Anxiety & Positive Thinking

Hi everyone,

If you've done some research into anxiety, you've probably discovered that many forms of anxiety arise as a result of long term patterns of negative thinking and worry. That's pretty obvious. What's less obvious is how to reverse such long-term, and incredibly habitual, thought patterns. Personally, trying to think positively often just makes me negative (it's a lot of work, and there's always that little voice arguing the opposite). What I've found more effective is to instead try to focus on changing certain core BELIEFS from which more positive thoughts will effortlessly flow. The following excerpt is taken from mc2method.com/anxiety - I think some of you will find it useful:

"Fear and worry can be beneficial survival mechanisms when they prompt us to choose safer alternatives in our physical world. But the excessive worry that leads to anxiety severely limits our ability to engage in everyday activities, and the amount of mental energy channeled into negative expectations usually far outweighs the amount of actual risk.

Ask yourself, what is the realistic probability that your feared event will actually happen? Is it worth filling your head and coloring your experience with visions of catastrophe? Ironically, the imagined catastrophe for most anxious people is a physically harmless event that could occur. This might revolve around fear of speaking, socializing, failure, embarrassment, loss, loneliness, and so on. Anxiety about these fears, if not confronted, can be devastating if it prevents us from taking steps to live the type of life we desire.

What we need in order to start moving beyond these self-limiting tendencies are replacement beliefs that give us a sense of self-control in all situations.
There is one belief in particular, one realization, that when FULLY INTERNALIZED, will free you to live without excess anxiety and to fully enjoy the life that you have available to you now. This is the realization that YOU CAN HANDLE IT. Whatever it is that you fear happening, realize now that YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT IF IT DID HAPPEN. No matter how bad it is, you have a strong mind, you will be able to cope, you won’t lose your sanity, YOU WILL SURVIVE.

In order to begin internalizing this new perspective into your belief system, continue working on your ability to be present with the feelings in your body. This is where confidence in your capacity to handle anything begins. If you can handle anything in your inner world, you can handle anything in your outer world. And anxiety simply cannot grow in the presence of such an attitude." source: mc2method.com/anxiety

  I too agree that are fears are in are minds and that the fear is unjust and that we dewell on them and therefore have formed a safety/comfort zome in are minds and we react to the way are body tells us to, stopping us from a regualer life, and as we overcome these things we find that the fear is unfounded. But on the other side there are alot of medical condition that do cause anxiety and when one is  subjected to this affect of and panic attack it can be so over wellming that are body's tell's us to stop and therefore we form these safety zones in are minds.

  Most safety zone's can be broken down if we just put aside are anxiety and just go for it, we find that the thought's are more unjust then the action, and when this is done we find that we have a better feeling about areself's in the end. But for some the distress of an p/a can not be ignored, do to a medical condition and for some it is so deeply rooted in there minds they become agorafobic(sp) and depressed that it is disabliatating while others can climb out when they put there unjust fears aside and relearn to live again.

 Even so I have found that living in Alaska we get alot of brown bears that come looking for food and yes I do hunt for them in the fall, and have found that going in after a shot bear is not something I injoy doing but it must be done, for I have been charged by one bear that I dropped 6 feet infrount of me. Now mind you that I also fish with these same bears (granted I give them a lot of space) but there's the old saying fight or flight, I had to fight that one bear by shooting it in the head or die therefore putting aside my fear and fighting back I did not die. So the same can be said for anxiety just by putting aside your fears and fighting back, one can regain there lifes back I know that I'm still a fighter at heart and I will regain that part of my life back again and knowing that I will not die from doing so for there really isn't anything that can hurt you (an less you hunt bears lol)

Post Edited (freezinginAK) : 11/20/2006 5:20:03 PM (GMT-7)