We are going to talk about Anxiety and Fear and what it takes to beat it.

There are always going to be times where we feel a little uptight, nervous or edgy because for growth to happen we need to be pushed outside of our comfort zone. This is an innate system. It is when anxiousness and fears overtakes our life that we say we are suffering with Anxiety. By the time that you are suffering Anxiety and or Panic Attacks, you have already missed the early warning signs of Psychological Stress. To be anxious, you have not taken care of your previous Stress effectively and you are now further from your authentic self and that is why you don't feel good. You may feel scared, alone, lost or afraid.

Please don't panic about this. You are not broken and need fixing. You have just taken yourself out of the present moment of experiencing your life in its fullness and are now running around and around with worries in your head and continually reacting to the unpleasant feeling you are creating from thinking in this way. When anxious you are accessing past experiences and projecting that they COULD happen in the future. You are in the natural Stress Response and when this is happening you lose choice, for it is only when you are fully present, that you have the CHOICE to create something different or new, because you have access to the logical conscious mind and the universal mind if you choose to meditate. 

Sometimes you may have a genetic disposition and an ingrained habit of worrying. This does not mean you are bad or less worthy, it simply means you were conditioned in this way and now you are aware of this unconscious habit, you can start to practice new habits.

For the Anxiety sufferer, there is a strong need for certainty, order, perfection and control. So sometimes suffering Anxiety brings about Depression, because they feel like they have failed at controlling their life and Depression is about failing at one or more of our important goals.  This person may now be experiencing Depression, though their main issue is an underlying Anxiety.

To be Anxious you have:

• Avoided dealing with something from the past and are believing that it could happen again in the future and are using all sorts of control mechanisms to stop this from happening.
• To be worrying a lot about the future and what could happen. We call it the “What ifs…”
• To believe that you need to control or prevent bad things from happening or you are failing.
• To have a belief in a perfect right path and right way of doing things, so you have perfectionist qualities.
• Thought some particular thoughts that have caused the body’s natural Sympathetic Nervous System to kick in to an imagined trauma, so the chemicals now have nowhere to go, accept to cause unpleasant sensations (anxiety) and wear and tear to your mind and body.

To recover from Anxiety, you must understand that it is about you taking responsibility for yourself and how you think, feel and behave. This can be foreign for some as we are conditioned to look externally and blame rather than know ourselves and have Self Control. This means realising that every experience you have is proceeded by a thought and it is your own thoughts that need to change to recover from Anxiety. You basically need to “Chill Out” and “Stop Worrying.” This is not bad, it just is. Some people are going through a physical illness such as cancer, some people have a challenge with family and some people have thoughts that lead to Depression. The great thing is that you learnt to think this way, so you can learn to think another way and keep practicing that until that becomes the loudest voice in your head. This is changing your neural pathways.

You can start the road to recovery by practicing techniques that ground you and bring you back to the present moment. Some suggestions are:

• Take a walk in nature and notice all 5 senses. What am I smelling, tasting, feeling (not emotion), seeing and hearing. That is bringing yourself back into your body and reconnecting with the external world with your senses.
• Stand in the mirror or not and laugh and smile, even when you don't feel like it. Force it at first, like a fake laugh. You might even like to look up laughter yoga exercises or book in for a class. Doing this causes the body to release the "happy" chemicals.
• Practice Mindfulness, either in your daily life when eating and walking or as a formal practice to change your neural pathways. Please follow the link to our Mindfulness Blogs... http://renewhealthretreat.com/our-blog 
• Take up Yoga which causes you to be aware of your body, and this takes you out of your head and closer to the present moment. Many of the practices involve practicing Mindfulness. If you live on the Sunshine Coast follow the link for some information on Renew Therapy Room Yoga Class. http://renewhealthretreat.com/renew-programs/renew-therapy-room

Remember it really does only take one small step to make change and then keep taking small steps. This is the key. Humans are meant to be growing, moving and evolving.

Lets touch base again next week to talk about the specific thought that needs to have run through your head to be anxious and other helpful tools and strategies to Beat this condition.

See you next week for more on Anxiety and Fear. Jaye x