Understand Youre A Survivor
No one escapes life unscathed.
We all have our own war stories of broken hearts, hurt feelings, and some of the worst situations weve ever experienced.
Looking back at all that, you must realize that youve gone through all these challenging situations and youve come out of them alive.
Youve survived everything that youve been through and youll continue to keep surviving.
Youre more powerful than you know and stronger than you give yourself credit for.
Once you accept this fact and let go off your fear, youll see that whatever youve been worrying about doesnt stand a chance. Youve proven to life and yourself that youre more than the things that threatened to hold you back.
Whatever happens next, you can handle it.
Aromatherapy And Essential Oils
Essential oils, the extract from plants, have been used for thousands of years to treat a number of conditions, including anxiety. Essential oils activate certain areas of your brain and release feel-good chemicals such as serotonin. They have been found to ease symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression, improve mood, and improve sleep.
Recommended use includes diffusing, inhalation, or topical treatment which can aid with anxiety symptoms. When diffusing an essential oil or essential oil blend you will need an essential oil diffuser to fill your space with the desired scent. Inhalation is used by deeply smelling the essential oil straight from the bottle or by applying a drop or two of the oil on something such as a diffuser pad or lava bead that is connected to a bracelet, necklace, or even keychain. You can also place a drop or two of essential oil into your hands, rub them together, then cup your hands and take a few deep inhalations to get the desired effect.
You should be sure that the essential oils you use are pure oils and not mixed with chemicals. Some good brands to use include: Mountain Rose Herbs, Plant Therapy, Young Living, Doterra. You can do your own research to find a brand that will best work for you and your budget. Remember that a bottle of essential oil will last a long time since you typically use only a few drops at a time.
Essential oils that are great for treating anxiety include:
Listen To Good Mood Music
Music can have a powerful effect on your mood and on anxiety. They key however is to not just choose songs you like. but also make sure that you are listening to music that represents the way you want to feel. Happy or relaxing music can directly impact your mood and the way you feel.
While many people find it soothing to listen to angry music when theyâre angry or sad music when theyâre sad, the truth is that this type of music will only help you get in touch with those negative emotions. That won’t help you feel better. When you’re trying to stop anxiety, you should listen to music that will help you feel the way you want to feel.
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Mindfulness Techniques For Letting Go Of Control
If theres anything thats certain in life, its that things will happen that are outside of our control. Sure, we can change our environments to reduce the chances of certain things happening and do our best to prepare for worst-case scenarios, but we cant predict if they will happen.
As a result, mindfulness experts and psychologists often tout the benefit of letting go of control and accepting uncertainty. An excessive need to control can lead to unproductive stress, because it often puts people in an extended fight or flight mode. As authors Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane previously wrote in Fast Company, operating in this state exhausts our nervous systems and leaves us wiped out, jittery, craving an end.
Talk To Someone Friendly
Another very effective technique is to talk to someone you like and trust, especially on the phone. Don’t be shy about your anxiety – tell them you feel anxious and explain what you’re feeling.
Talking to nice, empathetic people keeps your mind off of your symptoms, and the supportive nature of friends and family gives you an added boost of confidence. If you’re suffering from a panic attack, it also helps you feel more confident that if something were wrong, you’d have someone that can watch over you.
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Set Small Achievable Goals
Anxiety sufferers tend to set unrealistically high expectations for themselves. To counteract this tendency, set goals that you can easily accomplish. This builds your confidence and your sense of accomplishment.
When you are learning skills to handle stress and reduce your anxiety, small steps work best. For example, if your goal is to integrate deep breathing into your life, start by practicing for one-minute intervals three or four times a day instead of for an hour all at once.
Setting small, achievable goals will help will take you farther than you can imagine over time. It will help you reach your final destination: a happier, low-anxiety life.
Healing Takes Time And Devotion
I still get anxious sometimes, as does everyone else, but over the years Ive picked up strategies that allow me to cope and manage my anxiety so it doesnt control my life. My most reliable tools are daily meditation, yoga, making art, journaling, spending time in nature, surrounding myself with people who love and support me, and being mindful of my internal dialog.
Writing has been the most transformative, however. When done mindfully, writing allows us to step back and shift our mindset, rewiring our brain over time. We can safely process our experience, integrate and heal it, all while staying present and kind to ourselves.
Slowing down is the key to successfully transforming anxiety, and both mindfulness and writing allow us to slow down the rollercoaster of reactions so we can unpack and integrate our experience.
We have a deep capacity to heal and grow, but we can only do with enough self-awareness, a healthy dose of self-compassion, and an empowering belief that we are inherently good.
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Relationship Anxiety Can Make You Question Your Partners Feelings
It could be something thats been said or an action thats caused you to start wondering whether your partner is all in like theyve said they are.
Maybe you think youve seen them check out another person or maybe theyve been off with you for no apparent reason. They could have even made a comment that attacks your character on some level.
Whatever it is, your partners words and actions could cause anxiety within you.
This is especially true if you dont voice how youre feeling and theyre none the wiser.
Its not that you two are not in love if you start feeling insecure about your partners feelings towards you, but instead that youre in a state of anxiety.
The overwhelm of anxiety can make you feel like youre not in the right relationship.
In my experience, Ive questioned whether Im with the right partner because at times Ive literally wondered if he likes me or not.
Hes made me feel like this.
Ill be honest: Ive felt like he likes the idea of me and not actually me.
The real me seems to get under his skin and I feel like he never has the time to hear me out. Its as though he wants to be with someone who communicates in a certain way. For example, he gets annoyed at me when I dont respond in the way hed like.
Knowing that he finds me annoying at times has, I wont lie, made me feel very anxious about the relationship. However, we do have a deep love for each other that Im aware of.
We Choose How Things Affect Us
Our disposition and family of origin greatly affect how we observe and react to the world around us. But we are not powerless we can change how we respond to lifes difficulties. Have you ever admired someone who came out of the other end of adversity stronger, wiser, and better equipped for the road ahead? You do not have to admire that person you can be them.
Take a brief moment and think back to a time when someone said or did something that troubled you. Did negative thoughts take over your mind? Was your heart pounding? Did you find it hard to concentrate? Did this moment feel like it would never end?
How will you choose to let things affect you?
I know from personal experience that stress can sometimes feel like an out-of-body experience. Our thoughts can quickly take over and we can get caught up in our heads. Over time we can start relying on that comfortable place of simply reacting without thinking, or we can push our feelings away and disconnect from situations completely, like I did.
For this reason, I have adapted my own go-to mindfulness exercise that I have used time and time again, as well as referred to others. This method can help you to develop a deep awareness of your thoughts, as youre facing difficult moments, or shortly after, while offering yourself words of compassion and kindness. One of the first times I put this technique into practice, it helped me move into a more accepting, healing place.
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Resist The Urge To Avoid
Anxiety is a skilled and convincing liar. It will tell us untruths like:
- Youre better off alone
- You arent capable of doing that
- Its not safe to accept social invitations
- If you try that, youll fail
- There is safety only in isolation
- If you cant do it perfectly, dont do it
Of course, everyone would prefer to avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable, anxious, or embarrassed. But, it is crucial that you do not make avoidance your default setting. Anxiety is sneaky. It makes us want to avoid things, but thats what makes it all the more powerful. By confronting your anxieties and learning to tolerate the discomfort, you decrease anxietys hold over your life.
It Really Is That Hard & That Simple
Letting go is the simplest and hardest thing youll ever do in life.
Letting go is embracing all of the splendor and sadness and love and heartache. It is releasing the past, and stepping into the beauty of right now. The ego aches with fear of having to let go. It wants permanence and certainty. The ego wants to know safety by making houses out of sand.
But you can only know true safety, security, and peace when you let go. When you let go, you learn that life is living this glorious dance through you, and that you dont have anything to fear. You also learn that your only job is to let go and let life happen through you.
Anxious energy will always come and go. I still feel anxiety from time to time, but now instead of resisting it, I let it pass through me. And I let the spectacular emotions pass through me too. I stay open for all of it.
Im so grateful to let go, into the magic of this beautiful adventure.
Much Love,
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Why Do We Feel The Need To Control
The desire to be able to control our surroundings and circumstances is ingrained into our consciousness. This is because the more we know about our world, the safer we feel. On the other hand, the less we know, the more scared we feel. The need to control is directly rooted in fearspecifically, the fear of what might happen outside our control.
Accept That You Cant Control Everything
The danger in believing that we need to worry for things to turn out okay is that it creates a misguided sense that we can control the outcome. Becoming aware of this flaw in our thinking is the first step in changing our relationship to the anxiety and breaking the ingrained pattern.
Life is full of uncertainty, and those of us who are chronic worriers tend to have a really hard time with that. Part of the process of letting go of anxiety is acknowledging and accepting that there are certain things that we just cannot control.
Rather than wasting energy worrying about what you cant control, focus on what you can do instead.
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The Importance Of Letting Of Control
When our brain is in this state, its fatigued and desperate to create certainty, so it tries to do just that. According to Pollack and Fox Cabane, we often try to do it in one of three ways. We jump into decisions quickly without thinking through the consequences because we want to lock something in, we become paralyzed and do nothing at all, or we rush to assumptions to fill the gaps in our knowledge. None of these responses leave us feeling more certainin fact, they typically end up making us more stressed.
Deepak Chopra, a prominent alternative medicine advocate and author of Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, says that one of his principles that he stands by when it comes to mindfulness is completely detaching from outcomes. He says he doesnt have any goal or hopes on whether or not his teaching will result in positive changehe simply chooses to share his ideas with those who are interested in learning about them. At my age, Chopra says, I am independent of hopes and despair.
Helen Weng, a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, mirrors this sentiment, suggesting that were better off focusing on the intention of our actions, rather than insisting on a certain outcome. She says, If you practice acting with intentions that align with your values , that may change what is happening, but you cannot expect a certain fixed outcome. Things rarely turn out as we expect them to.
Increased Stress And Anxiety
People who try to control everything may experience more stress and anxiety than those who don’t. The simple act of feeling out of control when it feels necessary to have it can make a person’s blood pressure rise.
One study noted that it is more devastating when things don’t go according to plan for people who feel the need to control than for those who feel less need to be in control.
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How Letting Go Freed Me
On the worst and best morning of my life, I found myself in a library parking lot. I said out loud, to God, I need some help here. Show me the book I need. I walked directly to the back corner of the library, and noticed a yellow spine sticking out of the bottom shelf. It was dangling towards the floor as if to say Its me. Im the book. It was Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins.
I opened it randomly to a chapter titled Fear. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I then read a paragraph. That paragraph was more than enough to confirm my prayer was answered.
Being guided to that book is one of the greatest miracles that has ever happened in my life.
Most of my adult life has been wrought with intense anxiety, fear, depression, and inner turmoil. My inner world was disharmonious for all of my twenties. Nobody would know this from my outer world, which Ive always worked to take care of. When I found this book, I was experiencing the most intense period of anxiety & dread in my life.
Ive been an avid student of self development and spirituality since I was 18. You name a sacred scripture, and Ive studied it. My spiritual knowledge helped get me through tough times, but a key element was missing for me. That key element was the practice of surrender, which David Hawkins calls letting go. It is only through letting go that I finally started to feel freedom, joy, and peace.
Tone Your Inner Power Daily
Think of your inner power as a muscle just like any other muscle. The more you use it, the more toned it becomes and the more you are able to accomplish. Every time you practice a healthy life strategy, you actually increase your ability to conquer your anxiety. What you couldnt do yesterday, you can do today. With practice, your new skills will become automatic. This is how you create lasting freedom from anxiety.
In the words of Aristotle: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
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Do You Ever Stress About How To Overcome Anxiety
Stress happens to everyone. And things sure can get overwhelming when you start delving into the root causes of anxiety. But talking about it with someone, building healthy relationships, and learning to recognize your own internal voice are all valuable actions that can help develop a strong self-awareness.
However, these changes in habit require a significant investment of reflection, energy, and perseverance over time. But if you start right now, you can develop healthier habits that contribute to relieving stress naturally. This, in turn, helps you to release anxiety throughout the day . . . so it doesnt snowball into a more serious problem.
How To Challenge These Thoughts
During your worry period, challenge your negative thoughts by asking yourself:
- Whats the evidence that the thought is true? That its not true?
- Is there a more positive, realistic way of looking at the situation?
- Whats the probability that what Im scared of will actually happen? If the probability is low, what are some more likely outcomes?
- Is the thought helpful? How will worrying about it help me and how will it hurt me?
- What would I say to a friend who had this worry?
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