How to Overcome Anxiety

I'm going to start this post by saying a funny thing for an anxiety coach - you can't overcome anxiety! Now, I'll explain why!

The mindset of wanting to overcome anxiety is flawed because anxiety is a normal bodily reaction. Wanting to overcome anxiety would be like saying 'I want to overcome fear'

Anxiety is our body and mind response that tells us 'worry about that thing that may happen in the future because it might put you in danger.' So rather than overcoming this response the better approach is to examine the thing that is causing you anxiety and then ask yourself 'is this response accurate and is the size of it reasonable, given the event?'

Many of my clients have disproportionate responses to particualr events, caused by that event being traumatic in the past. The brain's role is to keep us safe. It does this by conintually scanning our environment and making judgements about whether we're safe, based on past expereinces. All of this scanning goes on in the background, without us being aware of it.

If we have a past event that has been traumatic, the brain will store a danger response to that and before we can even be aware it's happening we will have an anxious reaction. For example, if I gave a presentation at work and it was a disaster and everyone laughed at me, and I got incerdibly upset and had to abandon the presentation. Next time I'm due to present, just the thought of it will cause extreme reactions in my body like palpitations, shaking and sweating.

The way we overcome anxiety is to address these disproportionate responses.

The brain does this in 2 ways:

1. If we are placed in a threatening situation that contradicts the pattern the brain has already developed for that situation, the brain will adjust it's response there and then because it has high survival value to do so.

2. The first instance doesn't happen often so the other way of overcoming anxiety is to introduce novelty and repitition. These allow us to form new neural pathways and new responses to the situation.

So, to overcome anxiety we firstly examine and recognise the response - bring it to conscious mind if you will.

Then we ask - is this response proportionate to the threat or has this response become outdated and do I need to update my brain's predictive patterning?

If the response is out of proportion - then constantly challenging the thought will, with repetition change the response.

Challenging the thought may be difficult at first, particularly if the event was very traumatic. So to overcome anxiety in this instance, you need to bring yourself to a calmer state, so the conscious reasoning brain can get involved. Do this by using an affirmation like 'I am safe, there is no danger, this happened in the past' Find your own words but repeat them over and over. By repeating these words in conscious awareness we can rewire the brain into changing it's response.