In my last post I spoke about why we often try to avoid or resist the feelings of anxiety, but it never works.

In this post, I’d like to share ways to overcome anxiety and stress and even how to avoid panic attacks.

But first we have to get past…

I Just Want To Be Comfortable

There seems to be this idea that we should be comfortable all the time. Unfortunately it is not the case.

If you can just accept that pretty much half your life, is going to be filled with disasters, making mistakes and things not working out as planned, it can bring you relief.

Half of the emotions you are going to feel are going to be uncomfortable and negative and that’s okay – that’s what it means to be a human being.

Thoughts Cause Anxiety

When you’re feeling anxious, you can just remind yourself the reason you are feeling anxious is because of what you are thinking. Then you can be curious about what you’re thinking.

So many times what’s going on in head is craziness. You can look at your thoughts and understand why you are feeling anxious.

Your thoughts are not reality or necessarily facts, they are choices that you’re choosing.

When you understand the cause of something, you are so much closer to relieving the feelings, than if you are trying to change it and fight it and ignore it.

What You Can Do

1. First thing is to write down all your thoughts and get them out of your head and on to a piece of paper.

2. Remind yourself the reason why you are feeling anxious is because you are thinking all these thoughts and that’s okay.

3. Don’t try and change it or get mad at yourself for your thoughts, it’s not useful. Just look at the thoughts and let it just be.

Let yourself just understand. If you’re in a hurry to get out of anxiety is because you aren’t allowing it, you’re afraid of feeling it.

The better you are at allowing it and feeling it, the easier it will be to move through it.

4. The next thing is to describe the feelings of anxiety in your body – the specific sensations.

Describe it in detail, as if you’re describing an emotion for someone that had no idea what it feels like.

The more specific the better – It gets you out of it, gets you observing and describing it.

5. Then read the description and you might wonder, “Why in the world I’m I doing so many things to avoid this, this is not that big of a deal, it’s just a vibration.”

It’s when you react to it, avoid it or resist it that it becomes much bigger of a deal.

6. One of the things that I like to do with clients before they experience a full on panic attack is give them worry time.

Give yourself ten minutes where you just allow yourself to just feel anxious. Imagine the worst case scenario and increase your anxiety during this time.

Now, this may seem counterintuitive, but what it does is it lets you get a hold of it. It lets you see that you are in the control, because if you can increase it, you can also decrease it.

7. Probably the most common and obvious technique is deep breathing into your belly.

Researchers found that when people are having panic attacks, if they focus on slowly exhaling, then the inhale becomes much easier.

Don’t even tell yourself to breathe. Just sit down and exhale ten times. Put your hand on your belly; fill it up with air and then exhale. Just focus on that piece of it ten times.

Don’t expect that the emotion will completely go away. Just know that you’ve owned it.

You’ve accepted it and therefore you are in control.

This is part of the process of tuning into yourself, of being connected with yourself, of being truly in control of your life and your emotions.

Get To The Bottom Of It

Sometimes chronic anxiety, stress and especially panic attacks are related to some experiences you had in the past that your unconscious mind will not let go of with simple techniques.

Give me a call and let’s figure out if that is the best solution for you.