ANXIETY… AND THE FEAR OF THE FEAR

I hear a lot of people talking about anxiety and how they suffer badly with it. They will often tell me that they realise they will always have it and just need to find ways of managing it.

Indeed, anxiety is very often presented as a disorder or a condition and as such we are given the impression that we are stuck feeling this way, as if just because we don't choose to be like this we can't choose to stop.

Let's get this straight. Anxiety is not a disorder. NOT feeling anxiety would be a disorder. Being bereft of anxiety would leave us an entire emotion short of a full set, and most likely leave us coming across as more than a little dysfunctional. We would be more laid back than your average sloth and probably find it incredibly difficult to give a damn about pretty much anything.

In truth anxiety is an important feeling and one that we all feel on a daily basis. However, many of us will barely notice it as it goes about its business, making sure we remember to put the bins out or making sure we have that report ready for tomorrow's meeting. A lot of the great things anxiety achieves for us often go unnoticed. The reason for this is that it is more often than not communicating with us at a whisper.

We only really become aware of anxiety as a thing when it starts to shout at us. This is generally because we have had something important that our mind regards as worthy of a high level of anxiety going on for a while and it has become a constant. This leads to the rest of our subconscious having to shout even louder to be heard over this constant high level of anxiety. As a result our mind gets in the habit of shouting rather than whispering and that starts to become tiring. It will often become so exhausting that we start to feel anxious about the fact that the anxiety doesn't seem to be going away. This simply amplifies that feeling, creating a horrible feedback loop of unpleasantness.

However, the mistake here is to regard anxiety as unwanted. This leads to us fearing it and regarding it as out of control. Remember your mind created this feeling for a reason and it can just as easily stop it if it regards it as safe to do so. When you're standing in a room of people shouting you would be foolish to expect anyone to hear your whisper. This is why your mind just keeps shouting from all angles. Before you know it you're feeling ridiculously anxious about things that shouldn't really bother you at all.

The good news is that this doesn't mean you have to keep shouting. You are not stuck feeling this way. You just have to let your subconscious mind know it can go back to whispering now.

You do this by refusing to fear the feeling of anxiety.

Take a look at the video to find out how.