As an entrepreneur who works from home you would think I would be totally free from stress, live a life with no anxiety, and that everyday would be a breeze working in my PJs, coffee in hand, with no annoying commute or boss to answer to. However, I find that on occasions I find myself struggling with feelings of:
- Being tired, worried or exhausted all the time
- Stabbing bouts of anxiety or feeling on edge or irritated about things
- Things that never used to give me stress now do, and I find myself looking desperately for methods of coping in healthy ways.
****Especially now with our world going topsy turvy amid the Covid-19 virus and all the uncertainty that lies ahead!****
In communities across the globe, people have been ordered to stay home from work, schools, restaurants and non essential businesses are closed and some returning from travel are forced to perform a ‘self-quarantine‘ method to try and limit the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus.
This means some of the ways you used to communicate with your customers are off the table.
The good news is, there’s still social media.
6 Ways to Use Social Media to Stay Connected During a Crisis
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Some People Suffer More Than Others
Economic crisis and global health pandemics aside, sometimes I wonder why do some people have a severe problem with anxiety and others do not? Or maybe they just seem to hide it better?
I guess this is a question almost everyone who experiences anxiety asks themselves at some point or another. Why me? Or why can’t I cope with this better? And how can I keep it from interrupting the enjoyment of my life?
As usual I went scouring the internet for answers. I came across this series by Barry McDonagh who is the ‘Go to internet guy for solving anxiety’ for everyone from Police Officers, to Stay At Home Moms to Entrepreneurs.
He has a program called Panic Away that so far, really seems to help to alleviate so many of my feelings of anxiety that creep upon me suddenly or seemingly out of nowhere.
Now I tend to be for the most part, quite a bit of a skeptic and not fooled into thinking I can simply read a book in one sitting and get instant results.
For anything to work you really have to apply what you learn and if you have had anxiety for many years this may take a little longer.
I’m about half way into it and so far it seems to be helping me quite a bit in all areas of my life, not only during times of crisis, so I wanted to share it with you.
Exhaustion and Anxiety
My understanding of anxiety is that yes, some people seem more susceptible than others but that the key trigger tends to be exhaustion. By exhaustion I mean mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion. (Under physical exhaustion I also include things like diet or substance abuse)
For some it may be exhaustion caused by a hectic life and never taking time to release the stress. People like that often do not notice their stress levels are so high until they get blindsided by a spontaneous panic attack.
For others it may be an emotional exhaustion caused by the loss of a loved one or the break up of a long term relationship.
If the anxiety is caused by a traumatic life event it is interesting to note that the person frequently does not experience the anxiety until the event has passed.
You often see people dealing very well with a crisis but then several weeks later when the dust has settled they start to feel the anxiety. It is like they have been in shock and are only now starting to process the experience.
The most important thing to remember about panic attacks or general anxiety is that help is available and it is important to get help sooner rather than later. Learn more here
I always recommend visiting your doctor first of all to really determine that it is just anxiety you are dealing with and not an underlying physical ailment.
Once you are sure that it is anxiety that you dealing with, treat it.
Don’t wait.
Burying your head in the sand hoping it will simply be gone next week is not an effective way to treat it. It is totally unnecessary to spend months if not years dealing with something that can be corrected now.
This program can help you if you have fear of:
• a panic attacks
• never being free of general anxiety
• a bodily sensation that worries you
• a fear of losing control to anxiety
Whatever your particular fear is, I want to share some tips and techniques with you over the coming days that will not only help you end these fears but also reduce your general anxiety level dramatically.
After many years of coaching people to be anxiety free, I have noticed that those who experience panic attacks or general anxiety almost always deal with the frequent occurrence of anxious thoughts.
Anxiety has a sneaky way of seeding doubt regardless of whether the fear is rational or irrational.
So what can be done for people who suffer from repetitive anxious thoughts? Read more here
To begin, lets look at how an anxious thought is powered and then I will demonstrate how to quickly eliminate the intensity of the thought.
Say for example you are going about your daily business when an anxious thought enters your mind.
Whatever the nature of the thought, the pattern that follows is usually quite predictable.
The anxious thought flashes briefly in your awareness and as it does so you immediately react with fear as you contemplate the thought. The fearful reaction you have to the thought then sends a shock-wave through your nervous system. You feel the result of that fear most intensely in your stomach (due to the amount of nerve endings located there).
Because of the intense bodily reaction to the thought you then get sucked into examining the anxious thought over and over.
The continuous fearful reaction you have to the thought, increases the intensity of the experience. The more you react, the stronger the thought rebounds again in your awareness creating more anxious shock-waves throughout your body. This is the typical cycle of anxious thoughts.
For some it feels like the anxious thoughts are hijacking their peace of mind.
Because of the reaction you are having, you may continue to spend the rest of your day thinking about the anxious thoughts you experienced.
“Why am I thinking these thoughts?” “Why can’t I shake off this eerie feeling?”
The harder you try not to think about it, the more upset you become. It is like telling someone ‘Whatever happens do not think of a pink elephant’.
Naturally enough it’s all they can think about. That’s the way our brains our wired.
So how can you eliminate these unwanted anxious thoughts? Continue learning more here
To begin with:
• when you start to experience anxious thoughts, it is very important not to force the thoughts away.
Let the thoughts in.
The more comfortable you can become with them, the better. These thoughts will never go away fully but what you can learn is to change your reaction to them.
By changing your reaction to the anxious thoughts you become free of them.
Once you establish a new way of reacting to the thoughts it does not matter if you have them or not. Your reaction is what defines the whole experience (and that applies to almost everything).
Everybody experiences fleeting thoughts that many would consider scary or crazy. The difference between most people and somebody who gets caught up in them, is that the average person sees them for exactly what they are, fleeting anxious thoughts, and casually ignores them.
The anxious person is at a disadvantage as they already have a certain level of anxiety in their system. The thoughts easily spark feelings of further anxiety which builds into a cycle of fear.
You break the cycle by changing how you react to the fearful thought.
Here is an example of how to approach this:
You are enjoying the way your day is going but then all of sudden a fearful thought comes to mind.
Before you would react with anxiety to the idea and then try to force that thought out of your mind.
This time, however, say:
“That’s a fear of X. I could worry and even obsess over that but this time I’m going to do something different. I’m not going to react to it. I’m also not going to try and stop it either. I’m just going to label the thought and not react.”
Then the thought comes again with more intensity and possibly with new ‘scary’ angles you never considered. When this happens you do exactly the same. As if you were observing a cloud passing overhead, you simply
• -Observe it,
• -Label it (fear of whatever), then
• -Watch it as it passes by with no judgment.
then
• -Move your attention on to what you were doing.
Observe, Label, Watch, Move on
See the anxious thought for what it really is: -one of the thousands of fleeting sane and insane thoughts every one of us experiences daily.
If you are a more indoors type of person then instead of thinking of the thoughts like clouds passing in the sky, you might try imagining a large cinema screen and the anxious thoughts are projected out onto the screen in front of you. Play around with this approach. Find what works for you.
The key thing to remember is to:
Observe, Label, Watch, Move on
By practicing this approach you gradually stop reacting with fear to the thought and you learn to treat it as nothing more than an odd peculiarity.
When you are at a stage where you are comfortable doing the above exercise and you feel you are making good progress, then try this additional step:
Actually invite one of your more regular fearful thoughts in.
Call the fear to you, say you just want it to come close so you can observe it.
It may seem like the last thing you would wish to bring upon yourself, as you don’t particularly enjoy these thoughts but this approach can be very empowering. You are now calling the shots. You actually invited the issue in.
By doing this you are discharging the dense vibration of fear surrounding the anxious thought. That fear was sustaining itself on your resistance, -the idea that you could not handle these thoughts.
The fear quickly evaporates when you turn around and say “yes of course I can handle these thoughts.”
Fear intensifies when we pull away from it. Anxious thoughts become a mental tug of war if we struggle with them.
It is the mental struggle of pulling against the anxious thoughts that creates the inner psychological tension.
The inner tension is fueled by thoughts like:
• “I can’t handle to think about this -please go away”
• “I don’t like that thought- I want it to stop!”
Take a different stance
Invite anxious thoughts in. Willingly sit with them, label them and do your very best not to react.
Yes, it does take practice but very soon you find yourself in a unique position of control. You are no longer a victim of fearful thinking but a decision maker in what you will or will not be concerned about.
As with every technique there is always a level of practice involved in the beginning. Initially you start observing but then suddenly get anxious about the fearful thought.
That’s very normal in the beginning.
Keep at it. Practice and you will quickly see how less impacting those fearful thoughts become.
Do not let your mind trick you into believing that your anxiety is something you will always have to struggle with. That is simply not true.
Not alone is it possible to control the occurrence of anxious thoughts but I can teach you how to end panic attacks and general anxiety if that is your goal.
You can have the life of your dreams. Anxiety does not have the right to steal that hope from you.
Some of this information forms a small part of the Panic Away Program. The full program eliminates panic attacks and general anxiety very quickly and has proved highly successful with both long and short term sufferers of anxiety. The results speak for themselves.
Here are some of the things you will learn from Panic Away
• -Learn how to be empowered and gain confidence by engaging a simple technique to defuse any panic attack.
• -The four most powerful approaches to creating an enduring anxiety buffer zone (particularly useful for those who experience GAD).<
• -Learn to avoid making the one mistake almost everyone makes during a panic attack episode.
I encourage you to take a chance with this course. As a former sufferer I would not pretend to have a solution if I did not honestly believe it could be of great benefit to you.
Together we can get you truly back to the person you were before anxiety became an issue.
P.S. Additional bonus- I am currently offering an opportunity to have a one to one session with me so that I can ensure you get the results you need. All I ask is that should you feel the course has been of tremendous benefit to you that I add you to a database I am currently updating of success stories.
If you want to learn more about this course and how to get started right away visit:
All material provided in these emails are for informational or educational purposes only. No content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your symptoms or medical condition
The Panic Away Program changes the way you process your anxiety enabling you to end panic attacks and general anxiety. It costs no more than a dinner for two but can change your life so much for the better.
Invest in the right kind of information.
Information that puts you back in control of your life.
That is the best kind of investment you as an entrepreneur who works for yourself day in and day out can make.
To learn more about Panic Away go to panicaway.com
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