The First 5 Steps to Deal with Anxiety

 

By the time anxiety symptoms have become an intolerable problem, sufferers have come to a conclusion about what the cause is and how to overcome it. The problem? All efforts to overcome the anxiety have either failed or the benefits have been short lived.

In my experience, there are five-first steps of understanding that help a person begin the process of dealing with their anxiety for good.

Understanding that Stress and Anxiety are Two Different Things

Very often the terms stress and anxiety are used interchangeably, but in practice they mean to very different things.

Stress: A physical and psychological response to the demands of current circumstances. This is most commonly experienced when the demands of the situation are greater than the individual believe they can cope with.

Anxiety: A physical and psychological response to unconscious pressures. This is most commonly a build up of emotion experiences from an individual’s formative years. The symptoms a person experiences (panic attacks, phobias, depression e.t.c.) are the pressure value for the inner pressure.

Of course, one affects the other. A person who has underlying anxiety is going to find it more difficult to cope with the stress of everyday life. Their belief in their ability to cope will be undermined by the unconscious anxiety. Likewise, the greater the unconscious anxiety, the more stressful people will find the challenges of everyday life and their anxiety symptoms will become more intense.

Understanding the difference between the two, prevents you from becoming frustrated when just dealing with your everyday stresses seems to have little positive effect on your anxieties. Flip the process on its head… deal with the underlying anxieties and everyday stresses are easier to mange.

Recognise There Is No Logic When It Comes to Anxiety

Many of my clients have tied themselves in knots trying to figure out a logical reason for their anxiety. They have applied their conscious reasoning to the problem for quite some time but each time they have drawn a blank. Why?

If there was a logical conscious reason for your anxiety you would have discovered it quite quickly and taken action to change the situation. As this hasn’t happened, we have to agree that the anxiety must be unconscious; there must be an underlying reason that is causing the symptoms.

Be careful of falling into the trap of thinking that the cause of anxiety is the stress and strains of your day to day life. They might make the anxieties worse, but they are not the cause.

How do we know? The anxiety symptoms remain even when life is stress free. A person’s phobia, depression or panic attacks do not disappear with a stress free life. They may reduce in intensity, but they will always remain: anxiety is an unconscious pressure.

Realise that Anxiety is Changing All the Time

Anxiety is not a rounded-off problem, it changes and evolves as time goes by. Something that made you anxious a year ago, may not be so much of a problem today. Perhaps you faced that fear or phobia and noticed how it reduced in intensity (or disappeared), only for it to be replaced with another phobia, fear to concern.

Remember anxiety symptoms are outward expressions of an unconscious pressure, so if that outward expression is prevented, the mind produces another one to replace it. Of course, wouldn’t it make sense for your mind to produce a symptom that is more difficult to overcome this time?

Remove the unconscious pressure (anxiety) and there is no need 

for your mind to substitute the symptom.

Accepting that Anxiety is Caused by Experiences in our Early, Formative Years

We all had millions of individual experiences from birth to whatever age we are now. Some were positive and others negative, but each one has left an imprint on us. These experiences shape how we see the world and our place within it.

Who we are’ is the result of our interpretation of the experiences we had in those younger years of our life. The key is interpretation. That would all be okay if we could interpret them with an adult intellect, but unfortunately many of those important experiences happened when we were children and adolescents without the benefit of life knowledge that we have now.

Getting lost in the supermarket is a much bigger deal at five-years-old than at thirty-five years old. As a child we are unable to understand the experience in the way we might as an adult, and the same is true for the emotions we felt. No-one feels emotion with the intensity of a child.

Stored up experiences and the emotion accumulate with each passing experience. These build up the pressure unconsciously and that pressure is relieved by the pressure value that is the anxiety symptoms.

Choose an Analytical Therapy to Resolve the Underlying Cause of the Anxiety

Once we accept that the anxiety symptoms are outward expressions of an inner pressure and that stress in our day-to-day lives is only acerbating and not causing the anxiety, we have to accept that managing the symptoms is not about to bring about lasting change.

Resolving the underlying anxiety is the way to rid oneself of the problem and the symptoms (panic attacks, phobias, depression e.t.c.) are redundant.

Hypnosis allied to the use of psychotherapy is 

perfect for achieving the task.

Hypnoanalysis is a type of analytical therapy which works through and resolves the emotional build up which causes the anxiety. The therapy works under the principal of cause and effect. For every effect (anxiety symptoms) there has to be a cause; a reason why this person suffers in the way they do.

There is no reason why anyone should go through their lives coping with anxiety when there is help available.

Find out more and how you can book a free initial consultation at www.ketteringhypnotherapy.com