Anxiety old

 

Negative Anticipation

 

• Anxiety is a normal stress response to anticipation of a threat or danger which helps keep us safe.
• This negative anticipation or fear can be in respect to a physical, emotional or psychological threat.
• This anticipation and fear can also be real or imagined.

 

 

Helpless and Inadequate

• Anxiety can also be an ongoing experience of feeling helpless or inadequate
• Thoughts that you do not have the ability to manage or cope and sense of hopelessness

 

Fight or Flight Response

 

• In anticipation of  fearful/dangerous situations our body automatically responds so that we can fight or flight to keep ourselves safe.
• This unconscious fight/flight response means that the brain focuses on preparing the body for action without you needing to think about it.
• This is why all the symptoms of anxiety occur like dry mouth, light headed, butterflies, etc. they are side effects from the change in bodily processes.

 

 

Problematic Anxiety

 

• Sometimes we experience unhelpful anxiety, where we are not actually at threat but our body/brain believes/responds as if we are.
• Excessive negative thinking can trigger the stress, anxious feelings, and the fight or flight response
• Negative thinking also triggers negative feelings which also then trigger the fight/flight response
• Avoidance can increase the fear/anxiety response as it is a message there is something to fear

 

How to Help Anxiety Issues

 

It is therefore often important to work with many aspects of yourself as part of working with unhelpful anxiety.  In counselling, working towards easing anxiety can often involve:

 

• facing fears, rather than avoidance
• addressing negative/distorted thoughts
• avoiding short term fixes which in the long term can heighten anxiety (avoidance, alcohol, caffeine, smoking)
• achieving self forgiveness, self acceptance, and self responsibility
• addressing relationships with over protectors, over controllers, and abusers
• increasing quality of self care: eg sleep, relaxation, healthy diet, exercise, positive relationships, fun, boundaries,
• recognising needs, and taking action
• exploring and honoring your true self
• exploring, expressing unprocessed emotions of past and present
• speaking from the I and owning your own experience
• mindfulness, non judgmental attention to self, just noticing experiencing and letting it pass
• attention to breathing which may become shallow or interrupted
• increasing the activation of the calming and soothing nervous system
• decreasing the activation of the stress/threat nervous system

You may wish to consider the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) if you would like to work more efficiently with anxiety related issues, please click here for more information.

Change can also be achieved by working directly with the subconscious using audio affirmations, subliminals, and hypnosis, FREE MP3s are available below eg self confidence, relationships, brain power, procrastination, and weight loss.

http://subliminalguru.com/unlock/a/myweb

http://hypnosisbootcamp.com/gift/a/myweb

 

 

 

 

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