How can I Deal With My Anxiety?
How can I Deal With My Anxiety?
You can deal with your anxiety by remembering the following facts. Please read each point separately and think about it carefully before moving to the next.
- Anxiety is an emotion and like all emotions, it is the product of earlier thinking.
- If you control your thoughts, then you CAN manage your anxiety.
- ONLY IF you control your thoughts, will you have any chance of managing your anxiety.
- Anxiety is the emotion caused by thinking about "how the future might be worse than the present".
- Anxiety is the emotion caused by the destructive use of the imagination.
- Anxiety is the emotion caused by allowing your unfettered imagination to conjure up an endless series of arbitrary "What if" scenarios, and then reacting to them as if the images were real. "What if it goes wrong?"
- An arbitrary scenario is one that is potentially true, but for which there is no tangible evidence to suggest it is ACTUALLY true. Note the difference between Potentially true and Actually true.
- Anxiety is the emotion that you feel whenever your emotions are under the control of your unfettered imagination, rather than your logic.
The cure to anxiety is to reverse these processes and to train your brain to do the following.
1. Switch off the imagination and switch on the logic.
2. Respond emotionally ONLY to problems that have some definite tangible evidence to suggest they are actually happening, as opposed to those which could potentially happen.
3. Strive to replace "thoughts of a painful future" with "thoughts of a better future". In other words, try to use your imagination to think up plausible "reasons to be cheerful".
The fact is, the world is NOT all bad-news. There are plenty of reasons to support the supposition that the future will be better than the past.
Train your brain to argue the case for a more optimistic future.
As your brain turns its attention to this opposite mode of thought, you will notice an immediate reduction in your anxiety and an increase in optimism and confidence (the antithesis of anxiety).
In summary, you have two changes to make in order to control your anxiety:
1. Change the direction of your thoughts from "the future will be bad", to "the future will be good".
"Future will be bad" thoughts = Feelings of anxiety.
"Future will be good" thoughts = Feelings of confidence.
2. Place the operation of your emotions under the guidance of the LOGICAL portion of your mind and NOT under the "imaginative" portion of your mind.
If you use your unfettered imagination to create innumerable possible arbitrary fears, it will lead to anxiety.
If you use your logic to distinguish the arbitrary fears from the logically possible fears, you will gain confidence based on common sense.
About the Author: Chris Farmer
Chris Farmer is the founder of the Corporate Coach Group and has many years’ experience in training leaders and managers, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve their organisational goals, especially during tough economic times. He is also well aware of the disciplines and problems associated with running a business.
Over the years, Chris has designed and delivered thousands of training programmes and has coached and motivated many management teams, groups and individuals. His training programmes are both structured and clear, designed to help delegates organise their thinking and, wherever necessary, to improve their techniques and skills.
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