Here’s how we CONQUER Anxiety for GOOD!
While I can’t FULLY explain it all in short, here are the core concepts you need to know.
Keep reading below or...
1 - The 3 Elements of Anxiety.
The first thing we need to get clear on is ‘what is anxiety’?
We actually use this word to describe a cluster of symptoms. While not everyone notices all of these symptoms at first, each of these are at play in Anxiety Disorders:
The secret is that each of these elements are in fact separate experiences, but until you notice that and learn to handle them individually, they will keep on fueling each other…
A moment of fear leads to negative thinking… Negative thinking leads to a stress response… The stress response creates more fear… which leads to more negative thinking… And around and around we go.
By isolating each of these elements and learning how to handle each one individually, we can stop that cycle and finally settle into a moment of feeling safe for long enough to allow our bodies to FINALLY release the pent up emotional energy they’ve been trying to deal with for YEARS!
2 - Trauma is ENERGY… NOT memory!
By now, you’ve probably figured out that anxiety is a trauma response and that you need to heal your trauma to get over it.
The problem is that most approaches focus on the trauma EVENT… not the trauma itself.
The trauma ‘event’ is the thing that happened in your past.
The trauma, however, is simply the unresolved emotional pain that still exists inside of you RIGHT NOW.
Think of it this way:
Imagine that, many years ago, you sprained your ankle and you never let it heal properly. As a result, you developed a strange way of walking to avoid putting pressure onto the muscles that were injured. Over time, this unhealthy way of walking became your norm and now it’s starting to cause other pain and problems.
That’s EXACTLY what happened with your emotional responses! There was pain that you never dealt with and you created defense mechanisms to avoid facing it. This helped you avoid feeling the direct pain in the moment, but it caused the habits that led to much more enduring and problematic pain in the long run.
The point is that
in order to heal this, it doesn’t matter HOW you sprained your ankle all those years ago. It’s just a matter of retraining yourself to walk properly in the here and now, and learning how to slowly and safely start putting your weight back onto the appropriate muscles so that you can walk in a way that is healthy and sustainable again.
Similarly, in order to deal with your emotional pain, we only need to focus on the present. The things that happened in the past don’t matter much anymore. You just want to feel healthy now and no amount of analyzing the past is going to get you there. You can’t heal what happened in the past. You can only work on what’s happening now.
And this is great news for anyone sick of ruminating over their trauma in a therapist’s office!
3 - Emotional Fitness Training
Inner-peace is an art and a skill that requires practice, NOT analysis!Â
We need to develop the skills of how to handle our emotional triggers. Not just how to COPE with them with things like breathing exercises, meditation, tapping and positive self talk… but how to genuinely turn moments of emotional distress into the moments of healing they are meant to be!
We build the practical tools of what to do in moments of emotional distress and we begin to apply them onto our small triggers, thereby releasing our resistance, learning to feel safe, building the appropriate strength and muscles and start to purge and process old, unresolved emotional energy.
Then, we can move up to the heavier triggers, and heavier ones, and heavier ones, bit by bit, naturally getting stronger and more confident along the way.
This is why I call my approach ‘Emotional Fitness Training’. Because it’s something that we practice on a daily basis to build strength and skills so that we can stay emotionally healthy and stable, no matter what is happening in our lives.
Eventually, you’ll be so strong, confident, self-assured and well-equipped with the skills and tools you need that you will be able to handle ANY challenge that life throws at you without ever losing your footing again.
