The thing that the majority of my clients tell me about their panic or anxiety, is how frightening it is to feel out of control..
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and then we discover that their anxiety is causing them anxiety! One client recently, in an "ah-ha" moment with me realised, that if she could let go of the need to control everything she wouldn't feel so anxious.
In fact, the super anxious believe, if they could have more control over things they would be less anxious..
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but the reverse is in fact true.
The more control you surrender and the more acceptance you have of the way things are, the more calm you will feel.
Panic and anxiety are bad habits that the body gets used to practising.
It is so used to practising them, that it might take just a fleeting thought, or a comment or situation to set them off.
Often the fear of anxiety or panic attacks obscures any of those original triggers and so the anxious are left having, often, no idea why they have had such an attack.
Does this sound like you? Are you in bad habits with yourself? And more importantly, are you sick to the back teeth with it? So how did we learn to suppress our healthy but self censored emotions so that we can no longer recognise them? Much of it will come from childhood, or they could be formed by shock, trauma or loss later in life.
Either way, the effect is experienced in the here and now.
And that is where we suffer.
Now.
It occurred to me a while ago, with a wide range of clients, that panic and anxiety are in fact all those forbidden feelings locked away deep inside that threaten to spill out if we, for one moment, relax.
The threat of being exposed or of not being good enough all stacked up is enough to give anyone chronic panic and anxiety! It's like a pressure cooker waiting to blow.
However, did you know for example that: *Anxiety is a chronic learned, not inherited, habit often found in parents and children *We can alleviate our anxiety by becoming conscious of what it is masking *Once conscious we can change the way we deal with familiar situations which will reduce our anxiety *That by building a deeper inner self confidence, you can reduce anxiety I discuss in my Open Mind Guide to Dealing with your Anxiety an anxiety loop where families get into chronic habits and cycles of anxiety: you know, the worrying about worry cycle that is exhausting and self defeating.
There can be nothing less productive and more frustrating than the worry cycle, or what I have called the 'Anxiety Loop'.
And we'll loop round our own anxiety, worrying about being anxious which can often be reflection of the way our families operated when we were young.
Anxiety is infectious.
Once a parent is anxious about their child, the child will be anxious about their parent.
Once a child is anxious about their parent, the parent will be anxious about their child.
Sound familiar? The one with the power here, is the parent.
As parents we owe it to our children to be calm and confident.
That is how our children will grow to also be calm and confident individuals.
So to start you on your journey of dealing with your anxiety take a reality check.
Make a list of all the current things in your life that disturb or affect you negatively and then write down, next to this list, what you would have to do to resolve those issues.
Be as honest as possible.
If you're not honest with yourself, there is nothing anyone can do to help you! If this involves telling someone something which you feel is completely unacceptable, then you need to do some work on giving yourself permission to express some of those forbidden feelings that you are stacking up inside and relearn and undo some of those bad habits from childhood.
If you want to grapple with the very root of the problem, and empower yourself to change, start writing now.
Take an inventory of what you want to change.
Writing things down is the first act of commitment to a better future.