Most of us would like to know how to stop feeling anxious during hard times in our lives. As a therapist who has had anxiety his whole life one thing I know well is how to stop feeling anxious! Before anything else…anxiety is NOT YOUR FAULT. It is a genetically inherited condition for many of us. Let’s be real if I am a drug dealer I have something to be anxious about. Or I am cheating on my partner. These are things that need action.
How To Stop Feeling Anxious Depends On Many Things
Lets out line a few of them!
If you are a drug dealer or cheating on your partner anxiety will be a part of your life accept it or change what you are doing. If you are an investor, or a heart surgeon anxiety will also be part of your life. I have worked in many mental health crisis situations and I needed to accept the fact that stress and anxiety would be a part of my work. What I also did was deal with my thinking.
Here are 3 ways I use and answer the question: How to stop feeling anxious?
NO WAIT LIST SESSIONS
We Need To Know When The Now is Good!
99% of the time our NOW is safe and secure. We may feel unsafe or anxious but is this rooted in feeling or fact. Defining the good is also important. Will we have enough food? Do we go into a cozy bed at night? Who loves us? If some of the answers to the 3 questions are negative an action plan is needed to do something about it. At times life hits us with a real wave of something awful. Just because parts of our life is bad does not mean we are unsafe. I use this often in my own life. My daughter has a brain injury from a car crash. For 4 years I used this daily as we helped her recover. Her whole personality changed. My little girl (then 15) did not remember any childhood memory. She was very difficult and treated me very badly. The 3 questions helped ground me during the worst time in my life.
We Need To Know If Our Thinking Is 100% True
When my daughter was very unwell I thought, “She will never recover.” At the time that thought was true. She has a permanent brain injury! Was it 100% true? No it was not. Let’s define recovery. Recovery is getting on with life despite your symptoms. This is what we helped her to do and I help the people I support do. She is now 25 and remembers more of her childhood. She just got a job as a recreational therapist and is the head of a unit!
We Need To Take Our Sun Glasses Off
We need to see the good even when life sucks! Anxiety put the shades on. Even in the dark days I just described I had such a loving wife. My friends were very supportive. I had skills in rehabilitation that most do not to help her. Still the sun glasses were on every day. I needed to take them off by writing goods thing that happen down. Keeping a sunshine log really helps. There are so many ways we can see the good we just have to look.
These 3 methods WILL teach you How To Stop Feeling Anxious!