Anxiety – is it in your mind?
Everything you do involves the minds – yes the minds. You have one physical brain but 2 minds, the conscious rational thinking mind which deals with data and facts and the unconscious mind which deals with emotions and the stress response patterns of depression, anger and anxiety. These three stress response patterns date back to primitive times and were responsible for survival.
Imagine primitive man hunting; off he goes with his spear hoping to bring back a large cow, well imagine his shock if instead of a cow he comes face to face with a wild tiger – his life is in danger, and the battle cry goes out when he thinks or says the words ‘oh no, what do I do now or oh no, I can’t cope, I’m going to die!’ – as soon as the unconscious mind detects those words of alarm it will fire off the anxiety response and with it come the physical responses of raised heartbeat, increased body temperature and release of the stress hormones; in this situation his rational mind shuts down, he can either fight or run away. We call this the fight or flight response and whichever he decides to do the physical changes created are designed to give him the maximum chance of survival – an elevated heart rate can pump the freshly oxygenated blood to his muscles, the raise in body temperature warms the muscles ready for action and of course today these reactions are often experienced as blushing, trembling and a blank mind!
In modern life the same process happens when we react to a situation with thoughts and words of panic and alarm. The unconscious mind races in with the stress response because the unconscious mind can’t tell the difference between us facing a wild tiger or feeling frightened about giving a presentation etc. Anxiety is further increased when we become aware of the physical responses in the body and worry that others can see how anxious we are and of course, we can rarely do a good job when body our mind and body are in anxiety mode.
So you see a lot of our anxiety is made worse by the words and thoughts we use. We need to be aware of how we react – we need to be able to choose rational and calm words and thoughts which are not interpreted as an alarm by the emotional unconscious mind. Awareness is created with a relaxed mind so the first part of this change process is learning how to relax your mind, because when we are relaxed we can react to stressful situations in calm rational ways by choosing to think rational thoughts, allowing the unconscious mind to realize there’s no need for an anxiety response pattern.
Hypnotherapy helps you overcome anxiety by helping you learn how to relax your mind and reframe old negative responses into more positive ones, because yes, anxiety begins in the mind – visit my online shop
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