If you were to ask most people if they suffered from anxiety, most would say they didn’t. They may admit that they are a bit of a worrier, or things get on top of them sometimes, but to admit that you suffer from anxiety is rare, yet most of us do.
Worry by any other name is a form of anxiety but that’s by the by, because it’s not whether you accept that label or not, it’s whether you recognise that no matter what you call it, you will show signs that anxiety is ever present in your life.
So how do you do yours?
Do you remember an ad from the 80’s I think, about Cadbury’s creme eggs, and the advert’s strap line was ‘ how do you eat yours?’ It showed that some people like to suck their ‘creme’ out of the egg- that was me, some others like to put the whole egg in their mouth at once, others liked to bite it in half and lick out the ‘creme’, basically we all have our own ways of eating the chocolate egg, and it’s the same for anxiety.
We all have our own little tells that we are suffering and we need to let off steam, or vent or try our best to manage our emotional states and it’s only when our bucket of calm and focus has ran out that we show signs of losing control.
So below is a list of how I and my clients do/did ours, maybe you can recognise yourself here.
When anxious or worried do you tend to :
- Lash out
- Act out
- Sleep badly
- Over think things
- Over analyse
- Eat too much
- Drink too much or other
- Procrastinate
- Settle for less
- Compromise to have an easier life
- Given in
- Argue and bicker
- Pick holes in the other person
- Criticise
- Moan
- Complain
- Expect others to rescue you
- Feel sorry for yourself
- Not be present
- Getting angry
- Put a brave face on it all
And the list goes on….
The issue isn’t that you suffer from anxiety, the issue is how does it show itself in your life? And if you don’t like the term anxiety, then swap that for worry, or being annoyed, or being bothered by… but notice how you do yours when you are in this state, and how often are you in this state? (Ask those around you to tell you the truth)
The Chinese Torture Effect
I used to think that anxiety was this big thing where you were so anxious that you couldn’t step outside of the house and yes for some this is true, but for most of us, it’s the little things that we do day in and day out that stack on top of each other until we find that we cannot cope and it’s that, that flaws us.
Sometimes it creeps up on us and we don’t even know that we aren’t reacting to events in a way that empowers us, we react in a way that makes us feel like life is getting on top of us.
The problem with those little worries is that eventually they grow into bigger worries that feed our insecurities, our doubts and gives rise to more fears, and pessimism.
In the end it can feel so overwhelming, not because each individual problem can’t be solved, but because there are so many of them and when you aren’t feeling at your best, having to not only solve the problem but manage your internal state as well, can lead to exhibiting one of the many signs of anxiety from the list above.
So what type of belief do anxious people have? Is it person A or person B?
Person A
- Everyone will think I’m stupid or something
- I will never be in a relationship
- Why does this always happen to me?
- I will lose my job if I make a mistake
- People find me boring
- When people look at me they are thinking that I’m strange or something
- People can tell that I’m always nervous
Person B
- I can cope with most things thrown at me
- Bad things don’t usually come out of the blue, so I know I can handle most things
- Other people respect me
- The world is a safe and exciting place to be
- I have some control, and the control I don’t have I don’t worry about
- People are okay in the main
- Small things don’t stress me, I take life in its stride.
It was easy wasn’t it? If you believe that there are people who actually think like person B.
But you’re not convinced, so let’s say for argument sake that there is no such person as Person B, does that mean that how Person A thinks is how everyone thinks? Can Person A have created all the opportunities there are, can they manage people? Can they build businesses? Can they jump out of planes…. You get what I’m saying here.
Even if we accept that we don’t know a Person B, so they don’t really exist, can someone with Person A’s beliefs really be the confident types we see and are around every day?
The answer is, no. Whatever those confident individuals think, it’s not like Person A, is it?
So what about you? Using the process here, identify if you are more Person A or Person B in your business or career and let me know what you came up with.
Thanks for reading- Got questions? Contact me here
See you next time
Elaine
