How to Overcome Anxiety, Worry, and Fear
How to create calm in WORSE situations.
I hate looking for things. When I can't find something, the act of looking immediately creates anxiety, worry and fear.
It makes me feel like the scene of the movie, the wizard of oz.
Lions and tigers and bears Oh My!
Anxiety, worries and fears Oh My!
Have you ever been stressed out looking for your glasses and realized they were right on your face the whole time?
Or looked for your wallet, keys or phone and laughed at yourself because they were CLEARLY right in front of you?
Most of the time, these mini heart attacks we give ourselves are unnecessary.
You say to yourself with immense relief, “ Phew!, Thank God. What was I so stressed out about?”
This article is about that question and how to overcome Anxiety, worries and fears around easy and the worse situation.
Because sometimes it's not so easy to laugh at your worries. Losing your glasses and keys is one thing, but in the face of cancer or losing your job, you can also lose your mind.
I’ve practiced these tools to prevent my mini heart attacks and create calm around the WORSE and easy situations.
The Worse Situation…the process
When the doctors told me my son had to have brain surgery and may not walk again. I went through the process.
I almost had a heart attack. Denial of what was happening and with acceptance came fear. I balled and cried and asked for help.
I prayed and called almost every family member. With the encouragement of God and family, I came to terms with what was really happening.
I made a decision that I would remain calm no matter what especially in front of my son.
The surgery was successful, and My son DID walk. I wish I had faith sooner. I would have saved myself from so much unnecessary anguish past the initial shock. I was unconsciously committed to my worry for a while because somehow, I thought it would protect me.
Maybe that’s the problem; we feel like we need, anxiety, worry and fear to survive. But that’s total unnecessary bullshit.
Beware of our Outdated Prehistoric Human Survival Mode Bullshit
Early humans needed the fast, powerful responses that fear causes as they were often in physical danger situations; however, we no longer face the same threats in modern-day living.
We are no longer running away from sabretooth tigers.
Despite this, our minds and bodies still work in the same way as our early ancestors, and we have the same reactions to our modern worries about bills, travel and social situations. But we can’t run away from or physically attack these problems!
It’s called fight or flight.
Instead of alerting you to danger and preparing you to respond to it, your fear or anxiety can kick in for any perceived threat, which could be imaginary or minor.
When we worry, most of the time, it’s a poor use of our imagination and not even based in fact. We can just as easily use imagination in our favor. Don’t use your life’s precious powers of imagination to conjure up bullshit, please.
Could you not do it to yourself?
It’ll just make you anxious. Anxiety is a form of worry, which is a form of negative visualization.
What do you do between the time you don’t know that everything is going to be fine and the time you do know everything will be fine?
The God Disclaimer :)
Whether you believe in God or not, prayer is form of visualization.
When it's not fine, PRAY.
- Pray
- Surrender
- Acceptance
- Faith
- Be patient
- Be present
- Be grateful
Prayer is talking to God and asking for help from a spiritual higher power. It’s admitting you don’t know what to do. The moment you pray you accept there are problems and acceptance can lead to surrender which leads to faith.
Faith
To have faith is hard.
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1
They say “Keep your eyes on the prize.”
But what if that prize is to walk and you're lying in a hospital bed with a body full of pins holding you together?
Faith requires strength and power to hold a consistent, sustainable focus on what you hope for and nothing else. It’s training your mind to believe in something you can’t touch, see and feel yet. Faith is creating your own truth and acting by that new truth or belief.
Even though you don’t know how it will work out. To think truth, regardless of appearances, is hard work. To have faith is to focus. Where you place your thoughts can make you or break you.
When the doctors told me my son might not walk due to brain surgery.
I kept my sanity by staying focused on healing and what can be done rather than losing my mind on the things that MIGHT happen. I didn’t allow myself to entertain the possibility of the worse that could happen. There is no room for pessimism in a serious situation or any situation.
Worry begets worry begets worry and it’ll snow balls down the path of the shadow of death if you start making stuff up real or imagined.
This could involve an overestimation of the likelihood of a bad outcome or exaggerating how bad the bad outcome will be. Some worries and fears are strengthened by negative thoughts about oneself, such as believing that one would be unable to cope with uncertainty or an undesirable outcome.
This only can be prevented by holding the thought of TRUTH. The truth that you will survive and God will help you in ways you did not know possible.
Anything is possible with God.
Having faith is a choice.
Have Faith.
You have no choice. Lol
What’s The alternative?
I’ll tell you what’s alternative to faith decisions;
Anxiety, worry and fear.
Cut it out!
Soon, you feel relief thanking God like you thank God for the easy stuff like finding your phone wallet or keys.
For those who don’t believe In God:
There is what you know and there’s what don’t know and there what you don’t know that you don’t know and faith is remembering that !
More tools -How to slow down the momentum of your mind
Stop thinking.
Your mini heart attacks means that your mind is racing and that what you are saying to yourself is probably not good for you.
Be Present
It means being present on whoever you’re talking to or spending time with. When you find your mind running off to think about something you need to do, or something that’s already happened, or something that might happen, gently bring yourself back to the present moment.
If you lost your keys for instance say to your self.
“Ok
I can’t find my keys right now
I can either look for them or stop looking for them
What can I do right now. I can choose to be calm and optimistic “
Don’t worry if your mind wants to keep disappearing off into thoughts; thinking is its job.
Try to stay in the present, focus on the specific problem, and find a solution that works.
The practice is to notice what’s happening for you right now, including that your mind might be busy and gently, kindly guide your attention back to what’s happening and NOT the perception of what's happening.
Acceptance
Simply put, not every thought is true.
Instead of trying to wrestle with beliefs, acceptance-based techniques involve identifying the thought, labelling it (“worry” or “judgment,” for example), and being mindful of the moment that gives rise to the belief.
Surrender
Every time I get what I hoped for it because I surrendered my desire to have it. For instance, I’d stop looking for lovers and then that’s when I’d find them. I wrote an article about that here.
Surrender is letting go. It’s a magical tool that works like a charm. No practice is more powerful and profound. When you let go, you give up control and have Faith that you will have what you desire at the right time.
Surrendering anxiety, worry and fear are letting go of the struggle and clearing a path for victory.
Patience
To practice patience in the face of adversity can be as hard or easy as you choose it to be; it goes hand-in-hand with faith and surrender.
Anxiety and worry and fear is primarily focused on what you lack; that’s why I hate looking for things. It’s like looking for a package that you don’t know will arrive. That’s hard
Patience is harder if you have no faith that you’ll receive what you desire, but patience is easier once you resolve to a faith decision.
Patience is what you practice between the time you’ve ordered something online, and when the package arrives.
Visualize receiving what you want and how’d feel while you’re waiting for your package of desires to arrive.
You might not have what you want now, but it’s coming, you’ll see.
Exposure
The basic concept of exposure is to lean into anxiety by confronting, rather than avoiding, anxiety-provoking situations to learn by experience either that nothing terrible will happen, or that bad outcomes are manageable (and might even have an upside).
My husband told me he used this exposure technique to get over the anxiety of talking to a beautiful woman. He decided to talk to the most beautiful woman in the room every time he went somewhere. He’d say something simple like “ I love your boots”, and she’d thank him and then he’d say goodbye.
That exposure helped him realize talking to hot women wasn’t so bad, matter of fact it was easy!
He was afraid of lions and tigers and bears.
But he conquered anxiety, worries and fears.
And so can you!
