So how do you stop feeling anxious all the time? The very basic answer to this is to stop thinking the thoughts that lead you to that anxious feeling. Is it really that simple though?
Actually, learning to think new thoughts is quite difficult, and that is why there are so many people walking around feeling miserable all the time. That is why there are so many angry, bitter, depressed people in our world.
Most of us just go out in the world not believing or knowing that we have any control over the thoughts that we think, the emotions we feel, or the lives that we lead. We believe we are here, stuck in this crappy life, and if someone is rude to us, we have no choice but to feel angry. If someone behaves in a threatening manner to us, we have no choice but to feel threatened. If something might go wrong for us, we must feel anxious.
That's how I used to live my life. I don't know if I actually 'believed' those things or not because I never thought about it. That's just how life was, so I guess I did have those beliefs.
What I have learned in the last few years is that I don't HAVE TO feel angry when someone is mean to me and I don't HAVE TO feel anxious because something in my life might 'go wrong'. These are learned feelings and responses. They are not required.
I used to be quite anxious and fearful most of the time, especially in the face of any sort of criticism. That was my big trigger. These days I know that criticism is either true or it isn't, but there isn't any meaning in it past that. If someone belittles me or doesn't like the way I did something, that doesn't make me a bad person. I can even choose to feel any way I want about the criticism - I don't automatically feel bad about it. It's pretty cool.
If I could get to this point, I know that most anyone could. I was very, very reactive and now I am not very reactive at all. It took me many years to figure it out, but I think I was a lot slower at it than I had to be. If it had really been important to me to feel good rather than be right I could have figured it out a lot quicker.
One thing that I think could help most people with general anxiety and even with panic attacks is the panic away program [http://www.anxietyfreenow.info]. I really love the mental methods taught in this course. This is the kind of stuff that helped me a lot. Check it out: [http://www.anxietyfreenow.info].
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