By Brian Robinson.
How do you get the anxiety genie back in the bottle, ten tips:
- Try and see anxiety as a disorder caused by high tension levels. If you are relaxed you cannot be anxious. Ask yourself throughout the day: is what I’m doing producing tension or reducing it?
- Many people see anxiety as a battle with something. In fact, fight or flight is a system designed to keep us safe. See it more as a misguided friend. Send it the right signals, and it is bound to settle.
- It is difficult if not impossible to recover from anxiety with direct or immediate effect. Recovery is a progressive and gradual endeavour and happens over time. Try and replace frustration with patience.
- Many people are daunted by the idea that anxiety is a viscous circle. How do you break the circle when you’re not in control of it? Try to see anxiety in more simplistic terms. You are a system that has become far too tense. If you put a relaxant into a tense system it is bound to relax. That’s physics! If you put lots of relaxants in: it will relax a lot. That’s maths!
- Acceptance works as a great backcloth to any recovery programme. We should accept the things we cannot change immediately. Acceptance does not mean we do nothing. Acceptance is where everything begins.
- Having a plan of recovery is psychologically relaxing. Write your plan down and this will give it more power. Note down the changes as you recover. This will help keep the momentum going.
- Every plan needs a driver, something to keep it moving forward. Determination, commitment and a good work ethic are the best drivers.
- When embroiled in anxiety, it can be difficult to believe you can ever recover. This is so because anxiety has the power to change our perspectives. However, trust is a good substitute for belief. Trust does not require a foundation of truth. We can trust in ourselves, trust in the process, and trust that we will eventually recover.
- If we want recovery to be sustained we will have to look carefully at what goes on in our heads. If our thinking habits and traits are unhealthy, then we will have to bring about some changes.
- Many anxiety suffers complain of a loss of interest in most things. This is natural and understandable. However, there is one thing that we should all take a keen interest in, and that is our recovery. Mount a recovery campaign. Make recovery your main mission in life.
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