Fear of the Anxiety itself
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BePositive-Amy
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Whenever we have an unpleasant experience, we will fear it. This cannot be changed. It is just how the mind is designed. We burn our hands on a hot stove, and every time we see another hot stove, we think "ouch", so we never touch it again.
This works great for avoiding burns, but it unfortunately makes anxiety more entrenched and more difficult to deal with. We get afraid of the anxiety itself, and so it becomes a huge presence in our mental lives. Our minds become totally obsessed with keeping anxiety away. This process works paradoxically: it makes us more anxious. The anxiety starts to dominate our every waking moment.
So the fact that you fear having anxiety means your mind works like any other mind. It braces and gets anxious in the presence of the things that have caused you to suffer in the past.
We might initially think that the answer is to to try to fight off or disprove or squash or replace our thoughts and fears about anxiety. But this doesn't work. In fact, it works in the opposite direction--the problem gets worse.
Ironically, what works is to stop trying so hard to control and fight off our fears and to just accept them. Let the anxiety happen. Let yourself be anxious. Be patient and gentle with it. It's just how you feel right now. It's OK. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or bad.
Relax your mind and open up to whatever you are feeling without judging it or trying to change it or make it go away. If you are feeling anxious, OK. Allow yourself to feel anxious. It passes.
If you try to fight your anxious feelings, or push them away, or squash them deep down inside your body, or argue with them, they will get more intense.
If you accept them and open up to them and let them run their course, they will gently dissolve away, and you will be able to get back to what you actually care about: living your life.
This may sound paradoxical, and it is. But bear with me.
Read this article by a Harvard psychologist:
<A HREF="http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ewegner/seed.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ewegner/seed.htm</A>
Here is the lesson: Control is the problem, not the solution. This applies to thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, basically everything that spontaneously happens inside the mind.
When we try to tightly supervise and control the random junk that occurs in our minds, we get the very junk that we were trying not to get in the first place. Doh! This is especially true about unpleasant feelings like anxiety and sadness.
When we try to control and regulate our thoughts and feelings, everything gets worse. The thoughts and feelings becomes more intense, more central, more of a threat, more of a concern, more of a big deal. They no longer 'just pass' like normal thoughts and feelings. Instead, they stay with us. They stick. The mind becomes completely and totally obsessed with them.
Ironically, the more we try to make them go away to 'solve' the problem, the more entangled and caught up in the 'problem' we get.
In contrast, when we allow our thoughts and feelings to happen in a non-judgmental way, and just look at them as temporary events that come and go in our minds, not actual realities that we need to fight off or disprove or crush or figure out or analyze, the mind calms down, and the problem melts away.
It's like a chinese finger trap. Have you ever had your finger stuck in one of those pesky things? The harder you pull, the tighter it gets. You get trapped. You panic. So you pull even harder and it gets even tighter. Talk about a paradox.
But if you gently push inward, things get looser and you can get your hand out.
The same is true of anxiety. When you relax your mind and let go and open up to whatever you are feeling, the feelings soften. When you allow things in your life to take their natural course, including the anxious feelings that you understandably don't want, they will soften and melt away.
Make sense? Let me know if you have any questions.
Good luck,
--ratobranco
This works great for avoiding burns, but it unfortunately makes anxiety more entrenched and more difficult to deal with. We get afraid of the anxiety itself, and so it becomes a huge presence in our mental lives. Our minds become totally obsessed with keeping anxiety away. This process works paradoxically: it makes us more anxious. The anxiety starts to dominate our every waking moment.
So the fact that you fear having anxiety means your mind works like any other mind. It braces and gets anxious in the presence of the things that have caused you to suffer in the past.
We might initially think that the answer is to to try to fight off or disprove or squash or replace our thoughts and fears about anxiety. But this doesn't work. In fact, it works in the opposite direction--the problem gets worse.
Ironically, what works is to stop trying so hard to control and fight off our fears and to just accept them. Let the anxiety happen. Let yourself be anxious. Be patient and gentle with it. It's just how you feel right now. It's OK. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or bad.
Relax your mind and open up to whatever you are feeling without judging it or trying to change it or make it go away. If you are feeling anxious, OK. Allow yourself to feel anxious. It passes.
If you try to fight your anxious feelings, or push them away, or squash them deep down inside your body, or argue with them, they will get more intense.
If you accept them and open up to them and let them run their course, they will gently dissolve away, and you will be able to get back to what you actually care about: living your life.
This may sound paradoxical, and it is. But bear with me.
Read this article by a Harvard psychologist:
<A HREF="http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ewegner/seed.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ewegner/seed.htm</A>
Here is the lesson: Control is the problem, not the solution. This applies to thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, basically everything that spontaneously happens inside the mind.
When we try to tightly supervise and control the random junk that occurs in our minds, we get the very junk that we were trying not to get in the first place. Doh! This is especially true about unpleasant feelings like anxiety and sadness.
When we try to control and regulate our thoughts and feelings, everything gets worse. The thoughts and feelings becomes more intense, more central, more of a threat, more of a concern, more of a big deal. They no longer 'just pass' like normal thoughts and feelings. Instead, they stay with us. They stick. The mind becomes completely and totally obsessed with them.
Ironically, the more we try to make them go away to 'solve' the problem, the more entangled and caught up in the 'problem' we get.
In contrast, when we allow our thoughts and feelings to happen in a non-judgmental way, and just look at them as temporary events that come and go in our minds, not actual realities that we need to fight off or disprove or crush or figure out or analyze, the mind calms down, and the problem melts away.
It's like a chinese finger trap. Have you ever had your finger stuck in one of those pesky things? The harder you pull, the tighter it gets. You get trapped. You panic. So you pull even harder and it gets even tighter. Talk about a paradox.
But if you gently push inward, things get looser and you can get your hand out.
The same is true of anxiety. When you relax your mind and let go and open up to whatever you are feeling, the feelings soften. When you allow things in your life to take their natural course, including the anxious feelings that you understandably don't want, they will soften and melt away.
Make sense? Let me know if you have any questions.
Good luck,
--ratobranco
Last edited by Ratobranco on Sun Jul 20, 2008 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Guest
ratobranco, that was a great answer. you explained it so beautifully. and it is so true.
I found that over time as I learned to accept it, then the fear of the anxiety went away. But it takes time. So don't beat yourself up if it takes some time. It took me about 6 months. But now I'm not scared of it because I know it will eventually pass.
I found that over time as I learned to accept it, then the fear of the anxiety went away. But it takes time. So don't beat yourself up if it takes some time. It took me about 6 months. But now I'm not scared of it because I know it will eventually pass.
[COLOR:PURPLE][B]~ Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. ~[/B][/COLOR]
I think this was my main problem at one time - the fear of my own anxiety. I stopped fighting and resisting it and eventually the fear dissipated. The program is what got me to this point. I'm on my third go around right now and have been reinforcing it as much as I can. A lot of this is finally becoming automatic. I sometimes now have an automatic thought that says "Yea I'm getting some anxiety here, so what", and it goes away or never developes at all because it doesn't scare my anymore. I stopped fearing it because I started to see how silly it was to be afraid of it. It wasn't going to hurt me, it wasn't going to kill me, - so why be afraid of it? It didn't make any sense to me anymore to fear it and I think the program is what made me really see this.
"life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of how you react to it."
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Guest
hi amy . my nane is rick barbosa and i understand how you feel . when i feel anxiety i get scared and it get stronger. what i try and do is say to myself its only anxiety and it will go away. and that seems to calm me down.. try it and let me know how itOriginally posted by BePositive-Amy:
Hello everyone, I am wonder if you ever or realize or experience this kind of fear where you feel fear of your own anxiety? If yes, please share and how you deal with it? Thanks