Are you ready to take responsibility of your mental health and start taking control of your thoughts and emotions, rather than them running you. It sounds harsh I know, though I have suffered both Anxiety and Panic Attacks and I had to do just that to recover. It is not about controlling others or yourself, it is about Self Control and Emotional Intelligence.

So how do we gain Emotional Intellegence? We need to understand that it is our own thoughts and perceptions alone that trigger certain chemicals to be released into our body so that we feel body sensations that we give a name. We will call the feeling anxious, nervous or aggitated. When this happens we say we have had an experience. That is the mind body connection. Prior to that were just unconscious or conscious thoughts in our mind and then the mind had to let the body know what was happening, hence the chemical change.

When we were young we were taught "if you are good you will get" via rewards and punishment. All very innocent, though this has caused us to relate "feeling bad" with "being bad" and "feeling good" with "being good." When you were punished it definitely felt bad and you knew we weren't a good person and when you were rewarded it felt great and you got the message that you were a great person. This also caused us to set goals to "be better" and in other words to increase our value and worth to others on this planet. As over 95% of our functioning is unconscious, we are not always aware of some of these unconscious goals we have attached our Self Worth and Value too. When your Self Worth and Value is attached to these goals, failing at one or more of them doesn't feel good, it is very painful and you get the perception of your Self Worth dropping, even though that isn't possible.

A person sufferening Anxiety and Fear has felt their Self Worth drop before and never wants to feel that way ever again. So their only focus is to make sure they get life right or perfect. Oh yes... they set lots and lots of goals and they have to achieve them. This will show everyone that they are Worthy. This causes the belief that there is a right path and you have to get it right. In other words, "I must control, I must prevent bad things from happening" (as I feel Worthless once before and it is too painful. I never want to feel that way again!) This is the thinking that causes Anxiety and Fear!!

It is now that the brain does it's thing. It says "okay he/she has so much to do, so they need extra Adrenaline, extra Cortisol" and then continues to pump in all the chemicals related to Fight or Flight Stress Response and suddenly the person feels motivated, lots of energy to do all these things they have to do to achieve their goals, so that they are a valuable Human Being on this Planet.  This is the Sympathetic Nervous System at work, which is the Automatic Stress Response. As you can see, this Stress Response can be triggered consciously or unconsciously.

The problems that come with this whole scenario are:

• The Stress Response has been set off by your thinking, not an actual physical threat, so the chemicals released have nowhere to go and cause wear and tear on the body.
• Continual use of the Stress Response in this way, can lead to other conditions, due to the body continually having to produce Adrenaline and Cortisol. This becomes exhausting!
• No-one else knows you are trying so hard to be perfect and get life right, so they don't always understand what is going on for you, as you are doing all of this with your own thinking.

Lets talk more about Beating Anxiety and Fear next week! :-)