Do you ever fear bad stuff happening to you?
That might sound like a silly question to ask someone who is suffering from anxiety and panic attacks, but the truth is not everyone does.
For some the anxiety and panic is not actually about bad stuff happening. I created a video for you below.
Go check it out, as always it is down to earth and in plain language, no medical mumbo jumbo from a text book written by a guy in a white coat who never had a lick of anxiety in his life.
In this video I tell a pretty ridiculous story about a time that I almost had a panic attack under some strange circumstances, but I had a major break through too. Go check it out, it’s all good stuff as usual.
I hope you enjoy it.
(ps. if you can’t watch the video right now, there is a transcript just below the video)
And Hey, Click Here To Check Out The Anxiety Resolution Method Course. It Really Is a Remarkable Life Changing Course.
Transcript
Hey, it’s Ben. Welcome back. How are you doing?
So, today I’ve got some really important things to talk about. One of the things is really again, you know, I said everything is important but the truth is all of this stuff really is important. Most people who struggle with panic and anxiety expect something bad to happen. They’re expecting bad shit to happen in the future, right?
They’re expecting, you know, either the world is going to end or there is going to be some sort of catastrophic event or there’s going to be a major health event, that health problem that’s going to manifest in their body or they’re expecting that their spouse is going to leave them or they’re going to get fired from their job or someone close to them is going to die or that they’re going to die or that they’re going to hit someone with their car, that one was a big one for me, I was crazy afraid of hitting someone.
Okay, with this expectation of bad stuff coming your way, there’s a couple of things to really know here. The first thing to notice is that it’s not logical. Right, it’s not logical that bad stuff is going to come. It’s simply a negative expectation about the future. It’s about something bad coming. It’s anticipatorily. It’s a negative thing, right? So, that’s the first part.
The second part is, obviously that anxiety and panic, I mean, there’s nothing logical about it. In fact, it’s completely illogical. I remember the day that I came to the realization that anxiety and panic was completely illogical.
I was walking around my block, and I’m not kidding you when I tell you, I was around my block, I mean, I was literally at the end of my block just taking a break from work, strolling around. I got to the other end of the block and all of sudden I had this, “Haaaaaa, oh my God, how am I going to get home?” And then all of a sudden it hit me, “Uh wow, even in the midst of almost virtually having a panic attack on the other side of the block because the fact that I couldn’t get home.
I had this intense realization that anxiety and panic are completely illogical. They don’t make any sense whatsoever. And so, based on that, things from a logical stand point, in other words, for someone to sit down and say to you, “Hey, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Was that helpful? No, of course it’s not helpful. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve read lots of different books and things like that with different coping techniques and all kinds of different stuffs… Don’t get me wrong, coping techniques are very helpful but on the same token, they’re not going to heal anxiety.
So, don’t necessarily plan on the fact that they will heal the anxiety but they will certainly help you to make it through the rough patch. So, the biggest thing there is that things that are logical are typically not going to be super helpful for you. I mean, for even your friends to go, what are you even afraid of? I know, for me, I couldn’t get myself on to an airplane and I had a buddy say to me, “Dude, why don’t you just take a pill and get on the airplane?” Well, that’s totally fine, okay. That’s totally fine except for the fact that everything’s that’s inside your body is telling you, “Do not get on that airplane, do not leave your house, do not even drive to the airport” like, “What happens when you get off the airplane?”
When you get to wherever you’re going, this is what’s going on inside my mind, when you get to wherever you’re going, you’re going to get there and go, “Ahhhh. How am I going to get home?” because I mean, if I was having that exact same experience on the other end of the block from my house, I mean, obviously the next thing that was to come was me just totally freaking out whenever I got to where I was. So, it’s important to realize that the logical, in other words, logical things are typically not going to be super, super helpful.
The other part of that is awareness, using your awareness to realize and to come to the understanding that, “Hey, this is just anxiety, this is just fear, this is just panic, that’s all this is. I’m still here. I could have a panic attack in this very moment, right here, right now and then in a minute or 2 minutes or 20 minutes or however long it takes, whenever that’s done, I’m still going to be here. A Panic attack / anxiety attack is not going to kill me,” and it’s not going to kill you either. So, use your awareness. Your awareness is essentially your ability to observe, your ability to observe your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions and the bottling sensation to things that are going on inside of you.
So, to take that one step further, do this exercise. The next time you’re feeling anxious, sit down, find a nice quiet place to be, if you can, if it’s not super quiet then you can still do this but find a place to sit down and relax and just observe the thoughts that are going through your mind, just observe them. It’s almost like there is a big white piece of paper in front of your face and you can just see these thoughts go by. Don’t attach yourself to them because for the most part we are attached to our thoughts but don’t attach yourself to them. Just observe these thoughts as they go by. Just let them go by and just observe them, just sit there and observe them.
What you’ll notice is that you want to attach yourself to them and that’s ultimately how we end up experiencing that ramp up to a panic attack because we experience a bodily symptom and we go, “Oh my goodness, what if that gets worse?” You know, that’s exactly what happened to me and the first panic attack that I ever had, I was on this airplane and then I started overheating. My body got really hot, I was super impatient and everything all of a sudden, I was like, “Oh my God, what if I heat up too much. I don’t know, my brain will explode, what if I have a heart attack blah, blah, blah.” All these things that happened and then, you know, full blown panic, right? So, don’t attach yourself to those thoughts, just observe them as they go by. Just observe them.
Do the same thing with your bodily symptoms. Just let them go by. Just observe them and go, “Yeah, I’m feeling the adrenaline rush. I feel that prickly skin. I’m feeling my heart raising. Wow, it’s raising really quick.” Just observe them. That’s it, just observe. That’s all we got for today. I hope you find that super helpful. Make sure you implement that into your daily life. Use your awareness to simply observe and you’ll start to notice holes in your anxiety.
What happens is as you notice these holes, these holes in your anxiety will start to get bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden, you’ll start to notice that instead of experiencing anxiety for you know early morning until you wake up the next day, you’ll start to notice that there are gaps in between it, and of course, that’s the idea that those gaps get bigger and bigger and before you know it there is less and less anxiety, and anxiety symptoms.
Your anxiety disorder and panic attacks will soon be on its way out the door.
So, I hope you find that super helpful. Talk to you soon. Thanks again.
Ben