Do you know what a worry is made up of? Do you know how you worry and keep on worrying despite what other people may say or even despite what you may consciously know to be the truth?
There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t or hasn’t worried about something or someone, so we are all accustomed to worrying and in most cases it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to changing the situation, but we still worry anyway.
If we knew each other years back, say when you were at school or college, and I told you then that years after you’ve finished University, got your first job and even gotten married and started to raise your own family, that your guilty secret is that you do stuff that you know is bad for you, but you can’t stop doing it, would you believe me?
That guilty secret is doing something to alleviate the guilt or the anxiety, or the worry or other negative states, which by doing so increases your guilt, anxiety, fear, or worry, but you still keep doing it because what else can you do?
[Read more…] about I Know It’s Bad For Me But What Else Can I do?
If I were to say the words , control, powerlessness, out of control, helplessness, paranoia, insecurity, low self esteem, or even imposter, you’d probably recognise them as the anxious person’s stock in trade of states that they feel on a daily basis.
Of the hundreds of emotions that we can all feel at various time throughout our lives, the number one emotion that anxious people want to experience the most is ‘being in control’ because they feel ‘out of control’ most of the time. It’s like events make them feel powerless, when they want to feel powerful. People make them feel inadequate when they want to feel good enough. Their spouse’s make them feel insecure when they want to feel secure. Their parents make them feel criticised, judged and condemned, when they want to feel empowered, right and just.
I could go on, because there are so many reasons why, if we had one wish, one secret wish it would be to be to control all events, all people and all situations, because then and only then, could we relax and take life in its stride.
If I were to say the words, control, powerlessness, out of control, helplessness, paranoia, insecurity, low self esteem, or even impostor, you’d probably recognise them as the anxious person’s stock in trade of states that they feel on a daily basis.
Of the hundreds of emotions that we can all feel at various time throughout our lives, the number one emotion that anxious people want to experience the most is ‘being in control’ because they feel ‘out of control’ most of the time.
If you read any self-esteem building book, you will find that the focus is on how you believe that there is something wrong with you, and if you change that assessment of yourself then your self-esteem will be bolstered. And to get there, ‘they’ focus you on positive self-affirmations, and looking at the messages that you received growing up and changing those so that they are more empowering.
That’s cool, except that what do you do if every time you feel any negative emotion you think there is something wrong with you irrespective of what that negative feeling was in response to?
Did you realise that because of anxiety, success is harder to achieve, so even if you are the head of your department, run your own business, been in a committed relationship for over 20 years, if you had never had anxiety, you would be even more successful, and found a route to success both easier and faster?
How do I know?
[Read more…] about Why Anxiety Sufferers Can’t Be As Successful As Those Without It
There are so many awful things about living with anxiety from how it affects your level of happiness, to how much you can earn, to how healthy you can be, to even how many friends you can have, but for me and most of my clients, it’s the belief that we don’t have it within us to get on with things, to be like other people who are ‘normal’, to just get on with it.
And the shame of this assessment of ourselves is that no one is shouting from the rooftops at us that we have everything we need to get on with it. On the contrary, there are so many books, videos, therapies, drugs, medications we could try to alleviate our internal struggles that tell us that we are broken, that we aren’t okay, that we ‘need’ help and support that unfortunately, we can’t just get on with it.
In the poem, Maud Miller written by John Greenleaf Whittier, he featured the words “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!” and sums up nicely one of the downsides of conquering your anxiety.
If you came to me wanting to conquer your anxiety, I would help you, if I could. I would never say don’t bother because there is this huge downside, no I’d tell you to get on this path right away.
But I have to admit, this downside, hit me like a tonne of bricks when I first explored the idea getting what I want when I felt too anxious to go for it.
[Read more…] about What Might Have Been! The Downside Of Conquering Your Anxiety
No I’m not referring to Schizophrenia, a very serious condition, I’m talking about all those inner voices we hear when anxiety, worry, fear are at home, and what to do about them.
I had this awful realisation after doing some inner work on myself, that for years and years, I’ve been doing the wrong thing to ‘cure’ myself of my anxiety, and that is I’ve been treating it as a problem. And because I was treating it as a problem I was throwing solutions at it, in my case the wrong solution hoping that that was how to cure myself.
And I was wrong.
Have you ever been to a fortune teller? And they told you the same things that they tell everyone, but at the time you thought, well it might be true, so I’d better keep it in mind just in case?
Or have you ever heard anyone say, “I don’t know where the time/ years have gone, it seems like only yesterday that I was …. “
I’m sure you have and you’ll notice that with both of these scenarios, they are about time, and how it slips by so quickly very few of us ever say that the years from teenage hood to now was slow, it may have been painful, but it wasn’t slow.
But Because Of Your Anxiety, Aren’t You Just Squandering Your Life Though?
Over the last 18 days, you’ve had 432 hours to live with. And of those how many were spent truly living and not worrying?
[Read more…] about Trying To Predict The Future Is Shortening Your Life
