If you suffer or have suffered from anxiety, you will totally understand how debilitating and paralysing it can be. If you’ve gone deeper down the hole and suffer from panic attacks, I’m sure you can identify with those feelings very well.
In truth, all human beings suffer from some form of anxiety in their lives. It can be incredibly mild and intermittent to severe and consistent. Nevertheless, all of us have dealt with these feelings or currently deal with these feelings and have never understood how to resolve them and move forward.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever been told why you might get anxious. If you haven’t, I am going to do you a solid and explain it to you in a very simple way. I like taking the complexity out of the challenges we face. It makes things a whole lot easier to process, manage and overcome.
Human beings experience varying levels of anxiety due to two main reasons.
1. A perceived lack of control over themselves, others or a situation
2. A perceived loss of power over themselves, others or a situation
These can be isolated on their own or combined. Either way, this is why you are probably experiencing anxiety in your life right now. There is something you have no control or no power over and it’s possibly making you feel anxious because you’re probably unable to achieve a particular outcome that you desire. Do you know what that is? Can you identify with this?
After working with clients for 10 years, this is the common observation I’ve made with everyone who has struggled to combat anxiety in their lives. They try, with all their might, to change something that they can’t change. To manipulate something that they can’t manipulate. To speed up time, even though nature won’t allow it. The results they want move further and further away, pressure and stress build up in their bodies and they freak out. Does any of this resonate with you?
The only thing we can really have control over, is ourselves. No matter how hard you try, you’re never going to make the server at your local ice cream parlor give you that extra scoop just because it’ll make you feel calm inside. I’m also fairly certain that getting out of a car traveling in a tunnel or wanting to leave an airplane mid flight, is not going to serve you well.
Anxiety is based on fear and most fears we experience are irrational. We make them up in our mind based on stories we hear, experiences we’ve had, that we haven’t healed yet and the beliefs and opinions of people we’ve subordinated to. Anxiety can be resolved just as fears can be overcome.
I’m going to leave you with something to consider. Think about a moment when you’ve felt anxious or panicky. When you were in that moment, you probably perceived you didn’t have control over something or someone outside of you. My questions is, what did you have control over in that moment? List every single thing you were in control of. Believe me, you’ve never actually lost it.
If you’d like to know how to finally stop anxiety from getting in the way of you living your life, contact me at info@gregschreeuwer.com for a complimentary consult.
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