make it bigger, then smaller, then bigger, then smaller again.
3. Do a Thought Download at the end of each day before bedtime or at the beginning of each day. Wrote down all your thoughts, good or bad. You can throw it in the bin or burn it later of you like. Doesn’t matter how crazy the thought is , get it out of your head and onto paper. Then remind yourself ‘ I am feeling anxious because of my thoughts and that’s OK’. Evidence supports that getting thoughts out of our head and onto paper can have a big difference to our wellbeing.