Looking at anxiety can cause a lot of confusion for many people, as the way we are told it exists often isn’t true. Instead of telling you the same things that you’ve probably heard a million times before, I’m going to show you some concepts that have really helped my clients.
Once you understand anxiety this way, it will change the way that you look at anxiety forever.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is basically part of our natural protection mechanisms. When we are in a situation that presents us with a threat or a danger, our natural systems alert us to this so that we can take action (or not). We are supposed to feel anxiety in certain situations. It is a natural feeling that has helped us and our ancestors to stay alive.
The problems with anxiety happen when this natural protection system becomes over-sensitive or is being fired in situations where there isn’t really a threat or a danger. If you are in a safe place and nothing is threatening you or your safety then there is no logical reason for you to feel anxious. Your subconscious mind and body don’t do logic though. Only your conscious mind deals in logic and this can be where some of the issues start.
A Conscious Way of Looking at Anxiety
When your conscious mind is looking at anxiety, it has to rationalise and make sense of it. It needs everything to be logical and ordered to understand. Whilst your conscious mind has the power to dive deep into complex understandings in order to find answers, it doesn’t understand how the body and subconscious mind are operating.
You have a feeling in your body (let’s call it anxiety) and your conscious mind wants to know why the feeling is there. It scans the environment looking for threats and dangers but can’t find any. It then gets frustrated and starts scanning backwards and forwards in time looking for what happened to you in the past.
“When did you last feel like this?”
Transderivational Searching
This process is known as….you guessed it…transderivational searching. Your mind scans back to times in the past that could be related to something you are dealing with in the present moment. It finds an event and gathers the information from that event. It then looks at the future potential outcomes related to where you are now and what could possibly happen in order to rationalise the feeling. It then starts to make stories (often with images) about how things could play out for you.
This then continues the initial feeling of anxiety you had and can also make it feel stronger than it initially was. A feeling on its own can’t last for very long. It needs the conscious mind to fuel it with stories in order to keep it going. Well done conscious mind. You’ve now taken a small feeling and turned that molehill into a giant mountain.
A Subconscious and Body Integrated Approach to Anxiety
The subconscious mind and your body are integrated as one. They both work together very well. While the conscious mind likes to pretend it is in charge of everything, it really isn’t. Everything starts in the subconscious and body then the conscious mind jumps in and creates thoughts to match what is already happening.
Your body and subconscious mind notice a feeling in the body and are more like…
“Oh there’s a feeling”
Now your subconscious can be much more abstract when it comes to reasoning and the storing of memories. It is much more based on feelings than logic. It will sometimes connect a bunch of memories together based on how you felt. Imagine a set of children’s blocks standing on top of one another. The bottom block is the first time your body held onto that feeling and each block up is each time it has held onto that feeling or a similar one that it has put in the same box as the initial one.
Why Does The Body Store Past Negative Feelings
Your body will store negative feelings when you have been through an experience and the issues weren’t resolved. Now, it isn’t always necessary for you to release every negative feeling as it happens. Sometimes you have to go away and think about it. Sometimes you need to learn something in order to release the feeling. Sometimes you need to be able to forgive or let go in order for the feeling to release. Sometimes it can be that your mind believes that the feeling is too much for you to handle so it locks it down in the body. Simply allowing the feeling to come up and experiencing it in its entirety can often be enough to release it.
What Are Negative Feelings?
The straightforward answer is that there are no such things as negative feelings. There are just feelings. Once you can grasp this concept, life will become so much easier for you. The negative feelings are often showing you what you need to work on and resolve from your past. If you are going through grief or loss then you need to feel that in its entirety. If you don’t then you’ll end up with a trapped emotion inside of you causing you issues.
People refer to negative feelings or emotions as the ones that they don’t want to feel.
- Anger
- Sadness
- Hurt
- Jealousy
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Shame
- Guilt
- Loss
There is nothing at all wrong with these emotions. In their proper place, they are there to guide us and help us to do what we need to do. They can lead us out of where we are and into where we need to be. When you can love depression as much as you do happiness and joy, life will open so many more doors for you.
How Our Present Anxiety is Rooted In The Past
So you have a feeling inside of you that your mind has labelled as anxiety. This feeling has a birthing point. A time when it was first experienced by you. The unresolved feeling always stays at the same age as when it was created. If you first experienced anxiety at 5, each time that you feel it in the future, you will go back to having the coping mechanisms of a 5-year-old in order to deal with the situation that you are currently in.
Imagine trying to deal with being anxious as a 5-year old. At that age, you have very limited skills and are in no way as skilled as you are now. Yet this is what happens to you every time that you experience anxiety.
Imagine for a moment that you have a brand new computer. When you get it out of the box and start it up everything works beautifully. You install some software onto it to perform certain tasks and these too work really well. Imagine how well that computer would run if you didn’t update the software on it for 5 years. Now imagine not updating it for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years even.
This is how your mind and body are running when it comes to those unresolved emotions. You are literally running without those out of date and buggy programs causing issues in your life. Some issues you will be aware of and some issues you won’t be. Isn’t it about time you gave yourself an upgrade? You’re worth that, right?
Looking at Anxiety Upgrades for Your Body and Mind
In order to receive these upgrades, we have to start looking at anxiety and where it comes from for you. We need to bring the adult self and help the child self to release the old feeling. Whatever it is that needs to be altered for you to release the old programs we will do. We look at what needs to be put into place for you to be able to change how you perceive that feeling in the future.
Remember, there is no such thing as a bad feeling and anxiety in its true form is there to keep us safe. We never look at getting rid of something that is there to keep us safe. We just learn how to use it correctly. Think dialling down that over-sensitive car alarm so that it can tell the difference between a bus going past and someone trying to break into your car.
Looking at Anxiety and How it Could Be Affecting Your Life
Here is a great video for you to watch about various scenarios of how anxiety could be affecting your life. It can really help you to have a different way of looking at anxiety.
Are You Ready to Receive Your Upgrades?
If you have had enough of your thoughts and feelings being in control of you and you are ready to take back control I’m here. We can work together to release the old buggy programs that have been causing you issues and bring in the new programs that can help you to feel much safer, more peaceful, grounded, centred and balanced than ever before.
You can either tap here to go to the contact page or you can give me a call or text on 07932 618988.
