When we are in the grip of rising anxiety levels, it can be really challenging to listen to reason. When our anxiety becomes overwhelming, constant and controlling, preventing us from being ourselves, it becomes problematic and something that we want to reduce and limit as much as possible.
One way that we can achieve this is to call out the lies that our mind is trying to tell us. Anxiety is our mind trying to protect us from a perceived threat. Sometimes these threats are real, like when we are in a dark alley way walking some place and someone is coming up behind us. It is normal to feel anxious then. Sometimes, the perceived threats are not real. It could just be that our mind is telling us that we are useless or that we can’t do a particular thing even when we know it isn’t true.
We often tell ourselves stories. These could be stories that have been told to us by others from when we were young, or more recently. It might have been a comment that was made, that perhaps didn’t mean much to the person who said it, but it has really stuck with us. Perhaps something like ‘you could never do …’ or similar. These stories could be perceptions we have made about certain people or certain situations. Perhaps something like ‘all rich people are …’ or similar. When we tell ourselves these stories over and over, sometimes for many years, we start to think they are true.
These stories can have a lasting effect on our anxiety. Are the stories you are telling yourself true? Or could they in fact be rewritten or adjusted? Are they in fact not true and you need to recognise this? We start to work through this by first noticing the stories we tell ourselves that are limiting and not true, then rewriting them and adjusting them. This is what we work on in my Release program. Once you recognise these stories, you are able to unpack them, where they came from, question them and if you need to, reframe them and rewrite them.
Try to decipher fact from fiction and remind yourself when things are not true. Notice the affect this has on calming your mind and reducing your anxiety levels.