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1. Experience
I think most people will agree that they see more & more harmful expressions of anger in their everyday life & thus I feel this is an important topic for all of us to take a closer look at.
Recently I had a client who came
to me because he was feeling a lot of anger related to his job.
It seemed to him that his boss wanted him to enthusiastically engage in every new project, while never asking him for his own opinion. This left my client feeling that his saying "Yes" was based more on his fear of creating conflict, than it was on his actual agreement with what was being suggested.
Because of this, when he said "Yes" he wound up feeling powerless & angry & he was finding it difficult to be enthusiastic, even when he thought a new project was a good idea.
My client's experience is one that's common to many
people. If we feel we don't have the right to say "No" & have our opinion respected, then we soon discover that our saying "Yes" is done without true enthusiasm & agreement.
We wind up saying "Yes" while feeling disrespected & frustrated.
We took a couple of sessions to carefully construct a new conversation for my
client to engage in with his boss. As we worked on coming up with a positive approach that would get the desired results, my client's initial reaction to each suggestion I made was either:
- "He won't want to hear this."
Or,
I let him know I was happy he was able to tell me he wasn't feeling confident about my suggestions & that his letting me know this was great practice for learning how to say "No."
Somehow, my saying this really touched him emotionally. His face softened & he
told me he was amazed to hear my words. He said that in his family any form of disagreement had always led to big arguments
& he felt like this was just the way life was.
I asked him to go ahead &
tell me what he thought might work in this situation. It didn't take but a moment for him to say, that as frightened as he was to disagree, he was even more frightened to offer up his own ideas, knowing they might be shot down.
This proved to be a very powerful learning for my client. He was frightened to say "No" to others & he was even more frightened that others would say "No" to him.
And all of this fear led him to feel frustrated & angry. He noticed in working with me, that his anger & resentment quickly subsided once he felt his opinions were sought after & respected & that just as important, his emotional state changed once he realized that it was safe for him to offer up his opinions, without getting them shot down in a harsh manner.
He took his new insights into his conversation with his boss. He said if he could critique new ideas before implementing them, he would feel
a sense of ownership of what was being done. He asked his boss to help him create a process that would encourage critiquing new ideas.
He talked about the importance of tearing a new idea apart, while being certain to respect the person who had come up with the new idea. As they worked out the kinks of their new relationship, his boss came to more
& more appreciate my client's viewpoints.
He said he experienced my client as much more positive & collaborative than before & that their new initiatives were meeting with a good deal more success than in the past!
Only when you feel like you have the right to say "No" can you
truly engage your heart in saying "Yes."
2. Commentary
If
you take the time to delve deeper into your anger, or resentment, you'll often find that you're seriously limiting your ability to feel & express the full range of your emotions.
In the process, you become the victim of your emotions. You might be angry because you feel that someone else should be punished, but in the long run your anger will wind up punishing yourself.
You might wind up resenting the way you're treated by others, but if you take a look you'll usually find that your resentment limits your ability to feel happy in a more general sense.
When you feel like you have no choice & you can only
say "Yes" then your response doesn't come from your heart & it isn't supported by the emotions generated by your body.
When you feel unable to say "No" then you'll likely find that no matter what you say verbally, "No" becomes the default response you want to give to others. You likely find yourself becoming more & more frustrated as you understand on an emotional level that you're never sharing your true feelings.
When you're able to speak the truth of your "Yes" or "No" in a calm manner, you'll find that you experience a sense of emotional freedom & well-being.
When it's all said & done, when we delve deeply into our
emotions, we almost always find that our strongest & most habitual response is covering up other feelings that we aren't fully aware of.
We feel hurt, disrespected, abandoned, or sad & we cover over these feelings & lose touch with them, by expressing anger or resentment instead.
When we find ways to tap into our deeper emotions we invariably find that we've been neglecting some form of pain or discomfort. When we neglect or simply don't notice our deeper emotional reactions, we lose the ability to express our full range of emotions.
In the process we find that by consistently expressing only one segment of our entire emotional range, we limit our ability to be happy & feel at ease within ourselves & with those that we interact with.
In Seishindo
we believe that our emotions emanate from the body. When you're feeling angry, your body generates a specific set of reactions that inform your rational mind of your emotional experience.
When you're feeling respected or loved your body generates a very different set of reactions. With Seishindo & other disciplines you can explore the process
of how your body generates your emotional state & you can come to understand how at times you say one thing with your body & something rather different with your words.
You can come to understand how you wind up confusing yourself when you say one thing with your heart & another with your logical mind. If you do wind up confusing yourself on a regular basis, you'll find that your overall health & vitality suffer in the process.
Only when you feel like you have the right to say "No" can you truly engage your heart in saying "Yes." Only
when your body & your rational mind communicate the same message in a congruent manner, will you find yourself feeling empowered & at ease.
Take the time to gently explore your feelings & you'll find that your emotional well-being resides deep inside yourself, waiting to be touched & acknowledged.
source: self growth.com
by kathleen howe
We all have our demons. Some people remember each one of them,
every detail, every word said, every humiliation or intimidation or both. It is remembered day in and day out. It's impossible,
or seemingly so, to forget. I experienced this myself. It has only been through my recent five year recovery / personal growth
journey that I have realized that I was clinging to false beliefs. I had no idea that my belief system was formed from what
my parents believed. I just didn't realize anything about the whole kit and kaboodle! I just knew what my parents had told
me.
How many of you baby boomers out there were raised the same way. Do any of you know why you believed what
your parents told you to believe? It was probably because they told you that you had to believe them. The funny part of it
all is; if you ever asked your parents, "why" things had to be the way they told you; you had to be one bold and disappointing
child!
I can picture my parent's - either one of them - eyes wide open, mouth gaping open, drool maybe rolling
down the corner of the mouth; standing there in front of me shaking from head to toe if I had ever asked, "why!"
But if I had dared, which I did a few times, but closed my eyes in fear to receive the wrath that was about
to befall me, I was told that it was because they said so. Everything that they told me to believe was because they said so.
There was never a reasonable answer, it was always just because they said so.
As funny as that seems these days, there are plenty of baby
boomers who raised their children the same way and in result, there are children of generation x who are raising their children
the same way. The all and mighty parent is right 100% of the time and you must believe everything they say because they said
so.
The problem with that parenting method is this. Our parents were raised with similar dysfunctional belief
systems. They didn't just dream up these practices, they were raised that way as well. They didn't know it, but they were
pretty screwed up when it came to parenting. Actually, they were pretty screwed up about many things because they were raised
by the "unfeeling" generation of people who lived the "everything's fine" life.
This in fact perpetrated the same dysfunctional life I grew up in where everything was "fine" - even abuse.
No one had the right to feel anything. Our parents were often known to say, repeatedly, "You shouldn't be angry." "You shouldn't
be unhappy." "If you want something to cry about, I'll give it to you myself!" (threatening their children with a spanking
most often)
Do any of those demands sound familiar to you?
In my family, even if you were physically hurt, and hurt badly, you weren't allowed to cry unless you were
a baby. Babies were left to cry in their cribs because it exercised their lungs. For hours my sister was left in the crib
to cry. It was horrendous. She held onto the rails, looking miserable, as if she were pleading for my mother to come hold
her, and she cried and cried until I couldn't stand it anymore. I had asked my mother why the baby had to exercise her lungs.
She said, "Because I said so, that's why."
By the time I was in high school I believed everything my parents said to be true. I'd been conditioned
to believe everything. I didn't agree with everything they said. I did have my own opinions, but for the most part if they
said something about me I believed them. It was just the way it was.
When I was sixteen years old and I got pregnant because my mother never had "the talk" with me. She was
too embarrassed to. But she was adamant that I couldn't have the baby. She said to me, "I won't let you ruin your life by
having a child!" So she hauled me over to the next state where abortion was legal and signed me up for one. She never explained
what would happen either. Her words kept going through my mind though, "I won't let you ruin your life by having a child."
Thanks Mom.
And when I was almost eighteen and it was time to fill out college applications, I brought one to my mother
who said go take it to your father. So when I took it to my father, he laughed in my face. He refused to help me. He told
me that I would never go to college. I was born and raised to become a wife and have children. He instructed me to go find
some guy and get married and start having children because that's what women were born for.
I believed my mother and I believed my father. Damned if I do and damned if I don't - those false beliefs
followed me until about four years ago. I still hear their voices saying those things to me - to this day - but I don't believe
those things anymore. How could I?
So what else had I learned my whole
life that was false? Aha! Finally, after all these years why things always rubbed me the wrong way! I wondered why
I could never succeed at anything. Believing what I did, I had already been set up for failure long ago. Never being taught any life skills was another problem that I faced because I had no idea that there were bills,
rent or mortgages to pay, that people had to save money for college, etc. I had been raised comfortably to have everything I ever asked for, nothing extravagant, but I just never knew how it was obtained.
I had no idea "why" anything happened in life. I didn't even know that
there was welfare until I was about 35 years old. Imagine that! I had been raised in a "fairy tale" belief system and I was Cinderella. I was the one who was taught to do the cleaning and the cooking and I was taught child rearing
to the best of my mother's ability.
These are our false belief systems. We must all evaluate what we believe and ask ourselves why we believe what we do. Because of my false belief system I was never ABLE to do anything that I desired to do. I had a predestined future. My parents didn't set me up to believe that I could do anything I wanted to do when I grew up. I was bound and determined by them to be a wife and mother only. I couldn't get it right though!
Why? I had no role models! How about that? My parents were never happily married. I know what they did, traditionally and religiously, but I had no role models of loving parents and a loving committed husband and wife. Anyway, I know that I have the ability, I am able to write
this column. Until recently I was unable to do it because I always believed what my father had told me. I believed that I would never be successful, so I would be afraid to embarrass myself more times than not.
I've been writing since I was a child, but I believed that I would never be successful at it so I just put my writing aside and disregarded the importance it held to me. This type of self denial is dangerous.
Believing in what your parents told you has to be examined over and over again if you have the slightest doubt in your mind about the correctness of their beliefs.
Don't let something someone said to you cause you be unable to do what you want to do. You are able to do it. If you don't have the talent
to do what you want you can learn how to do it by getting educated on the topic. There's always possibilities, opportunities
to learn, we must be "able" to see this and act upon them.
If you've experienced a similar family situation as mine;
please re-examine your personal beliefs! I'm hoping that you'll see my point.
We're hearing
more and more about EQ (emotional intelligence) these days, and
for good reason. How you handle yourself and others makes a big difference in your success and
happiness, both in your career and in your personal life.
Here are 10 signs of emotional intelligence:
1. Self-awareness & Self-honesty.
This is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence.
Without self-awareness, you can't be emotionally intelligent. It means being able to recognize when you're having an emotion, being able to name it correctly, attribute it to the right source, and to delay acting
upon it until you've considered the most positive course of action. It means being able to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses realistically, and not idealistically.
2.
Knowing how emotions are caused & the difference between emotions & actions.
This means being able to avoid being overwhelmed by any particular emotion, and being able to delay taking action until you've considered the consequences of your
actions. It also means being able to differentiate between how you feel about something,
what you think about something, and not confusing those things with actions.
3. Self-regulation & modulating your emotions.
Having a high frustration tolerance and the ability to regulate your emotions and manage them effectively. Responding to emotions, not reacting. Emotions and behaviors are appropriate to the situation.
4. Empathy.
Able to recognize emotions in others and to know what they're feeling and why. Sensitive to the feelings of others and listening effectively to the feelings of the speaker as well as the content and the words.
5. Motivation & Good Decision-making.
Able to focus and stay on-task; better at handling
stress; less impulsive and more self-managed. Able to use emotions to guide yourself to the best decision, rather
than being used and overtaken by your emotions, or ignoring them and trying to make decisions on an intellectual basis alone.
6.
Increased ability to analyze & understand relationships.
Able to connect with others and maintain strong relationships built on mutual trust and respect; having people you can rely on and with whom you can be your real, true self; being able to handle constructive discontent well.
7.
Intuitive.
Able to trust your gut feelings to direct your actions and to make decisions. Knowing what the signals from your body are and what they mean, and using them
effectively as guides.
8. Creative & flexible thinking.
Being able to generate alternatives and consider options. Not shutting down
in the face of a challenge, but opening up to allow new information and insights in.
9. Integrated self.
All parts work together -- emotional, social, physical,
mental, spiritual.
10. Balanced life
A life that includes work, relationships and regular periods of rest, renewal and relaxation.
Emotional intelligence competencies can be learned, and can be increased over your lifetime.
Evolving
by Kathleen Howe
Things happen in life. There's a saying that most people
say, but I won't say it here, but you know it and it's the truth. Those of us who are living our lives barely hanging on to our sanity feel threatened and fearful of things that are out of the norm happening to them. They live their lives in a rigid programmed world. If anything happens
out of the ordinary there is a good chance that they feel as if they will fall apart or end up out of control.
Everything that happens in our world is based in some kind of energy.
You might never think of it that way. You may have heard some nut case talking about their inner energy and laughed all the
way to your next scheduled stop because it sounded strange and unrealistic to you. If you're not centered in thinking about
yourself as a being that runs on "energy" I can understand your inability to feel safe in thinking this way.
I understand that people think in many different ways because everyone I know thinks differently than I do. When you meet someone that thinks somewhat
like you do, it's so great! I get excited! I ask questions and find out how much this person thinks like I do. It enables
me to be confident in myself and allows me to be totally myself. I am drawn to other people who think like I do. Besides finding
it wonderful to find people who think like I do; when I can get someone I already know to understand one concept that I might
believe in - that's a huge accomplishment. I'm so happy about that and find myself getting equally excited as I do when I
meet someone that thinks like I do.
Take this thought a step further - inserting energy into the equation
- and you can see two very positive balls of energy being more energized because they can positively communicate with each
other. They feed on each others' positive energy and it's a good thing. They are energized with positive energy increasing
their individual levels of positive power or energy with their interactions. Get the picture?
One step further - the two meet up - gain power from positive energy -
depart from their positive exciting interaction so happy and excited that they want to interact again with that same "feel
good" positive energy, but they return home or to base camp where they are interacting with people who don't understand their
energy. Once surrounded by several beings who have been feeling negative all day or feeling alone in their own energy all
day - it doesn't take long for this energized happy being to lose some of the positive power.
Are you seeing the picture?
Some people call those of us who are able
to open our minds to all sorts of possibilities without feeling fearful or threatened because it is outside of our norm or
safety zone - free thinkers. Not everyone can just listen to a foreign concept and grasp
the importance of understanding it. Other people may call us CRAZY! And yet, others may simply dream for half a second that
they might have the liberty to think freely for just a very few seconds. Many people just don't care to occupy their thoughts
with things outside of their immediate environment. As I continue, I hope I can project that I have ridden both sides of the
tracks - rigid, controlled and unavailable to anything outside of my environment and on the other side - the free thinking
agent or the complete opposite.
When I was growing up, I was truly open to all possibilities.
Being comfortable with anything happening at anytime - feeling okay if something unusual happened was okay for me. I didn't
fall apart. In fact, I liked strange things happening or out of the ordinary things popping up because I was closer to my
authentic self when I was a young child. Before I was traumatized, abused and inundated with dysfunctional relationships I
was very happy go lucky. Throughout my lifetime I tried to continue this happy go lucky attitude and I would smile no matter
what. As time went on and I began to suffer personal hurt and experienced very hurtful things - I evolved into a very rigid,
dysfunctional person.
After being stepped on and physically and emotionally injured time after
time by people I loved and I thought needed to treat me with caring and love and devotion - I evolved into a hard shelled
person who smiled all of the time. If someone asked me if something was wrong - which didn't happen often because no one cared
how I felt and no one asked me - I would reply, "Everything's fine!" and I would smile. Evolving into a negatively affected
human being happens when things happen in life that aren't very nice and this happens to people for all kinds of reasons.
Evolving into a non-feeling deeply wounded individual most generally takes
time. For me, it pinnacled in my forties. I was in such a sad dysfunctional state that the only thing I had left to do was
to kill myself, which is what I was thinking about every day right after opening my eyes in the morning. Every day I would
wake up to these suicidal thoughts because I just couldn't deal with any more negativity. I was miserable. I was drowning.
There was no where to turn. I wasn't able to be saved.
These things happen because life happens. Energy happens. Get it?
In my forties, I decided that I'd had enough. I wanted to be me. I had
been living a miserable existence, not able to be myself at all. I was anyone else but me.
I was having severe symptoms of something so I went on another search for a therapist. I still had one thing going for me,
perhaps the residual effect of being innately free in my thinking. I still had hope. I had visited at least fifteen therapists,
probably closer to twenty, but I went again to another. Finally I had found someone who knew exactly what was wrong with me.
She knew I had been deeply wounded. She didn't think I was crazy. She had empathy for me and I felt it and responded.
In cases such as mine, there must be relief from symptoms first. I tried
doing it without medication, but the energy within me was stirring in a positive direction and I was starving to emerge from
my desperation. I wanted out. I was turning the circle within me, my center in a new direction and no one would ever stop
me. My diagnosis was post traumatic stress disorder, depression and then an unusual eating disorder that disrupted my sleep
since childhood. I didn't know it then, but I had regained the most important dose of my power back when I was able to stop
dissociating. After that I was able to stop feeling paranoid.
I had been stalked for over a year, fighting for my life and finally the
life of my unborn daughter. I had a two year old in tow while traveling by bus throughout the state of Michigan from domestic
violence shelter to the next. He always found me though. I had irritable bowel syndrome in the extremest of cases. One time
when he found me, I was walking in a new city down the street from a shelter. I had only been there one week. I was going
to the thrift store to find a new outfit because I was pregnant and only had one thing to wear. I saw his car, my two year
old holding my hand, I began shaking violently. My stomach began to churn as I looked all around me. Had he seen me?
As I picked up my boy and began to run to find the thrift store I realized
that I had lost all control of my bowels as the hot putrid liquid went down my legs beneath my pants. As I ran into the store
I screamed, "Where's your bathroom?" A woman pointed and I ran to it, slammed the door, opened the door and screamed out,
"Call the police and please... bring me a pair of pants or a towel or something!" I was wounded alright. These memories had
been running through my brain one after another and I couldn't shut them off. I could smell the smells, feel the churning
of my stomach and I experienced it time after time from a higher level than normal as if I were looking down on my own scenes
of misery.
I had tried to make my marriage work, especially when that preacher had
told me I wasn't walking with God when I left my husband; thus my pregnancy. I had allowed a reunion for pastoral counseling,
but it didn't last long. The Lord always listened to my prayers though. I had wanted a daughter to keep my son company
as all my other children were almost grown. It happened very quickly and then he almost killed us both. So when that
initial spark of positive energy began to eagerly surge through my body, I felt it and I wanted more. To leave the
dissociation behind and the nightmares soon fell away. Then I was able to sleep for more
than an hour at a time. It was if a snowball was falling downhill gathering strength. Once I began to feel better, feel alive
again, I wanted to be able to have it all!
And so the process goes,
evolving that is. We evolve as we are able to. We learn how to walk again, we learn how
to talk again, how to eat, how to sleep as we are able to. None of us evolve at the same
rate. Some of us take longer to remember how to walk on our own. We may stumble for a few more weeks or months than another.
Time is irrelevant. We who
have to turn ourselves around and relearn how to live again, unencumbered, free again have to absorb what we are learning
this time and relish the successes we find. Celebrating each small accomplishment is crucial. It reinforces our evolution.
It is here that I see our wounded military today returning
to the states from the Middle East. When they arrive they're unable to do much. Their heads are full of negativities. They
need kindness, love and caring. They need a diagnosis and the assuring help of everyone. We owe it to them. Those of us who
have made that journey back to some type of real life again, need to speak up and reach out to help these people.
Each person is in their own world, their own time zone and we must as
a community of Americans embrace them and let them know that we are here to help them until they are able
again to do what they need to do. Post traumatic stress disorder does us like that - so to speak. It tears us apart
bit by bit, piece by piece - mentally instead of physically. I once spent almost every day for a year in the emergency room
with panic attacks so severe that I thought the pain was worse than childbirth. I had to be medically sedated to get through
them. Panic attacks made me unable to spend more than a day out of pain. It's a symptom of post traumatic stress - the panic
attacks are. This is what our military people are experiencing.
They need understanding until they are able.
to evolve again. Find out what you can do to help them. I learned very early on that through helping others I would help myself.
That is how this network of sites began almost six years ago. Beginning with one single site - I wanted to help others almost
immediately - to find their way towards their own evolution. It's been great. I've learned so much from helping others. There
are certain things you can't learn unless you are helping others. Be there for someone. I know you are able.
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Jeffrey showed up at one of my 5-Day Inner Bonding Intensives to deal with his alcoholism & resulting relationship problems. His past 2 marriages had ended in messy divorces. His business was falling apart.
Yet in the face of all of this, Jeffrey couldn't or wouldn't stop drinking.
2 things
were immediately apparent in my first session with Jeffrey. First, he had completely abandoned himself, making others responsible for his self-worth.
His inauthentic saccharine niceness felt like sticky glue trying
to ooze its way into having control over getting others’ approval. Needless to say, it wasn't working for him.
Second, he had no spiritual connection, no Source to turn to for love, comfort & guidance. As anyone who has attended AA knows, being able to turn to a spiritual
Source is essential for healing. The support of the people within the program can help sustain abstinence, but true healing comes from the inner spiritual connection.
No one had ever confronted Jeffrey with how much they were put off by his controlling niceness. They would just go away, leaving him to wonder what he had done wrong.
At first, when the Intensive participants told Jeffrey about feeling pulled at for approval, he felt hurt. But within the loving energy of the Intensive, he was soon able to open to learning about the gift they were offering him.
Until the Intensive, she had believed that her pain was being caused by others’ behavior towards her – others’ judgments of her. At the Intensive, she discovered that she wasn't a victim – that her pain was being
caused by ignoring her feelings & judging herself, as well as by not speaking up for herself with her husband & family.
As Rachael
learned & practiced the Inner Bonding process, she started to attend to her own feelings & make the connection between her pain & her self-judgments.
source: self growth.com
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I've been asked all sorts
of questions througout my years of helping people with Anxiety & Panic & certain questions came up far more than others. So for everyone's benefit I decided to list some of the
most popular ones below.
Q.1 I feel so strange & out of touch with the world
around me. Am I going mad?
No, you are definitely not. You may feel as if you are,
but this is just another offshoot of Anxiety.
Anxiety isn't a mental illness. These feelings can't harm you & there's nothing to worry about.
Otherwise known as depersonalization
& derealization, this feeling of unreality & detachment has a totally logical explanation. It comes from the constant
worrying about how you feel as you search your mind for answers to your condition. Your mind has become tired & less resilient
through watching yourself & worrying about your symptoms, day in, day out.
It's been bombarded with
worrying thoughts & becomes fatigued. Just as our limbs can tire, so can our mind. It craves a rest from all this introspection of oneself.
In fact these feelings of unreality are your body's way of protecting you from the onslaught of worrying thoughts. Your mind has a safety mechanism that protects against all this, causing us to feel strange &
not with it. It's crying out to be left alone & just like a broken arm will heal itself so will your body, you just have
to step out of the way & let it.
The key to recovering from this feeling of detachment
is to surrender to this strange feeling, to pay it no respect & realize it's just the product of an over-tired mind, fatigued
by your constant worrying thoughts & the constant checking in to how you feel.
Constantly worrying about
this symptom is the very thing that keeps this feeling alive. When people are caught up in the worry cycle, they begin to
think deeply & constantly. They study themselves from deep within, checking in & focusing on their symptoms. They
may even wake in the morning only to continue this habit, “How do I feel this morning? “ I wonder if I will be
able to get thru today”.
"What’s this new sensation
I feel?” This may go on all day, exhausting their already tired mind further. This constant checking in &
constant assessing of their symptoms then becomes a habit, but like all other habits this one can also be changed.
This Question I have been asked more than any other over the years & I go into a lot of detail
in my book to explain this harmless yet disturbing symptom. This condition can really throw people into thinking it's something
far worse than it really is. I myself found this feeling of detachment very hard to accept & understand,
but when it was explained to me in full, I was able to rid myself of this symptom of anxiety.
Q.2 Why do I feel better in certain situations & not in others?
This is a very common one & it all comes down to how you think in other situations.
i.e., you may feel better
in the safety of your own home rather than at a family gathering. There is no difference in both
of these situations, the only difference is in the way you think. You're the same person & it isn't the situation that
makes you feel worse it's your thought pattern.
You may spend the day worrying
about going to a particular function, setting your body up to be anxious on arrival & then blame it on the situation you're in rather than the thought pattern you have created during the day
while at home.
You may get there &
then also worry about making a fool of yourself, spending the whole time tensing against how you feel & creating more
anxiety. Do you see how we do this to ourselves?
It isn't the situation,
but our perception of the situation that causes us to feel worse in certain situations. You're merely doing it to yourself
with your thoughts.
You must just accept how you feel wherever you are & in whatever situation you find yourself; deal with yourself & not the place.
Sometimes a place may hold certain memories of failure, which makes us feel anxious, but this soon passes when we learn to accept how we feel & let go of that tension.
Don't try & hold
on to yourself, learn how to let go & just be.
If you truly accept
how you feel in every situation & stop all the "What if's" & other negative thoughts that just increase anxiety, you'll find that although you may feel uncomfortable at times, nothing bad is going to happen to you & in time your
reactions lessen until you feel more able to cope, day by day.
Anxiety loves avoidance, so take it's power away & move forward & embrace these feelings of fear, this is the key , moving towards your fears is far more productive than hiding from them. By continually hiding
& running away from how you feel you are training your mind & body to fear, this again is another habit born through
anxiety, but again like with all habits it can be reversed.
Avoiding symptoms just doesn't
work, as you must realize by now. you need to let all feelings be there, not to avoid them but to go through them, invite
them even. This worked for me, I had faced my demons head on and realised this was the only way to stop fearing them. I ignored
my body's instinct to avoid and started to embrace how I felt, I moved towards the feelings of fear. Eventually, I started to understand my condition so much more. I went from not been able to even mention or hear the word anxiety, to barely giving it a second thought.
I mention the word 'understanding' again, because this is the key to
recovery. How can you not fear something you don't understand! How can you accept something that
still scares you?
Q.3 Will these feelings ever go away?
Yes they will, once you understand why
you feel like you do, you can then start to unmask a lot of the fears you hold about anxiety. There are so many myths about
anxiety that it worries me just how many people are mis-informed and truly believe they will never get better, and that they
will just have to live with this condition.
Too many people spend years like I did, searching for that elusive miracle cure
that just does not exist. Your body has been through a lot in the time you have had this condition, it maybe emotionally spent
and feel so tired.
None of this
has done you any long term harm. Just see your body as running at 75% at the moment, in time when we learn to step out of
our own way and start doing things the right way and changing our habits, it improves and starts to feel more healthy and
refreshed.
Letting your body recover
at it's own pace is the key, overnight cure is impossible after what you have been through. But what a journey recovery can
be when we allow it to happen.
Understanding anxiety also takes away so much fear out of how we feel. A lot of anxiety is habit, a learned behavior that can be reversed.
Every stage and symptom has a logical explanation that can be explained. With less fear and more understanding,
we also calm the constant worrying; it is the lack of information on the subject that keeps the worry cycle going. Constant
worrying that we will never get better also adds to the belief that we will just have to live with it.
Once we start to understand anxiety and use the tools we have learned to cope with
how we feel, the change can be dramatic. In my recovery, I found that the more knowledge I had and the more I understood
my condition the easier it was to accept how I felt. I started to lose fear of my symptoms and how I felt. Eventually they
began to hold less power over me and I started to pay them less respect.
It's your desperation to rid yourself of how you feel that keeps your anxiety alive. The stress you put on yourself day in day out, the
constant worrying and thinking about your condition, this puts a tremendous pressure on your body. Is it any wonder you stay
anxious? It's time to stop beating yourself up about how you feel and give your body the rest it craves.
Knowledge is power. The less you fear your symptoms, the less they mean. This also stops the worry cycle you may find yourself in, which
is the very thing that keeps anxiety going. You are bound to worry if you don't know what is wrong with you, that is why you
need an explanation to help break this cycle.
Q.4 Why do I find it so hard in social
situations? I find it so hard to communicate with people.
Is it any wonder we find
it difficult to follow a conversation when all we are concerned about is ourself and how we feel. We can't concentrate on
what the other person is saying because all we are concerned about is how we are feeling and how we maybe coming across.
I found myself
trying to hold on to myself, trying not to crack. It was like acting out a part in a film. It was like being two separate
people, one trying to hold a conversation, the other watching my body's reaction. Is it any wonder we struggle to fit in to
the world around us?
Once we find the courage to accept how we feel and try to not
put too much importance on how we come across, we find it easier to follow what the other person is saying. We become less
concerned about how we feel, which gives us more time to be interested in the situation we are in and we start to become more
involved in the present.
Q.5 Why do I seem to have so many bad thoughts running around
all day?
The reason you seem to have your attention on yourself all day and it feels
like there are hundreds of thoughts running through your mind is because of all your confusion about how you feel. You go
round in your mind all day long, looking for answers, trying to find a way out of this hell.
Some people may
even stay up all night reflecting on the whole day, trying to figure it all out. Mostly these are negative or worrying thoughts
and that's why they seem to come automatically and with so much force. When you are in an anxious state, emotions seem to
be ten-fold. Everything magnifies, a little problem becomes massive, and something that you could dismiss when you were healthy,
sticks around all day.
Eventually thinking just becomes automatic; it becomes a habit.
All day, every day, these thoughts seem to come before you even think them. Looking at it from another angle, when people
meditate, they stop thinking for hours on end until it becomes a habit and they can go all day without a worrying thought.
That is why they feel so refreshed.
Not you, your thoughts just carry on and on
and when your mind is tired, like it is now, it grasps hold of every thought, pulls them in and they seem to stick. Some people
worry to the extent that they believe everything they feel is life threatening. A headache becomes a brain tumor, a stomach
ache can become cancer and so on, and no matter how many times their doctor tells them there is nothing wrong with them, they
are never quite convinced.
If this is you, then realize these thoughts of illness
are just figments of your imagination, mainly created by your anxious state. Everything becomes magnified when we are anxious.
Let these thoughts go, don’t react to them and see them as just that, thoughts that carry no weight whatsoever, no matter
how loud they shout.
When we try too hard to do ANYTHING, it seems to slip further
from reach. This applies to ridding oneself of unwanted thoughts. The more you "try" to push them away, the longer they linger
and the stronger their impact. When we welcome, yes actually embrace, unwanted thoughts, they lose their significance and
quickly diminish. When you impose a false sense of importance upon a thought, it will often appear more serious than it deserves.
Time is a great healer, especially concerning this condition. I allowed them to
flow in and flow out and I didn’t react. When I did this, I noticed the scary thoughts seem to lose their scary edge.
Stop fighting them, just say: come if you wish, I am ready for you. Do not be thrown by these symptoms or this experience.
Once you begin to recover, the mind and body settle down and these overwhelming thoughts disappear, along with the anxiety
condition.
Don’t ever think, "I must not think that". Let all thoughts come,
do not run away from any of them. See them for what they are - thoughts - exaggerated because of the way you feel. They can
do you no harm and they mean nothing. They won’t be around when you recover, so pay them no respect.
Why not try following a negative/scary thought through and ask yourself, "What’s the worst thing that
could happen?" Ask yourself, "Is it really going to happen? Is this thought rational in any way?" If you do this, you may
find an answer to a thought you have been so frightened of.
So the next time
you can see them for what they are and let them go, and deep down inside of you there is a place where you can see thoughts
for what they are, you will realize they just come from habit and are just not important.
source: self growth.com
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