HOW TO TREAT ANXIETY:
THE 4 LIFE-CHANGING FACTORS THAT WILL SET YOU FREE
Feeling overwhelmed, worried and downright anxious? Or feel like your anxiety medication isn’t cutting the mustard?
This is because there is more to anxiety relief than just neurotransmitters (aka. what your medication is doing).
To truly find freedom from your anxiety (without the zombie-like side effects) you need to look at the big picture – from your mind to your body to your environment. And it’s easier than it sounds!
I show you how to treat anxiety by making sure you love and nourish 4 specific factors in this weeks episode.
These 4 factors are the ones I used on myself when my anxiety spiraled out of control, they’re the ones that finally gifted me with long lasting anxiety relief and they’re now the ones I use to help my clients achieve calm and peace from their anxiety, too.
If you’re looking to finally experience long lasting anxiety relief, this episode is for you.
Download the podcast episode from your fav podcast platform or hit play below.
The truth is, there’s actually only two factors you need to address to achieve long term freedom from your anxiety.
Now there’s always going to be treatments out there that help you band-aid your anxiety. This makes your anxiety more manageable and reduces your symptoms so you can feel calm in the short term. But if you ever want to take off the band-aid, the chances are, your anxiety is going to come back again.
Which is why if you want to find long term freedom from your anxiety, you need to address the root cause of your anxiety, AKA, your anxiety beliefs.
#1. Anxiety Beliefs
Your beliefs tell your mind how to think and your body how to act.
So, when a potential anxiety trigger comes along, the anxiety trigger activates your subconscious belief and that belief tells your body and your mind to go into anxiety mode.
The key here is to rewire those subconscious anxiety beliefs into calming non-anxiety beliefs. So the next time you’re exposed to that anxiety trigger, the calming non-anxiety belief is activated and you stay calm and in control.
To rewire these anxiety beliefs, you need to go deep and uncover the stories that backup and strengthen that particular anxiety belief.
And then rewire it.
Rewire it with new stories that promote calm and confidence.
Once you’ve rewired your anxiety belief with a calm and confident belief and found the stories to back it up, you’re less likely to automatically be triggered by that particular anxiety response, which means you stay calm, cool, and collected.
Now because you’re human being living out in the world, experiencing new things, and going on new adventures, it means you’re always going to potentially be exposed to new anxiety triggers. That is why this second part is so incredibly important.
#2. Anxiety Resiliency
The second part is strengthening your anxiety resiliency.
Now, what do I mean by resiliency?
This basically means your mind and body’s inner ability to not be triggered by an anxiety trigger.
The way I like to describe this is, imagine you’re putting on one of those Medieval knight armour outfits. You’ve got the helmet, chest plate, the arm guards, the leg guards, the things that cover your hands and even your feet. You’ve got the entire kit and caboodle; you’re completely covered and really well protected. So when that sword comes swinging your way, it can’t penetrate through your armour and harm you.
In this analogy your armour is your anxiety resiliency.
When you have all the pieces of your armour, your armour is strong and totally protects you from harm.
And that sword swinging at you? That’s your anxiety trigger. They’re things like doing a presentation, asking your boss for a raise, going to an event alone or going on a first date.
But if your armour is incomplete…like you’re missing your chest plate and you’re missing your leg guards, when that sword comes swinging at you, it can easily get through the gaps in your armour and cause you damage and harm.
Your armour reflects your anxiety resiliency.
The more armour you have on = the stronger your anxiety resiliency.
The stronger your anxiety resiliency = the less likely you’re going to be triggered by a potential anxiety trigger.
Take for example you’re going on a first date.
Let’s say this date was to happen in the week leading up to your period:
- You’re feeling a little bit PMS-ie.
- You slept terribly.
- Your energy’s really flat.
- You’ve had had one too many cups of coffee.
In this case, you’re more prone to feeling anxious, uneasy, and worried in the lead up to that first date and there’s a higher chance you’re going to bail.
This is because your hormones are unbalanced (causing your PMS), you’re lacking sleep and you’re swimming in oodles of caffeine. These 3 factors are dents in your armour. Therefore, they reduce your anxiety resiliency.
Now let’s say that date was happening two weeks earlier.
- So smack in the middle of ovulation when your hormones make you feel really good.
- You slept amazing last night.
- You only had one cup of coffee.
You might be feeling a little bit nervous, but generally you’re still feeling pretty confident, calm, and you’re going ahead with the date.
This is a case where your anxiety resiliency is much higher.
Your hormones are balanced, you slept really well, and you aren’t swimming in caffeine, meaning you have more pieces of armour on, which is making you less susceptible to feeling anxiety.
What’s the difference between these two situations?
The first time, your anxiety resiliency was way too low because your hormones were unbalanced, you had lack of sleep and too much caffeine.
In the second situation, your anxiety resiliency was really high because your hormones were balanced, you had good sleep and only minimal caffeine.
Low resiliency = more prone to feeling anxious.
High resiliency = less prone to feeling anxious.
So, the higher your anxiety resiliency, the more likely you’re going to completely bounce an anxiety trigger off you when you’re exposed to one, leaving you happy, calm and confident.
Sounds amazing, right?
But now the important question, where do you get this resiliency from now?
This is where the second part is broken up into three important sections:
- Your mindset or psychological resiliency
- Your environmental resiliency
- Your health or physiological resiliency
1. Mindset Resiliency
Your mindset refers to your thought patterns and general attitudes.
Are you a generally positive and optimistic thinker or are you generally a negative worrywart, pessimistic thinker?
Your mindset and general thoughts are that beginning domino that can lead to anxiety or calm. If you’re prone to thinking negatively and pessimistically, that promotes that downward spiral towards anxiety. Whereas if you’re an optimistic and positive thinker, that encourages you towards calm and confidence.
Your mindset can heavily influence which direction your mood goes.
2. Environmental Resiliency
Your environmental resiliency refers to your:
- physical environment
- mental environment
- online environment
- life environment
Let’s take your physical environment for example. If you were to look around your room and it was really messy, chaotic, and disorganized, and you struggle to think of where to find something, that adds to the chaos and overwhelm in your mind. This makes you more prone to feeling anxiety.
But if you looked around your room and it was really clean, the benches were empty, and as soon as you thought of something, you knew exactly where to find it, that encourages you to feel calm and in control.
If you have a chaotic environment = you’re more prone to anxiety.
If you have a calm and controlled environment = your risk of anxiety is reduced.
3. Health Resiliency
And lastly, your physiological or your health derived resiliency.
Now this one packs a heck of a punch.
This one refers to your internal body:
- Are your hormones balanced?
- Are you ovulating so you actually have an abundance of beautiful progesterone, which reduces anxiety?
- What’s your gut like? Do you have an abundance of the bad bacteria which promote anxiety? Or do you have a lot of the good guys that reduce anxiety?
- What’s your diet like? Are you eating enough nutrients and protein to make your neurotransmitters in the first place? Your GABA and serotonin that make you feel calm and feel good, require certain proteins and certain nutrients to make them in the first place.
- Are you eating anxiogenic foods? These are foods that promote anxiety.
- What’s your stress like?
- …and a whole bunch of other different health areas.
Your health has such an influential impact in either promoting a state of anxiety in your body or promoting calm and confidence.
Just take for example when you’re feeling tired and really stressed, you’re more prone to feeling overwhelmed, irritated, and uneasy.
But if you’re not stressed and you’ve had a really good night’s sleep, you’re generally more level headed and feeling calm and more confident.
This trifecta of your mindset, your environment, and your physical health can make the shiniest, newest and strongest anxiety armour, that completely deflects any anxiety trigger that’s thrown your way, leaving you calm and happy.
Over the next four episodes, I’m going to be going into much greater detail about these four areas so I can show you how to achieve long-term freedom from your anxiety:
- The root cause of your anxiety: your anxiety beliefs
- Your mindset resiliency
- Your environmental resiliency
- Your physical health resiliency
Remember your anxiety is not your destiny. Your solution is out there and the life beyond your wildest dreams is just around the corner.
Till next time,
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