by Delta Hunter
Anxiety is overwhelming
Anxiety is fear. Let’s call it for what it is. When we are anxious, our thoughts are full of fear. Our bodies react to fear by clenching and tightening up. We feel it in our brows, jaws, shoulders, chest, stomachs, hips and so on. Our minds become fixated on our fearful thoughts, and we can’t seem to break away from them. The more often we experience anxiety, the more our brains become conditioned to the stimulation and a pattern begins to settle in. Eventually, frequent anxiety will develop into panic attacks and our physical symptoms intensify. Our blood pressure and heart rate quicken, breathing becomes difficult and labored, and our hands and feet become cold. We become afraid we might die.
The truth is that we can live without frequent anxiety and panic. Imagine what will fill in that time and space. Pleasure? Love? Peace?
Anxiety is fearing things that might happen sometime in the future.
At least 90% of what we fear is about something we are anticipating might happen. We fear we will fail our exams, that we will be late for work; that our children won’t get into the best schools, and even that we won’t be liked.
Fear is for things that happen in the present.
A very tiny percent of our fears are about things that are actually happening in the present. These are the rare events that fear was made for: a fire breaks out in your kitchen and you need to make sure your children are safe; you step off the curb of a busy street and a car is speeding towards you; you are alone at night on a quiet street and you see someone lurking behind a tree. These things that are happening in the present moment require decisive action and the fear/startle response is the very thing that will shift you into that kind of thinking.
We can live without anxiety
Instead of spending our time feeling anxious about something that might NOT happen in the future, we could spend it creatively thinking about solutions to our problems. It’s only possible to think creatively, and to find solutions if we are not consumed by anxiety.
Take this simple beginner’s step: write a short list of things that make you anxious, and next to them write when you think they will happen. Once you have finished, ask yourself what is happening in that very moment. You will find you are thinking creatively and have begun to see how worrying about something that might not happen is a way of robbing you of a life that could be filled with love, fun and peace.
Being laughed at future
Being old and poor future
Being lonely future
Right now I feel ok! I still feel ok… still feeling ok… feeling good… smiling
Got it?
posted by Delta Hunter
NYS Licensed Psychotherapist, Meditation and Martial Arts Instructor