You know that dense dark cloud of uncertainty following your every move or what if’s thoughts; spiraling out of control in your brain.
AS A MENTAL HEALTH ENTHUSIASTIC AND A PROUD CERTIFIED LIFE COACH
I STUDY THE BRAIN, AND I KNOW HOW TO HELP YOU MANAGE YOUR MIND
I am not a physician and highly recommend and advocate going to a doctor or a psychiatrist and getting help, including medicine if you need it
If you are still functional in your life and want to learn how to manage your anxiety, then this blog post is for you.
First, we will discuss what anxiety really is then I’ll teach you how to manage it in 3 Easy Steps.
WHY DO WE EXPERIENCE ANXIETY, AND WHERE IT COMES FROM?
When you understand where anxiety, worry, and fear come from and why it may feel like your brain likes to default to thinking thoughts that bring up those emotions, it becomes helpful to see that nothing is wrong with you. Your mind is working correctly, and you need to develop the skillset to manage it better.
HUMAN BRAIN 101
Humans have a primitive survival brain, and an evolved
part called the prefrontal cortex.
Survival brain only cares about keeping you alive.
The Prefrontal Cortex is the most intellectual part of your brain; it’s future-focused, slower, and used for creativity and planning. It also helps you estimate what will happen in the future.
By using what it knows from your similar memory banks and recalling past situations and experience
When your prefrontal cortex struggles to create thoughts about a particular future, your primitive brain is triggered. Every time your brain can’t figure something out, this side of your brain is activated. Its how your brain protects you. It jumps in fight or flight mode.
Hundred of years ago, this survival response was essential. Its what kept us alive
Now in modern society, we don’t need that level of fight or flight.
We are no longer running from danger that might cost us our lives.
We don’t need to worry about being attacked or eaten.
Instead; our anxiety, fear, worry are coming from
Our Weight loss Journey
Money
Decisions
Job
Children
Changes
Even though we may experience challenges, none of these are immediate life or death emergency.
Let’s take your decision to have weight loss surgery
Weight loss surgery is something that you never experience, and your brain was likely triggered to focus on the unknown, and you ended up feeling anxious.
You have seen the success rate; you see other sleevers, but you have illogical thoughts about how it may not work for you, or you may die.
Its simply because you’re brain switches to survival mode.
When your brain sees something new and different, and it’s unsure of the outcome and can’t make sense of it. Its harder for it to stay calm, but it’s not impossible.
You can manage it
You don’t need to react in fight or flight mode
You’re not in danger
Become aware of what’s going on UNDERSTAND is not a problem and accept the feeling and allow it in your body.
What people do is fight and resist their anxiety, and that makes it worse
They will try to avoid it by escaping it with external pleasure like eating drinking, shopping, and Netflixing.
Or they will start to think about the worst-case scenario or possibility, creating panic, sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety-causing wildly thinking behavior.
All this unnecessary drama! We don’t know how to be with an emotion. We don’t know how to feel our feeling without thinking there is a problem.
We aren’t taught how to in society
But I got you… I have a solution that works.
HOW TO MANAGE ANXIETY IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS
STEP 1: MAKE FRIENDS WITH ANXIETY
Do not try to get rid of it
Do not try to solve it immediately; allow it to be with you. I helped so many of my clients with this. I know it sounds crazy, but I promise this is true. Resisting anxiety feels worse than allowing it.
RESISTING EMOTION IS LIKE TRYING TO HOLD A BEACH BALL UNDERWATER
The pressure builds around it. It wants to come up, and you must consistently have to exert your energy and hold it down.
That’s exactly what you do when you try to push away anxiety or any emotion, holding down that emotion, feels intolerable.
ANXIETY IS JUST A VIBRATION IN YOUR BODY
These vibrations are just your body organs releasing chemicals and hormones to get you ready for fight or flight response because it thinks it’s helping you. But you know your not in danger.
In my coaching program, I take my clients thru a step by step process on how to process their feelings, but just knowing this will help you today.
Allowing emotions looks like swimming next to the beach ball and being with it. Being with anxiety all day and knowing that it won’t do you any harm just like that ball.
Just observing what anxiety is doing to your body. Feeling the vibration and noticing that your life is not in immediate danger.
STEP 2: UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS CREATING ANXIETY
Anxiety is your brain saying we might die, and something has gone wrong. But when you know that the only reason you are feeling anxiety is because of the sentence your saying in your brain or a belief that you might be thinking subconsciously or unconsciously; It makes anxiety more tolerable. It gives you more control over your emotion.
After I teach this to my clients, they can become more aware of the sentences that are making them feel the unwanted emotion and work on changing it.
However, to feel better, you do not need to change it right away. Just knowing that you are feeling any emotion because of a sentence that you keep saying in your mind is just as powerful.
Some people experience chemical and hormonal imbalance that requires them to see a medical professional.
STEP 3 OBSERVE YOURSELF
Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of the anxiety. When my clients learn that it’s their thoughts that create their feelings they always want to change their thinking immediately to try to feel better
HERE IS WHY I TELL THEM NO
Your brain is such a powerful machine. When you believe something is true, your brain collects evidence to prove you right. It is not easy to switch up your thinking.
Making friends with your anxiety makes it easier to be patient with it.
Observing yourself
Digging deep and understanding why you choose to think that thought is the key to long term change. Rushing to changing a thought without the proper work will make a new thought unbelievable, depending on how ingrained it is.
Questions to ask yourself as you observe your anxiety
Am I in danger?
Is it true?
Why am I choosing to think this?
Could something else be possible?
These are the three steps to help you manage your anxiety or any emotion.