There’s a fine line between anxiety and feelings of excitement. Instead of robbing you of your confidence and drive, anxiety can actually motivate and excite you. The following exercise demonstrates a simple way to handle the nervous energy you feel. When you feel anxious, accept the way you are feeling in that moment. Instead of getting upset by the anxiety, decide to turn it to your advantage. You can turn your nervous energy into excitement and stimulation by pretending you have just finished a strong cup of coffee! Just like caffeine, anxiety stimulates your nervous system. Under its influence your
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Have you ever noticed that anxious thoughts are like a broken record? I know with Ipods etc. it’s a bit outdated to be using a record analogy here but it works well to illustrate a key point about anxious thoughts. Remember when a record got scratched it made a very unpleasant sound and caused the needle to get stuck on the same groove. The same one line would play over and over again ad nauseam until you picked up the needle and moved it past the scratch. Anxious thoughts are bit like this. You might be happily going about your
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People who experience panic attacks will often say that they feel out of control as soon as the panic is in full swing. Christian Nevell Bovee once wrote: “Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.” Doesn’t that sum it up well? A confident self assured person can suddenly feel powerless and vulnerable as soon as the panic manifests. As the bodily sensations race, the mind jumps from logic and reason to wild fears fueled by the imagination. The hardest part for most people to get their heads around is why
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Why do some people have a problem with anxiety and others do not? This is a question almost everyone who experiences anxiety asks themselves at some point or another. Why me? My understanding of anxiety is that yes, some people seem more susceptible than others but that the key trigger tends to be exhaustion. By exhaustion I mean mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion. (Under physical exhaustion I also include things like diet or substance abuse) For some it may be exhaustion caused by a hectic life and never taking time to release the stress. People like that often do not
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One of the most common times people feel anxious at work (after getting called in to see the boss) is at meetings where you are expected to speak up in front of many others. Let me give you a few quick tips on how best to approach those meetings: Generally these type of work meetings involve a group of people sitting around taking it in turns to speak. Most people anxious about speaking in public dread their turn and hope some divine intervention will save them from having to speak at all. To get around this try the opposite approach.
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In order to quickly move away from generalized anxiety you need to throw yourself 100% into life. What is needed is to engage regularly in an activity that stimulates you, and holds your complete attention, something in which you can become completely absorbed. Something that distracts you is a very valuable tool in taking your attention away from the uncomfortable sensation of anxiety that may be lingering in your body. You see almost everyone with anxiety finds themselves getting a bit obsessed about how they feel at any given moment. The less preoccupied the person is, the more time there
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I’ve often observed that many people’s top-ranking fear is not death but having to speak in public. The joke is that these people would rather lie in a casket at their own funeral than give the eulogy. Public speaking for people who suffer from panic attacks or general anxiety often becomes a major source of worry, possibly weeks or even months before the speaking event is to occur. These speaking engagements don’t necessarily have to be the traditional “on a podium” events; they can be as simple as an office meeting where the individual is expected to express an opinion
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As most doctors will tell you, there are two things that disturb sleep: physical pain and worry. It’s therefore understandable that many people with anxiety report frequent sleep disturbance as a major problem. Not being able to sleep can actually be quite traumatic for many people. The first thing you need to understand about sleep is this: it’s not the amount of sleep you get that’s important, but rather the quality of the sleep. Quality over quantity. I am going to give you some quick tips to help tackle any problems you are having with sleep. Firstly, to break the
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People who have never experienced a panic attack often judge the anxious person harshly. The outsider has no real comprehension of what is happening to the person experiencing a panic attack and wonders why they fear to do the simplest things. I know myself that I could not understand how overnight I went from being a confident young man to someone who became anxious of common everyday situations. Going places took on a whole new dimension as I constantly evaluated if being there might trigger a panic attack. I had to force myself to do very simple things like go
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Sometimes people have the impression that their experience of anxiety is like being hooked up to an electroshock machine and that it just takes a flick of the anxiety switch to cause a flood leading to a full blown panic attack. People in this situation often feel that are lucky to make it through the day without that switch been flicked but in the back of their mind they fear that it could happen at any moment day or night. They remain on high alert anticipating it. Anticipating the big one! In fact most people who experience panic attacks fear
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Have you ever wondered why people often experience setbacks when they begin to tackle their anxiety? Setbacks happen because, as you face your anxiety and the situations that make you feel uncomfortable, the avoidant/protective side of your personality becomes active. When you decide to tackle your anxiety issue head on, the protective side of your personality would rather that you left well enough alone. Your protective side doesn’t like taking risks and feels better when you don’t put yourself in situations that make you feel anxious. It’s the part of you that says: “Let’s stay in our comfort zone today.
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