We all experience anxiety at different times and it comes in different forms, usually depending on what is happening in your life, including your job, your relationships with others, your home, and all the challenges and expectations you’re confronted with on a daily basis. So, what can we do to reduce anxiety?
1. Getting really clear of what anxiety is and what how people label and use as a an identity trait.
Anxiety is like any other emotion that we experience, just like happiness, sadness, fear. For some, anxiety can be more heightened than normal, just the same way that sadness can be more heightened than normal, just the same way that anger can be more heightened than normal. So, sometimes when we hear people say, “I’ve got anxiety.”, but what people mean by that is that their anxiety is heightened more than usual, and that they experience the feeling of anxiousness more than they would usually feel. Now, when people feel sadder more than they usually are, people don’t really say it “my sadness”, people call it depression. Depression is when sadness is more heightened than normal, when we feel sadder, the same way goes with anger. Again, we don’t really hear people say my anger.
When it comes to anxiety, people label it and call something in itself, but we don’t really tend to hear people do that about the other emotions. With sadness, people label it as depression, with anger, people don’t tend to even label it, they just think people have problems that they have anger management problems. The only difference is that we tend to label it something in its own right, like it has its own identity. It can compose us and it becomes our own identity, and that’s when people tend to have heightened anxiety problems and give themselves an identity really. I’ve been there, I’ve also been diagnosed with OCD during my pregnancy and got very severe after, which turn into post natal depression, so there was a lot of anxiety, sadness and anger. So I’m not speaking from a place of taking an advice, I’m speaking from place of experience.
2. Exploring why are you feeling anxious.
So if you’re feeling anxious or if it’s starting to heightened, it’s about really exploring why are you feeling anxious.
• Consult a doctor. If you have ongoing anxiety and the method that we talked about within this video and the training do not help, it is important to see a specialist, a doctor about your problem. In my experience when I was diagnosed with overactive thyroid the first time, I had a lot of heart palpitations, sweaty palms and anxiousness. It didn’t have anything to do with sadness, it was just anxiety. It wasn’t necessarily worry as I have experienced in the past. It was heart palpitation, having a panic attack, shortness of breath, also known as physical symptoms of anxiety that we experience. So, when we visited a doctor and did a blood test, I was then diagnosed as overactive thyroid. So, it’s really important to visit a specialist as well.
• Are you trying to retain information in your mind? This will also make you feel anxious and overwhelmed, trying to remember everything all at once and remembering million things that you to do.
• Worrying. It could be worrying about a future event, about something that’s not happening, or about working out, the current situation, what’s gonna happen, being unstable and you imagining the worst. These are common traits of people who feel anxious especially people who are anxious of more than one event specifically.
When we explore the question, “Why am I feeling anxious?”, it really helps us get into the bottom and understand what is your conscious mind or unconscious mind.
3. Think about the thing that you’re really worrying about and imagine successful completion.
It could be anything that you’re worrying about, that you’re panicking about. You might not be consciously aware of it because our brains have unconscious paths and that unconscious paths may have beliefs and values, and what happens is we act in accordance with it at the conscious and the unconscious level. So, if you’re there thinking, “that’s not me, I’m still feeling anxious”, go back to number two, and you can spend time journaling and spend time listening to yourself, and to really explore why you’re feeling anxious.
Would you like some support in getting clear on what ‘it is’ (your goals and success) download my FREE 90-day personalised success planner HERE!
