You can’t just not be anxious, but you can do things less anxiously.
It’s not like something goes bing! and suddenly you’re not anxious. You can learn to do things less anxiously. The more things you do less anxiously the less anxious you are.
One of the ways I help people who come to me with anxiety is to lead them into an easy, simple, relaxed state (also known as hypnosis). Then I create good feelings for them, and then bring them in a direction where they can see themselves behaving less anxiously.
Everyone can learn to create good feelings.
How we create our feelings
Think about it for a moment, aren’t we masters at creating bad feelings and making ourselves anxious?!!
We can take that same procedure but use it to create good feelings. They first have to know what it feels like to be less anxious; how they look as less anxious, even what they are thinking as less anxious.
The person who has anxiety is often planning.
Planning how they will get anxiety next. Maybe it’s before taking a test or maybe it’s about being on a plane. Now they can spend a little time planning how to do things less anxiously. Planning how to be calm and confident while taking a test or enjoying a plane ride.
You may as well use the planning time to get what you want! Wouldn’t you agree it’s a better choice?
This is about choosing what it feels like to be less anxious before moving in the direction you want to go — feeling yourself doing it with more ease, seeing yourself doing it with more ease. This is not about knowing we have a choice intellectually.
We already know that.
This is about experiencing neurologically what it feels like to be less anxious. People with anxiety know what anxiety feels like; racing heart, confused fearful thoughts, seeing the worst outcome, etc.
We all know when riding in an airplane it’s a better choice to feel safe than it is to feel anxious, but that doesn’t mean you have the choice to feel safe – not until you can feel either safe or anxious.
Then you have the choice.
You are in control of your feelings
Now you are in control of your thoughts instead of the anxious thoughts being in control of you. Who better to be in control of you than you?! Choice means you get to choose purposefully the outcome your choice will provide for you.
What is your desired outcome?
Is it not the opposite of what you create anxiety over? You can now create an empowering movie inside your mind instead of the old habitual one which created the anxiety to begin with.
Seeing yourself doing this in a relaxed (hypnosis) state enables your brain to install the new empowering pathway of seeing yourself doing the very thing that you truly want to do with pleasure instead of panic. The brain does not know what is real or imagined. The person with anxiety begins to see themselves doing it as opposed to being anxious about it.
What would you like to see yourself doing?
