#480: Today we're talking about how our thoughts and feelings about anxiety affect the quality of our life. We'll be looking at the benefits of clearing resistance and resentment towards anxiety, and how that frees up our energy to start taking action steps toward feeling less anxious and more hopeful.
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Thoughts that keep us stuck in anxiety
Some thoughts we often hear are:
"I will never be free from panic attacks!"
"I know I'm stuck with this anxiety for life."
"I've tried everything and nothing works."
These are beliefs, not facts, and beliefs can be changed. Freedom from anxiety begins when we challenge those beliefs and look beyond them.
Breaking through the wall of anxiety
When you see anxiety as an enemy or personalize it by saying you hate it, you are giving anxiety power over you.
It becomes something you have to fight, or you resent. Feeling this way about anxiety puts you in a victim mindset. You are feeding your anxiety and exhausting yourself.
We’ve all done it. It's the default setting of a suffering mind. You don't like how you feel, so you declare it. I hate this. I don't want to feel this way. But anxiety isn't personal. It's not listening and it's not going to back off and leave you alone - unless you make the choice to deal with it by taking action.
Two challenges for the anxious mind
The mind tends to form grooves. Like an old record, our thoughts carve tracks that our mind falls in to and plays over and over again.
The mind also has a negativity bias, which means it's particularly drawn to unhelpful thoughts and beliefs and likes to replay them and ruminate on them.
This replaying makes the grooves of negative thought even deeper and difficult to escape, but we can, with determination and support.
Changing our mind is easier when it comes from our heart
Changing the way you feel about your anxiety and switching your perspective to seeing it as an emotion, or a messenger that is trying to communicate something to you is a positive first step in regaining your power and sense of control over anxiety.
One way to do this is to ask yourself what would I love to do if I was free from anxiety?
When you practice looking for purpose and meaning in your life, anxiety becomes a hurdle between now and what you want to experience instead of a brick wall.
Using EFT Tapping to change unwanted thoughts
Tapping is a quick and effective way to change our unwanted beliefs and, in doing so, change your entire experience of anxiety from feeling trapped to feeling hope and finding freedom.
You can try it by yourself via a book or course or work with a practitioner for support and to make sure you cover all the aspects of the thoughts that are affecting you. Read the rest of our show notes at
www.anxietyslayer.com
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