Anxiety Release

The scariest thing about having any sort of problem with your mind is that your mind is seemingly at the center of everything, well everything in your life anyway. It’s not like a broken leg which you can stick a cast on and have it heal - aside from the annoyance of limited mobility.

Your mind, however, seemingly puts a halt on everything in your life, but this does not have to be the case. There can be an “anxiety release” so to speak…

Your mind is constantly working, constantly chattering, at least for the anxious person and that can certainly cause stress and panic. If your mind is racing then how can you concentrate on anything else?

You become trapped in your mind. It can even enter your sleep at night. This is one of the things that was very difficult for me when I was suffering with anxiety and panic. I couldn’t turn off the racing thoughts. My mind was constantly worrying about this and that. It was worrying in a nonstop fashion.

Again, fortunately this does not have to be the case.

An amazing thing I learned comes from Carl Jung, who stated:

“Whatever you resist, persists.”

Let’s examine this sound observation - what I have come to call “anxiety release” - and apply it to panic attacks so that you can help yourself.

If your mind is racing with anxiety and panic or you’re having a panic attack, there is no law or rule that you must continue exacerbating your attack by worrying about your panic or symptoms.

This reasoning may seem overly simple and you might be thinking something like “Well obviously if I could calm my thoughts that would solve the problem, but I can’t slow down my thoughts. That’s the problem.”

It may seem hopeless at first, but please read on...

Shirley Swede, in the Panic Attack Recovery Book, discussed the notion of just stopping whatever you were doing when you felt a panic attack coming on. If your typical reaction were to pace back and forth to figure out what had brought your panic, or hyperventilate, etc., you just stop doing whatever you’re doing. You stop resisting your anxious thoughts

Let’s examine the seemingly worst case scenario. That is, you don’t fight your anxiety and panic and racing thoughts. What if you embraced your anxiety? What would happen? Do you think your attack would get worse and you’d lose your mind? No. Actually your symptoms would slowly dissipate the more you stopped fighting them and would eventually cease if they were not fought at all. Now you probably see why I have used the phrase “anxiety release”.

What happens is that by not continuing your racing thoughts or playing into your symptoms of a panic attack, the cycle of the panic attack or anxiety decreases.

Let’s me use a different example.

If you don’t allow yourself to become upset when you feel anxiety or panic creeping up, you can’t have a panic attack. If you don’t get worked up over something then you’re not going to be perpetuating anxiety or panic. How could you?

The whole reason that a panic attack and anxiety continues on is because you continue to feed the symptoms by what you do with your body (physiology) and thoughts (remember we talked about this in a previous installment. (If you don’t remember, you can click here, and then come back once you refresh your memory.)

Let’s look at an analogy.

If you grab one end of a rope and I grab the other and we tug in opposite directions, there’s obviously stress on the rope. That stress is similar (metaphorically speaking) to the anxiety that is at the center of your panic attacks. Stress is anxiety. Anxiety is stress. Resistance is stress. Stop resisting, stop anxiety. This is key.

Let’s come back to my analogy now. If we are both tugging on the rope and I let go what happens to the stress on the rope? It disappears. This is precisely the case with anxiety if you stop resisting.

The great thing with this suggestion is that it’s very easy to do. If you stop doing what you’re doing, thinking what you’re thinking -- as far as anxious thoughts --and just relax, the panic and anxiety dissipates. It has to do so.

Now I’m not going to be naive here: this is not exactly as easy thing for the anxiety sufferer to do initially, to stop resisting that is. However knowing at this point that it is possible and does work will be helpful for you – helpful the next time you feel anxiety.

What I would recommend is that you try this idea out yourself. See how it works.

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Attack Release

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