Are You Afraid Of Anxiety? I Was!

Life has many moments consisting of many things. That sounds pretty simple. It is. The previous sentences are just a non-anxious way of getting some words on paper as I begin this section on proactive ways of managing anxiety.

There are many causes of anxiety: some are obvious, others not. There are many effective ways of treating anxiety: psychotherapy and psychotropic medications are the two most common. As long as these anxieties are not debilitating and the person having them is not in need of professional mental health treatment, the anxiety can be readily managed. If not, Get Therapy!

Personal Life Coaching provides us with an antidote to anxiety that is the perfect addition to any form of treatment designed to rid us of our anxieties.

Disguised in my dumb opening paragraph is the most effective solution to any anxiety-provoking situation ever:

Just DO something:

Anything that provides movement

towards your goal.

Breathe and DO. DO and Breathe.

The anxiety will dissipate,

as long as,

you keep doing and breathing,

while working towards accomplishing

whatever you need to do,

to get wherever you need to go.

Acknowledge the feeling; focus on a plan and go on with your life.

I began writing this segment by breathing and doing. I am not a spontaneous, prolific and professional author and as a result, get anxious about writing for publication. Rather than obsessing about what I was going to write about, I followed my own advice. I started out by breathing and doing, writing whatever came to my mind so that I had my beginning. The first three sentences are essentially words strung together that serve no real purpose other than as my beginning. I could have begun somewhere else. None of the words or the points I made was really relevant to this section except that they began “It”. They were used to make my point: that the way to break anxiety about doing anything is to breathe and do. The rest will follow with less anxiety associated with “It”.

You see anxiety is not fear. It is the illusion of fear. It is the body’s defense against perceived fear. If there truly is something to be frightened of, this section of the book and the recommendations included do not apply.

Most of us equate anxiety with fear. We fear the feelings of anxiety and equate the sources of our anxiety as legitimate issues to respond to as if; there really is something to be frightened about. Avoidance of fear/avoidance of anxiety is interpreted as synonymous by our feeling system.

Personal Life Coaching makes the task of handling anxiety simple. Coaching teaches us that it is not our job to analyze whether or not these feelings are rational or to discover where they come from, just to find effective ways of addressing them and moving forward with a clear life plan.

Stop! Look! And Listen! Now Plan Your Do!

Stop! “Is ‘It’ Live or Memorex?”  Check “It” out; determine whether or not there is any imminent danger or anything to be afraid of.

Look! Look around you, orient yourself and take some slow deep breaths.

Listen! To your inner truth that now knows that this is anxiety, that “It” is truly safe and that it is just your gut telling your head to believe “It” is to be feared.

PLAN YOUR DO. What can you do to move forward with your life as your breathing and doing dissipates your anxiety?

NOW DO “It”!  By doing the above you can proceed with your plan anxiety free. Your coach can help you structure your plan and support you through it as you gain a new sense of control and freedom for living.

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The most insidious part about addressing anxiety is that we tend to want to respond to it as fear anyway. Coaching provides us with an antidote to the above antidote: a supported proactive plan that demonstrates anxiety can be dealt with, along with the steps necessary to achieve purposeful forward momentum to do whatever else we’d rather be doing than empowering our anxiety to keep us stagnant. It doesn’t address the cause. It addresses the remedy.