I Feel Anxious All the Time

In our culture, today that statement "I feel anxious all the time" is something that many people feel, especially people who have been personally involved in something traumatic, like 9/11, or an abusive childhood. Sometimes people give up completely, just accepting this kind of feeling as the way life is, or their lot in life. After my son was born in 2003, this was how I felt about anything concerning him. It was quite disabling and just felt horrible all the time.

I was able to make the shift to feeling better a little bit at a time until finally today, I would describe myself as almost never feeling anxious. And when I do feel anxious I can soothe myself and make myself feel better very quickly.

I would like for everyone who wants to, to be able to make this shift to feeling better. My life is much sweeter and more fun these days and I think everyone deserves that. I remember how awful it felt to be anxious all the time and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

So, what I believe is really required to feel better and to get out of that anxiety trap is a shift in thinking and attitude. In my experience, when I was anxious, I was very guarded all the time. I was guarded against life, against experiences, against anything that I believed would make me feel bad. In the process of walking around on guard all the time what I really was doing was cultivating and nurturing an attitude that life is scary and painful, and I must constantly have my defenses up and keep things from coming in to my life that I don't want. This attitude basically used up all my life energy and I became sick, run-down, and miserable.

My shift in thinking and attitude was from one of guardedness and 'I-can't-handle-it-ness" to one of openness and one of "I-can-handle-anything". Now I am healthy, happy, joyful, and full of energy. I am open and I can handle anything. It's quite awesome. I didn't take medication and I didn't go to a counselor (well, I did try an anti-depressant and go to a counselor 6+ years ago but neither seemed to help so I didn't do them for long).

It took me 5 years to figure this out completely, but hopefully I was just slow. I read a lot of books and did a lot of work with my emotions - trying to feel them and accept them instead of push them away and reject them. This work, I have found is very important, because your emotions are there to tip you off to when your thoughts will make you anxious and sick. If you can feel your emotions and they feel bad, you are tipped off that your thinking is out of whack and you can start thinking different thoughts and seeing how they make you feel.

My favorite books to help me with this kind of stuff are Abraham-Hicks books and the Sedona Method book. I also liked Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine.

I can also recommend panic-away [http://www.anxietyfreenow.info] for both generalized anxiety and panic attacks. The move taught in that course is exactly how I got over a fear of heights within about a half an hour.

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