Affirmations replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Why? If your thoughts are negative, then the world is negative. To change your feelings, you should change your thoughts and beliefs. Have and BELIEVE positive thoughts and positive feelings will follow.
Agoraphobia represents a fear of situations where feelings of entrapment, helplessness, or embarrassment might arise. The person avoids such situations. Agoraphobia may develop secondary to panic disorder. The person may be completely housebound or travel outside the home only with their “safe person.”
Every living thing wants to survive and reproduce. So does anxiety. Anxiety can be thought of as a parasite that finds an area of vulnerability and burrows in. Like every parasite, anxiety’s survival comes at the expense of the host. Typically, you’ll notice anxiety symptoms in connection with some area of insecurity, perhaps your health, your relationships, your finances, or your work.
Gratitude is a feeling of appreciation or thankfulness experienced after receiving kindness or generosity. Most clients seeking therapy for anxiety disorders arrive with little sense of gratitude. They just want their anxiety, their panic attacks, their worries, their depression, to go away. And who could blame them. In the face of overwhelming negative emotions, reacting to the positives of life doesn’t seem nearly as important as avoiding the next panic attack, for example, or being able to sleep despite an onslaught of worries.
When you meditate regularly, you realize that thoughts and feelings are always percolating up. They rise into the theatre of awareness, with no necessary logical order, then subside, connected by the loosest associations. You need not take your thoughts seriously. Let’s say someone knocked on your door. Would you drop everything, run to the door, fling it open, grab them by the collar, and hurl them into the living room? Absolutely not. But that’s exactly what most people do with anxiety.
Mindfulness meditation implies acceptance. During meditation, you might free associate to any number of memories, each raising up into the theatre of awareness to momentarily occupy center stage, then subside again. Whatever occurs, try to greet the stream of consciousness with nonjudgmental acceptance. Practice being okay with what happens inside of you is excellent practice for being okay with what occurs in the world. When you do notice judgments, pull back and just observe. Do not judge your judgements.
We usually assume that all our experiences are real—a state of “cognitive fusion.” But experience is the product of stories we tell ourselves, like “I’m too fat” or “I’m ugly” or “I’m a failure.” Such stories are a lens that creates reality. Appreciating our stories as stories softens up our conviction and allows us to question these stories and make more healthy interpretations.
Lucid dreaming is the art of being conscious during a dream. Nightmares are especially common for clients who have anxiety disorders. Nightmares may be viewed as catastrophic scenarios unfolding in the dream state. Lucid dreaming involves setting up signals which, once observed, make us ask the question, “Am I dreaming?” Once lucid, you may then change the dream.
People suffering from anxiety disorders often experience insomnia. Anxiety and impaired sleep represent a vicious circle: Anxiety sufferers find it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep. In turn, lack of sleep decreases coping skills, raising anxiety levels even more the next day, thereby further reducing sleep. Sleep hygiene and relaxation represent two ways to increase sleep and break the cycle.
Getting healthier psychologically proceeds along two broad fronts. First, you can solve your problems. This approach may be exhausting, but it also very effective. Some problems, however, cannot be solved. For these, there is only acceptance. Here are 18 ways that acceptance is important in psychotherapy. Identifying what cannot change and must be accepted is a superpower that few people even know exists.
