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June 7th, 2009

Morning Anxiety and Getting Your Life Back

Author: M. C. Smith

Morning anxiety is the worst thing in the world Everybody is different in this world. That’s such a elementary but accurate statement, don’t you think? And for some individuals waking up in the morning is a tough time of the day. Maybe you can relate to this? I know I used to feel that way all the time, many days of the week.

It was terrible, going to sleep at night wasn’t any better because I knew that when I woke up in several hours I was going to feel negative, anxious, a thousand thoughts dancing through my head, achey, wanting to sleep a lot more, but totally unable to unwind and relax. This is what’s commonly called morning anxiety, it’s a type of anxiety disorder that’s really pretty common. At least six million americans put up with some kind of panic disorder. Morning anxiety is simply one form of this disorder. How do you eliminate morning anxiety? Well, thank the lord, there are lots of things that you can do!

One of the best things you can do is to begin an exercise regimen. Exercise relieves tenseness in ways that nothing else ever will. If you’re out of shape start slow and take it easy at first, but rev it up pretty quickly. You can do it. Even just a fifteen minute walk can help, but definitely scale up to energetic exercise three or four times a week. You’ll be surprised at what this can accomplish in a few short weeks.
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May 24th, 2009

Letting Go of Outcomes Reduces Anxiety

Author: Dan Stelter

This is another one of those concepts that will probably always be a struggle, to some degree, for each and every anxiety-sufferer. For many of the chronically anxious, this is a completely foreign concept altogether. Although the new can be scary at times, this concept is yet another one that is very beneficial for every anxiety sufferer, and particularly for those with social anxiety and generalized anxiety.

Many will hear this phrase for the first time and think, “This sounds like more of that new-age type of garbage that is all dreamy and emotional, but doesn’t really work.” And those that think this have a legitimate gripe because some of those who are into the new age thing do take this concept to that extreme.
But, here is how it works and how it can and will benefit the anxious person, if the anxious person allows it. Letting Go is the idea that the anxious person begins to cease caring about the outcome of a certain situation. The social anxiety sufferer is often very concerned with social interactions, and in particular tends to blame him or herself for being inadequate, and because of this inadequacy, he or she perceives that no one likes him or her. So for example, if a social anxiety sufferer, with the goal of making friends in mind, talks briefly with another person, and that other person moves on and is not interested in a friendship, the social anxiety sufferer instinctually tends to blame him or herself by thinking, “If I would not have said something stupid that person would be my friend,” or, “If I were not so full of flaws I would have more friends.”

In many cases, this is simply not the truth; most social interactions fail to work out the way people want them to. There are also a variety of unknown factors constantly occurring that may prevent things from going the way one wants – factors such as the other person has a spouse and does not want a boyfriend or girlfriend, the other person is suicidal and does not want any friends, the other person is busy with work and already has the circle of friends he or she desires.
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May 23rd, 2009

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Author: Dan Stelter

Many of us become very frustrated and find ourselves burned out very often or most of the time; in fact, burn out is a fact of life at some point in our lives for all of us affected by anxiety. When recovering from anxiety, for example, we do not magically become “better” and then suddenly have everything come to us. We do not have this euphoric revelation where everything is suddenly wonderful after being so difficult for so long.

Rather, recovering from anxiety is a gradual process in most cases. It seems that anxiety that is brought on by some tragic event or extraordinary circumstances in one’s life can be cured rather quickly, but in most cases, it has taken many years to form the anxiety condition, and as a result, it will take several years’ worth of hard work to get back in a good place in life.

The strategy that is probably most helpful for anxiety-sufferers to understand is the “two steps forward, one step back” strategy that is very cliché in present times. What does this cliché mean? It means that for every two successes we have in recovering from anxiety, we are going to also probably experience one setback. It seems that this happens to everyone, from those who seem to have a natural knack for dealing with anxiety well to those who have no clue at all on how to recover from anxiety.

The other idea that this cliché makes pertinent in our minds is that we will all fail or fall short of our goals at some point in our recovery. In fact, not only will we fail from time to time, we will all fail hundreds, even thousands, of times to take the steps that we need in order to recover from anxiety. So, if we fail so much, why even bother trying to recover from anxiety? Does life even get better?
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May 8th, 2009

Overcoming anxiety

Author: Patrick Wanis

“The dictionary defines peace as: “Inner contentment; serenity: peace of mind.” And peace of mind is “the absence of mental stress or anxiety.” Anxiety is caused by fear. As a Clinical hypnotherapist and human behavior expert, I believe that peace of mind or inner peace is when you feel OK with who you are, what you have, free of anger, hatred, bitterness, revenge, guilt, blame, shame or fear. Inner peace is that state of love and acceptance for yourself and others. Peace is also built on expressing compassion, justice and unity, promoting non-violence, tolerance and co-operation. Later in this book, I explain how to attain peace.

Jesus taught, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In other words, you must first love yourself so that you can know love and then be able to express it to others, to your neighbor. But I didn’t understand that teaching at the time. I didn’t know what love is and I didn’t love myself. Later I learned that when Jesus spoke of love, he referred to brotherly love and human compassion, not romantic love. I also didn’t realize that one can’t express brotherly love and compassion when one is full of anger and bitterness or some other negative emotion.”

Just this past two weeks, three of my clients have expressed challenges with anxiety. I said in the excerpt above that anxiety comes from fear, and thus anxiety can also be caused by the fearful feeling that our life is out of control -that we have no control over what is happening in it. Often my first suggestion is to identify what you can control, what you can’t control, and then accept what you can’t control and create strategies to handle what you can control. Our resistance to accepting “what is” often creates more stress and anxiety. When we fight to control something that we cannot control, we begin to feel weak mentally, emotionally and physically. The more we fight and resist “what is”, continually losing, the more anxiety we create because we feel more and more out of control.

Often the only thing we can control is our thoughts and ourselves. And contrary to what some people teach, we cannot control our feelings. We can change our thoughts which will result in different feelings. We can release repressed feelings and thoughts which will result in new feelings but we cannot control our feelings. When people speak of controlling their feelings, they often mean denying, repressing or suppressing feelings and the result is always harmful because withholding feelings leads to physical ailments, stress, depression and other mental and emotional problems. Just like a metal spring, you can push down those feelings but eventually they will spring right back up, and with greater force than before. They key to emotional freedom and inner peace is to first acknowledge and accept whatever you are feeling and then find a safe way to release those feelings by also gaining new insight, wisdom and understanding pertaining to the initial cause or trigger of those feelings.
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August 4th, 2007

Are You An Anxious Person?

Anxiety and stress are very common in the modern world. I would say we are having a time when all of us are getting little unhappy. Fear, worry, anxiety, unease are all very common feelings in today’s world. How about you? Are you an anxious person? Do you get anxiety attacks? Anxiety attacks are not very common, but many of us suffer from anxiety attacks. Are you an anxious person? Let us find out.

Why do we get anxiety attacks? The causes of such attacks are mainly rooted in our ancestry. Our ancestors were taught by nature to save themselves by running away from any danger if they could not fight it. We have inherited those genes. Though we do not face fierce animals in jungles, we face situations that make us equally scary and we want to runaway, but unlike our ancestors we cannot run away in social situations. That makes us anxious. Stress is a big factor in producing anxiety.

How much stress you face everyday. Is your stress level equal to what others are facing or more or less? You can do this by talking to few friends and co-workers. If you find that your work itself causes a high level of stress, you can always consider a job change. High stress over a period of years is not good. Please quiz yourself about this and find a way to reduce the stress you face.

How you fight stress is very important. Do you get scared of the stress or face it squarely and fight it off. Write down all kinds of stresses you are facing and your responses to them. Find out if your response is of good quality? Develop methods to fight the stress and bring changes in your response to stress. Evaluate yourself over a period and make changes if needed. Relax.

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