What maintains our anxiety?

Anxiety is not a monster that’s invaded your body and wants to have its way with you (even though it may feel that way)!

Anxiety is not The Enemy. It’s here to get your attention to your physical self (not just your brain) and all its feeling states. It’s shown-up in your life to encourage you to learn how to connect with other emotions you’ve likely been taught as a child, were “unacceptable or wrong.”

Anxiety is an adaptive reflex, a defense if you will, against experiencing other emotions we’ve harshly judged as “wrong or bad,” been afraid to experience, felt ashamed to feel, not wanted to bother with, etc., since we were very young.

You’ve learned to bypass or ignore difficult feelings since you were a toddler. You gained great control over the ones you believed you weren’t “supposed” to have. But anxiety and panic attacks break thru all emotional controls you’ve put in place your entire life, which is why they feel so bloody awful!

Try to think of anxiety as a surrogate or substitute emotion. Folks who work as stand-ins on a TV or movie set are substituting for the stars of the show. They resemble the lead actors, but they’re used to help the production team figure out where to place lighting, cameras, microphones, etc., while the stars of the film are relaxing in their trailers!

Anxiety is a ‘stand-in’ feeling that takes the place of other emotions we’ve either feared or harshly judged as “wrong,” and chosen NOT to feel since we were very young: Depression, rage, anger, sadness, hatred, frustration, grief, envy, jealousy, etc.

Anxiety triggers your body’s autonomic system, which produces horribly uncomfortable bodily sensations that are impossible to ignore or control.

The root cause of anxiety or panic attacks is having learned to control or suppress emotions since you were very young. This course helps you’ll learn how to dismantle the need to suppress your feelings, so that anxiety has no ‘role’ to play in your life.

All your feelings (no matter how dark) represent dimensions of the personality that make us human! They’re totally normal and natural to everyone’s life experience (unless we’ve killed ‘em off in childhood).

We might want to ‘manage’ anxiety with medication, but we’ll never mitigate it. This means we could be dependent on prescription meds the rest of our life, if we don’t heal this issue. We’re here to do that!

A few long-standing bad habits you acquired when you were very little have to be altered, so that you can surmount anxiety issues.

For one (and this is major), you must stop being hard on yourself. Being self-critical, analyzing or mentally assigning reasons or meaning to difficult feelings, judging or shaming yourself as “bad or wrong” for feeling certain emotions, etc., is what keeps anxiety alive in you. (Review “Getting Well” video, #3.)

Throughout this course work, you will learn how to experience and “associate” with all the emotions you’ve kept at bay or tried not to feel since you were very young, rather than dissociating or disconnecting from them.

Believe it or not, this is the secret to permanently stopping panic and anxiety from intruding on your life! Let’s practice this, shall we?

*Deep breathe into any/all feelings on your body, self-soothe for 2 minutes, and stay the hell out of your head!