I Changed My Relationship With Anxiety In 30 Days

With this little almost magical tool

I am not about to use the P-word. This is not about COVID-19. This is about a lifelong relationship with anxious thoughts, constant rumination, being on a hamster wheel, and not even realizing that that’s what it was —Anxiety — a constant, low-grade fever that intervenes with everything just enough to let you be a functioning, nay — a successful, high performing human being with an unrested, hyperactive mind.

I think of it like this — your brain is a CPU. Every “trigger” is a new process — it takes up memory and computational power. It has its own little threads. The more “triggers”, the more processes, the more power and memory you exhaust. Noone presses the “power off” button. Until you run out of memory and power.

And it’s okay to be that way, you might say if this resonates with you. Like many anxious individuals, you too forgive your Anxiety — because you think it makes you an achiever. It brought you to where you are today. It is important. You need this. Without this, you’d slack, fall behind, not be as good, perhaps? This is not true to the extent we believe — is what I’ve learned when reading “Unwinding Anxiety” by Dr. Judson Brewer (link below)— smiling and nodding at the portions that talk about us who hold on to our Anxiety as the thing that made us “successful”.

But this post isn’t about that. This is about rewiring your brain at the subconscious level by employing Rapid Transformational Therapy® (RTT®). This is about hypnotherapy — Yes — I’m serious. Read on, I promise this isn’t about someone putting you under and making you “woof” on command. But it is about accessing your subconscious to reckon with it and rewire old beliefs that are limiting you.

There are several RTT® practitioners trained to help with a multitude of problems — anxiety, insomnia, confidence, our relationships with money and success, etc. My RTT® session was with a friend who has established herself in this field over the last couple of years, in addition to being a pediatric opthalmologist — I trust her — she performs eye surgery on screaming infants who come packaged with scared parents. More importantly, she has had personal success with RTT® — something that we would chat about in-depth over dinners in the City. This compelled me to at least try the method. I will link to her below, and likely do a follow-up post in an interview-style Q&A with her. But you should research the topic and practitioners for yourself for your specific reason.

So what does an RTT® session really consist of?

In my experience, a typical session is about 3 hours and can be done over Zoom. Yes, in the comfort of your own home. It is best to make other arrangements for kids and pets — you’ll likely become vulnerable during this time, and they can sense that. Switch off all phones and buzzers and other things that “ding”.

In guided meditation style, your coach will bring you to a relaxed state of mind, and basically just talk to you for the next two hours. Expect to bring back memories, speak about them, and see how they might relate to what you’re trying to resolve. You’ll have the opportunity to restructure these vital aspects of your past and how they relate to your current self, all with your coach.

You will remember everything. You are in control and at no time are you unaware of, or unable to govern your own actions. At the end of the session, you will receive a personalized recording that you must listen to for at least 21 days after the session to help rewire your old, go-to tendencies that resulted in the issue. Different practitioners have different options for follow-up (non-hypnosis) calls. I had mine today, 30 days after my RTT® session! In the follow up you will talk about your progress toward the life you have envisioned without this issue. You’ll situate any next steps from there.

So your Anxiety is just.. poof.. gone?

I don’t think Anxiety ever will be fully gone for anyone. But its power to control me the way it did is gone. I can say that with confidence. RTT® allowed me to reframe its role in my life by showing me that the reasons Anxiety developed for me (those memories that surfaced during the session) aren’t reasons today. So while there is conscious work to do, things are in my control — fears are reduced, and I trust myself to deal with whatever is in store for me. I know, it all sounds too simple, but it seems to work!

The reason I think it’ll always remain lifelong — in this diminished power — is because our brains aren’t wired to deal with uncertainty well just yet. Oftentimes, uncertainty is what breeds Anxiety. The next brain upgrade should install the necessary patches to help deal better with uncertainty — this is an evolution away, though, so don’t hold your breath. Understanding how our brains work is my conscious counterpart effort to RTT®— the book mentioned above (linked below) does a great job of explaining these workings. Conscious work is necessary to do, but in my experience has become much less of an uphill climb after I decided to wrestle with my subconscious.

I know this sounds like magic, and almost is hard to believe. What convinced me to try other than my friend’s experiences, is really accepting that the human brain is so much more powerful than we know. Memory works in mysterious ways. I am not anyone who remotely studies human brains but I continue to compare it to a CPU just from my human experience of.. owning and using a brain — we have our versions of cache memories — for quick access and processing, and quick erase. We have our RAM — slightly less transient memories. We have long-term memories we don’t need to access that often — our hard drives. And we probably have some deeper reserves of cold storage where we don’t even know what our subconscious files away. Just like a data center dedicated to Disaster Recovery, some memories and some logic cannot be accessed by conventional means — i.e our conscious selves. We need to go deeper. Some neuroscientist or researcher is probably laughing their behind off with my comparisons! It’s all good, in the end, all I am trying to say is if there is something you are struggling with, this is something to research and see if you can seek help.

So here is my friend’s website https://www.janhavishirali.com/ and here is Dr. Jud’s book — Unwinding Anxiety. Stay tuned for a Q&A-style deeper dive on RTT with my friend.

I hope that whatever method you choose to help with your struggles works, and that you are happy and can rid of anything that is limiting you from living a full life! For me, this was RTT®. I am now 30 days transformed and I know it will stay.