How To Instantly Stop 65% Of
Your Panic And
Anxiety Using An Anxiety
Detox That Literally
Forces Your Mind To
StopWorrying...
This is an idea I learned about a while back which I saw
used for something other
than anxiety, but I tested the idea on myself and on my own
anxiety, and I realised how effective it can be in stopping some of our most
common worries and fears.
You’re probably familiar with Detox diets, which usually
involve temporarily
eliminating all foods and drinks other than fruits,
vegetables, and water. This kind of
diet, over a one or two day period, gives the body a chance
to flush out toxins and other contaminants that build up over time.
It was a few months ago that I came across the idea of
using this “Detox”
approach for the mind instead of the body. When I first
saw this idea it wasn’t aimed at reducing or eliminating anxiety (it was aimed
more at freeing the mind from stress and unclear thinking). But I could see
that the idea would work with anxiety too, so I started looking for ways to
alter the “Stress Detox” into an “Anxiety Detox,” and what I came up with is
what I’m about to talk about right now.
And what this will hopefully help you to do is flush out
some the toxins and contaminants in your mind, because that’s exactly how I see
the fears and worries and anxieties we experience on a day to day basis. They’re
toxins and contaminants, just like those in our bodies. And like those in our
bodies, we need to flush them out from time to time.
I’ve put together a short exercise that helps to identify
the specific anxieties we’re experiencing and then to get rid of them - or at
least to lessen their impact on us, to make them less able to affect the
quality of our lives.
Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do. Take out a blank
piece of paper and spend
a few minutes writing down all the specific worries and
fears you think about. Write
down everything you can think of.
Even this first step of writing these worries and fears
down can be therapeutic, so
the Detox will already be beginning as you’re making this
list. The act of making yourself search your mind for these thoughts and then
writing them down has a calming effect on the mind.
Many of these thoughts are locked away like dark secrets,
and shining a light on them like this lets your mind breathe and this will
probably be a pleasant experience for you.
Once you’ve finished making your list, you can move on to
the next step. But what I actually suggest you do is wait a day or so
before moving on. The reason for this is that you’re probably going to think of
more things to add to your list.
Now that your mind is focused on looking for these
fears and worries going on
inside you, you’ll find that things will subconsciously pop
into your mind from time to
time over the next 24 hours. This is especially true of
the time you spend lying in bed
before you fall asleep. That tends to be a time when our
worst fears come to the surface, and if this happens for you, take advantage of
it and add anything new to your list.
Okay, so you’ve either completed this step right away, or
you waited 24 hours to
give yourself the best chance of noting down as many of
your fears and worries as
possible.
And you have your list.
If your list looks anything like mine then you’ll be amazed
at how much is going
on in your mind at any one time, and how many fears and
worries you have racing
around up there all the time.
So, onto step #2.
What you’re gonna do next is go through your list, one
worry or fear at a time,
and you’re gonna put a star next to everything that’s
beyond your control, so anything that you have no power over, that you can’t
influence or change.
And you’re gonna put a check mark next to everything that
you can control. Things that you are able to effect, or have the
power to change, even if they’re just small things.
So now you’ll have your list separated into two groups -
things you can’t control,
marked with stars, and things you can control with
check marks beside them. Now take all these worries and fears that you can
control and put them on their own list, on a separate piece of paper.
This new list should be no longer than about 10 or 12
worries or fears, so if you have more than that just list the top 10 or so.
This will help to keep this manageable, and it will also
let you concentrate on those fears that are causing you the most problems.
So the list you end up with here will be where your
attention’s going to be from now on. These are the fears you have the power to
affect in some way, either through
thinking or through taking action. And because you have
the potential to affect these
fears, this is where your energy is best spent.
Any energy you spend on those things you have no power to
change is only wasted, and anxiety or fear about any of those things does you
no good at all - all it will do is grow into more fear and anxiety. It’s one of
those horrible vicious circles that anyone with severe anxiety is very familiar
with.
All those things on your original list that you put a star
beside because you have no power over them?
Consciously try to let those go.
In fact, as you go through your list, deciding which of
your fears and anxieties you
have control over, consciously try to let go of those ones
you put a star next to. As you make that decision that the fear in question is
something you have no control over and
It might sound simple, but this process can stop many of
these fears from haunting you. How often do we really go through our
thoughts and fears this way?
Probably never.
We experience the fear and the worry and the panic and we
let them affect us in many different ways. But we have the power to affect them
too.
And in this exercise, we have the perfect opportunity to
look at each of these fears in turn and ask, “Can I let this go? Can I really
let this go?” There’s a lot of power in doing this - there’s a lot of power
in writing these fears down and then saying, even out loud, “I’m gonna let this
go.”
So, back to your list of your 10 or 12 biggest fears and
worries - the ones you have the power to affect in some way. Let’s start by
changing the way you think about the things on this list you’ve made.
The first thing to do is not let yourself waste any time
thinking or focusing on any of those things on your original list that you
decided were beyond your control.
No amount of thinking will help you with those because you
can’t change them. So whenever you catch yourself thinking anything about one
of those fears, immediately switch your mind to one from your shortlist
that you believe you do have the power to change.
This is actually pretty easy to do, because you’ve narrowed
the list of fears you can change down to just 10 or so of the worst ones you
experience, and because they’re your worst fears, they tend to be very
easy to switch to at any time - for some reason, the worse a fear is the more
we seem to enjoy going over it in our minds.
This ability to switch your thinking to something of your
choice, instead of something your mind just throws at you, is a pretty easy one
to learn, and it won’t be long before it’s second nature.
There are lots of benefits to learning how to do
this.
First of all, it trains you to control your thoughts, which
makes it less likely that you’ll suffer those unpleasant trains of thought
about horrible things that sometimes go on against your wishes. Learning to
switch your thoughts like this will also mean that you’re only ever experiencing
a small chunk of the fears you used to. If, for example, you had 20 fears on
your original list that you decided were beyond your control, and you can train
yourself to let those go in favour of those on your list of 10.
Well, you’ve just completely stopped over 65% of
the fearful thoughts you were having before you went through this little book..
And not only are you saving all that suffering those fears
were causing you, you’re
also saving the energy you were wasting on them -
because, after all, they were things you couldn’t control. Things that
no amount of thinking would help.
All that energy can now go on the fears you’ve found that
you do have the ability
to change or control.
So you can probably begin to see how big a change this
simple exercise can make.
If you go through the steps I’ve laid out, the result will
be that you can stop the majority of the fears you think about, save the mental
energy you’ve been wasting on them, and switch all that energy onto the really
important fears you have - the ones you can actually change.
And that brings me to the last step in this exercise.
Now that you’ve got yourself focused on the fears you can
control, and now that you know to switch your focus and energy onto them
whenever you experience those other fears you can never control, you
might be wondering what you should be thinking about these controllable fears
or anxieties.
Well, I’m gonna keep it really simple.
These 10 or 12 worst fears are fears that you’ve decided
you have the power to affect or change in some way. And if you have the power
to change them, that means there are solutions to them, or answers to them that
will make them go away, or make them considerably less unpleasant to
experience.
So for now, make all your thinking about them a hunt for solutions.
Look for positive answers.
Ask yourself new questions about them. Consider everything.
The important thing here is not actually what you’re
thinking. The important thing is that your thoughts on these subjects are positive,
not negative. And any time your mind is looking for solutions to problems, you’re
in a positive state of mind.
And that’s a healthy state to be in.
By putting yourself in this positive state of mind when
you think about these fears or worries, you’ll find that a lot of the fear will
just fade away.
Thinking about these fears in a positive state of mind is
the opposite of the state of mind you’d normally be in when you’re thinking
about them. That takes a lot of their power away.
And there’s no need to feel disappointed if you don’t
actually find answers or solutions to these fears. If you do, great, but if you
don’t, the exercise is still helping you in the way it’s supposed to.
It’s still getting your mind in a far healthier place, it’s
still reducing a lot of your anxiety without you even being aware of it, and it’s
still preparing you for those ideas we’ll go over together soon.
I really hope you’ll try this anxiety detox for yourself,
because it really can make a huge difference to your anxiety and to your
quality of life.
If you liked this idea, you’ll find lots more like it in
my Instant Panic Relief program. It contains every trick, strategy, and
technique I used to stop my own anxiety and panic after living in Hell for more
than 17 years.
