Today's insight discusses where thoughts come from, and builds on the previous lessons regarding the subconscious mind. The more an anxiety sufferer understands stuff like how their mind works, cause and effect, habituation, the nature of conditioned beliefs mindfulness, self awareness, the more empowered they feel to do what they have to do to change, to change their beliefs, attitude, behaviour and habits... anxious habits. All this stuff is good shit, especially if you are an anxiety sufferer who is stuck and struggling to find peace and healing. I'm giving you the road map that healed me more than 11 years ago now, and that is healing sufferers all around the world who are willing to learn and change.
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Whether we like it or not, everything that is happening in our lives is as a result of the choices that we have made in the past. Unfortunately, most of us make choices unconsciously and therefore do not think that they are choices, but they are. Even though we are infinite choice makers, we have become bundles of conditioned reflexes, which are being constantly triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes of behaviour. Whether I insulted you or praised you, you would probably make the unconscious choice to be offended and flattered respectively, but it’s still a choice that you are making. Most of us, through conditioning, have repetitious and predictable responses to the stimuli in our environment; our reactions seem to be automatically triggered. But if you step back for a moment and observe the choices you are making as you make those choices, in just this act of witnessing, you take the whole process from the subconscious realm into the conscious realm, and you will immediately find this to be very empowering. You have the power to choose your thoughts in any given moment. You have the power to break away from a subconscious, conditioned response (habitual) to any given situation or any other stimuli by observing the choices you are making, thereby bringing this process up into the conscious level, and therefore giving you the power to choose the response which will bring happiness to you and those around you. You can feel happy and grateful right now. It’s your choice. No matter what your life challenges are in this present moment—whether they are of a financial, relationship, or health related nature—no matter how bad you think your situation is, you are not alone! Watch this lesson for more gold...
Insight #31: What Does The Subconscious and Conscious Mind Have To Do With My Anxiety Condition?26/5/2020 No matter what your life situation is, no matter how severe your anxious condition is right this very moment, the answer to ending your suffering is your conscious attitude: making a commitment to choose your thoughts, not based on your situation in this moment but based on what you desire. You cannot afford to fall into the trap of allowing your thoughts to be based around what you are experiencing in this moment, for you will surely secure the same result tomorrow. You must rise above your current situation. As Charles Linden puts it, ‘You must transcend your fears.’ You have the power to choose your conscious thoughts; you have the power to change your beliefs. Your subconscious mind will faithfully obey your conscious commands and bring about new situations and habits. Even though an anxiety condition is a learnt behaviour, a bad habit, stored deep in the subconscious mind, the answer to ending your suffering sits at the conscious level, your conscious choice of how you react, your attitude towards your situation, and the beliefs that you choose to adopt from this moment on. This will take a lot of work, and it may or may not be easy, but if you are willing to do whatever it takes and practise and persevere with everything outlined in BB3 and BB4, you will override the panic response, and you will build new non-anxious habitual behaviour.
I have mentioned earlier that the sensations that you experience, that you associate with fear, are the same sensations that you experience when you are excited, exhilarated, or engaged in any activity that stimulates you. What makes the sensations good or bad is your conscious choice of how you interpret them or the meaning that you give to them. A queue is just a queue, a car is just a car, and a crowd of people is just a crowd of people. A loud noise is just a loud noise, it doesn’t mean that there is threat on the other side – and you don’t have to jump into action. It is your interpretation or meaning that you give to them that determines whether the initial sensations escalate into a panic attack. Remember that you do not even fear the situation or event, you fear the horrible sensations, which are harmless and have never and will never harm you. When you understand and accept that, it will be easy for you to choose a new meaning or interpretation. Go back and review my Sky Tower analogy. The difference between a wonderful experience and one of sheer terror is a matter of meaning or interpretation of the sensations. You have the same conscious power as me and all the other ex-sufferers who have healed themselves to change the way you react to the initial anxious sensations (which is nothing more than a false alarm), to change the meaning that you give them. Check out this very short video further illustrating this insight with an analogy involving a threatening dog.
You must understand that an anxiety condition is nothing more than a bad habit, a learnt behaviour through operant conditioning. It developed just like any other habit, and you can remove it just like any other habit. Understanding the principles around habituation will help you to put things into perspective when things don’t seem to be going your way, and give you the faith and courage to keep going if, or when, the going gets tough. When you embark on a new programme of learning a new skill, discipline, or habit, like starting a new diet, learning to play a musical instrument or riding a bike: do you expect immediate results? do you expect to master the skill or discipline in an instant? Of course not! Learning something new will take time. Then why do we expect immediate results when it comes to overcoming our anxious condition? It is because of our fear of the intrusive and uncomfortable sensations. We want them gone now, and we don’t want to face and push through the fear... (watch video for more)
It is very important to understand how breathing works to reduce anxiety and why it won’t stop a panic attack. If there is a magic pill for reducing anxiety levels, it would be deep breathing. However, in hot moments, do not expect breathing to stop a panic attack in an instant. There are two reasons for this: A conscious resistant attitude which fuels the panic cycle. No matter how much deep breathing you do to reduce anxiety levels, if you are reacting to your anxious sensations with fear, you are just stoking the fire of panic and nullifying any positive results that deep breathing may have achieved. The sympathetic nervous system, or panic button if you like, can turn on in an instant. This is by design: if a car comes screaming around the corner as I am crossing the road, I need the emergency response to kick in immediately so that I can respond to the threat. ... (watch the video for more)
In the next series of posts, I will be sharing lessons from my online course which breaks down anxiety and anxiety conditions. The first of these lessons explains exactly what anxiety really is. It’s not only very important foundational information for anxiety sufferers, but also very useful for non sufferers as well. If you are an anxiety sufferer, empower yourself with self belief and confidence that you can be well again by going on through these lessons. When you understand what’s really going on, you are more likely to step up to the plate and take a swing, you are more likely to do what you fear, what you have been avoiding all this time. I trust you will get alot out of these lessons.
Today I am going to respond to two questions that have been sent into me by two different students: 1. How to overcome the fear of public speaking, and 2. How to deal with panic during public speaking. I am going to walk you through the panic attack eliminator which will teach you how to move into of your fear, turn off the panic cycle, disempower your panic and overcome your fear or phobia of public speaking. Now there are a few things that you need to understand and know before you even think about walking into your fear. If you are really serious about overcoming your fear of public speaking, you are going to have face your fear and walk right into it, and to do that we are going to have to be on the same page..... (watch the video for more)
When one of my students Abhi reached out to me he had been suffering from GAD (and eventually panic attacks) for 15 years. He lived in a constant state of worry and unease. His recurring depressive and bizarre thoughts were centred, among other things, around getting old and dying. At the height of his anxiety condition, not only could he no longer sleep, but he started suffering from panic attacks while breathing and drinking water! Holy sh..! Two pretty important things right there and he’s struggling to do them! Imagine that!! Abhi had been to doctors and shrinks, and had been taking medication for years. Over time things were just going from bad to worse. Out of desperation Abhi’s wife turned to Amazon and found my book attackpanic. She bought it for Abhi, and after reading it, he reached out to me, and subsequently joined my 4 week one to one coaching program in the beginning of 2018. The rest is as they say history, but I should step aside and let Abhi tell his own story from here. If you are a sufferer of GAD, anxiety or panic attacks and it is starting to restrict or even destroy your life, you might want to take some time out to watch the interview below to hear Abhi’s story. I am very grateful to Abhi for his willingness to air his dirty laundry out for the world to see, but feels it will be worth it if it inspires others to step up to the plate and take action.
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March 2023
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