There is a possibility that if you have sought out this book, you may be having some struggles or frustrations with anxiety. If you’re having these struggles, you’re not alone! 33% of the population will develop some sort of anxiety disorder within their lifetimes and, furthermore, nearly the same amount will have complaints about their doctor and his or her method of treatment. So, if you’re looking for an alternative option, look no further!
First, it’s important to understand exactly what is causing your anxiety. Your anxiety is based on something you’re afraid of and itsconsequences. For example, if you have social anxiety, you might be afraid of what possible bad things can happen to you when you’re in a social environment. Another important aspect of your anxiety that is important to understand is that although there may be and probably are, simple solutions to whatever your fear may be, you instead choose to think of grandiose solutions that are completely unrealistic.
Your very first technique when it comes to anxiety is to reframe your anxiety and the symptoms you’re experiencing. To do this, picture yourself having a typical bout of anxiety and what that looks like for you. For example, you have anxiety when your boyfriend or husband is late coming home. You’ve arrived home, it gets late, he isn’t home yet, he hasn’t called and you begin having anxiety thinking about where he might be, what he might be doing, who he might be with and you lead yourself to believe absurd ideas, like he is never coming home again and he is probably cheating on you.
There are a few factors here. First, you need to agree and come to terms with the fact that you have created the anxiety and your panic. You’re the one who got all worked up and began telling yourself these things. Is there or was there ever any real, factual proof for any of your thoughts? Chances are, the answer is no. If so, you have just identified your first problem. Now, think of your strategy. What thought process led you to believing these things? What did you tell yourself? Are these things grounded in facts? Or, are you making things up and jumping to conclusions? Think about your train of thought during your anxiety and identify the good and the bad.
Furthermore, ask yourself if you could explain this train of thought to someone else. If you can, you have now identified another problem. This is because you are so sure of these things that are causing you anxiety that you have convinced yourself so much that you could also convince another person. That’s how deeply you have overreacted. It’s important to identify this harmful process. Next, think about this same situation that is causing you anxiety and talk about it out loud but, this time, as if you’re watching someone else do it.
Does this seem realistic and like a normal thought process? Chances are, your answer is no. Now, you have fully realized, from many points of view, why this thought process that is causing your anxiety is causing you so much frustration and negativity. You now need to teach yourself to choose a different thought process. You can do this through self-talking yourself through different scenarios and choosing positive trains of thought rather than negative.
The next technique you can use to tackle your anxiety problems is by doing something called accessing resources and accessing solutions. Oftentimes, there are events or certain things in your life that trigger your anxiety. This technique focuses on that trigger and helps you to cope with how this trigger and the situation makes you feel as well as how you can solve this. First, you need to identify your problem and its trigger.
For example, maybe at work, when your boss speaks to you in a very short way it creates anxiety for you because you feel like he or she is angry at you or treating you unfairly. Now that you’ve pinpointed the problem, it’s time to tackle it. You can do this by asking yourself a series of questions. For example, “What do you want to achieve by solving this problem,”“What need to happen to make you feel relieved and like this problem is solved?” Or, “How will you know this problem is solved,”“If and when this problem is solved, how and what will you feel? Answer these questions honestly and reflect on the answers.
You may start to realize that you’ve answered quite a few questions for yourself, especially as to how you can solve your problem just by exploring it with those questions. Next, you’re going to ask yourself another series of questions. This time, you want to think about times when the problem that leads to your anxiety isn’t happening.
Then, ask yourself the following questions: “What are the times when you feel the problem isn’t as bad or doesn’t exist at all?” What were you doing at that time? Were you doing anything differently than you usually do or anything out of the ordinary? You may realize that with these questions, your eyes are opened to times when your anxiety is lessoned and maybe even nonexistent. If you find yourself realizing this, focus on your behavior at this time and how you can teach yourself to have that behavior more consistently.
However, if you find that this second set of questions doesn’t apply to you, move onto one last set of what is referred to as “miracle questions.” For example: “Imagine, one night, as your sleeping deeply, that the problem or problems that cause your anxiety have magically or by some miracle has been solved. You have no idea how this problem was solved, since you were deep asleep but when you wake up, how do you know the problem or problems have been solved? What’s different? What gives it away? This may give you some answers to how you need to change your train of thought or attitude to make this change happen and avoid your anxiety.
Another technique you can use is trance and learning to utilize relaxation anchors.
The very first way to do this is to teach and train yourself to stop flexing and tighteningcertain muscle groups that cause you to be more tense and thus, more anxious. Some of these vital muscle groups might be your jaw line, the muscles in your forehead and clenching your hands. If you find yourself growing anxious or experiencing the problems you usually do when your anxiety presents itself, take a second to check these muscle groups. Are they flexed and tightened? If so, take a second to fix this and then see how you feel!
You may not even realize how big of a difference this may make in your anxiety levels! Next, pay attention and focus on you’re out breathing rather than when you breathe in. When your body experiences anxiousness, it’s natural to quicken and tense up your inward breathing movements. Instead of allowing this to happen, focus on breathing out in a calm, relaxing way. This may help to calm you down if you’reexperiencing anxiety. Lastly, you want to focus on the mental imagery you have in your head.
As humans, we spend a large portion communicating with ourselves inside our heads. This communication includes mental imagery and oftentimes, people who experience anxiety on different levels have negative mental images that they are feeding and creating for themselves. Train yourself and your mind to avoid this. To do this, you can start training yourself on a daily basis.
For example, throughout your day, keep track and be aware of what mental images are coming into your mind. When you experience a negative one, immediately put a stop to it and replace it with a positive one. This will take quite a bit of self-talk and self-discipline but if you commit to it and preserver, you will be surprised and please with just how much of your anxiety and thinking you can change!
Finally, one last technique you can use for any anxiety you’re experiencing in your life is through something called anchoring. This is also similar to classical conditioning. The entire point of this technique involves finding what external cue is trigging an internal response and learning to change this external cue to then change your response.
For example, you have a severe fear of monkeys and when you see monkeys, you become internally scared and frightened. This triggers your anxiety. To change this behavior, you want to train yourself to make a link between the external cue and the internal emotion. To do this, you want to associate whatever the cue may be with something positive rather than negative.
So, for example, if you have a fear of monkeys, you would want to train your mind to associate the sight of monkeys with something you really love, for example, your children or you favorite memory instead of a stream of terrifying made up outcomes as to what might happen when you come in contact with monkeys. Or, you can even choose an object to change the emotional attachment to the cue. For example, when you see the picture of monkeys, you can choose an object that you greatly connect with or something that means a lot to you and concentrate on that to avoid the negative emotion that triggers your anxiety.
You can even bring this object with you to physically look at it and focus on it instead of focusing on the emotions of fear, anger or sadness. One other way you can use anchoring is though sound association. Just as with the last pervious options, you can think of a sound that means a lot to you or that you associate many happy memories with and use that to help curb the emotions that trigger your anxiety. For example, when you see monkeys or pictures of monkeys you can try to think of the sound of your grandfather’s voice or the sound of your baby laughing.
You can train your brain to think of these things instead of fear and thus, turn your upsetting emotions into happy ones. Finally, the last tool you can use for anchoring is the idea of an important relationship to combat any negative feelings. When you see the cue to whatever causes the trigger, you want to train your mind to think of the positive, happy relationship you have chosen instead of your negative emotions.