Your alarm goes off in the morning. You roll over and turn it off, and then you sit and look up at the ceiling. Your heart immediately starts racing and your body becomes heavy. You lie there hoping it will pass. You grab your phone to try and distract your mind. The thoughts don’t slow, they just become quieter.
You try and calm your mind with little mantras you taught yourself;
- Nothing bad is going to happen;
- People want you around;
- You aren’t a burden;
- It is just another day;
- Nothing bad happened yesterday, nothing bad is going to happen today;
- Even if something does happen, it’s called life;
- You are safe, just breathe;
- It is going to be ok, it is going to be ok, it is going to be okay.
You do this for 30 minutes to an hour, and then you get up and go about your day.
Challenges with conventional advice
Later on, you find an article titled “How Successful People Start Their Day” or something of the sort. It is recommended that when your alarm goes off, to get right up out of bed and get the day started. So, you try that. It backfires completely and you feel so much worse. You can’t stop shaking. You are shivering as if you are outside in the middle of the night in the dead of winter without any cover. You try to brush your teeth, but you are shaking too much. Your stomach feels like it’s twisting around and you’re nauseous. It takes longer to calm down just to get dressed. You damn the article, but you know the author just wanted to help people. It may have helped someone else, but it made your day awful.
Living with unpredictable anxiety
Some days it is a light feeling that washes through your body at random times in the day. Something feels off and your senses tell you to worry. It feels like a thousand eyes are on you waiting for you to mess up. Thoughts flow through your mind; “One misplaced step and I can fall down these stairs”. “A car could come out of nowhere and hit me.” “Someone could dart out in front of my car and I could hit them.” “I could get bad news about my family.” “I could get bad news about my friends.” “What if something has happened?”
Some days the feeling is stronger. You feel it concentrated in your stomach and an uneasy almost nauseous feeling overtakes you. You work around it by giving yourself time before you eat breakfast.
Some days it is the strongest and you feel a sharp pain in your chest. It hurts to breathe deep, so it is exacerbated by the short shallow breaths you take. You sit there quietly and pretend everything is okay while everyone else goes about their day.
The good news is that it is not hopeless. Anxiety isn’t something that has to rule your life. I have had to find ways to work with mine or soothe my mind. For some people mediation helps. For me, it makes my mind run faster and bounce off the walls. Breathing exercises help, deep breath in, hold, then deep breathe out, and repeat until you can breathe without thinking about it. Talking to someone helps. Moving or getting the extra energy out is good.
Address the root cause issues of anxiety
These are all band-aids. They help for a moment, but the anxiety will continue to come back. The SFT tapping from Jen Ward has been extremely helpful at getting to the root causes. I had a session with Jen and in it she targeted the root issue of some of the anxiety. At the moment it was causing the most anxiety in my day to day. For a month and a half, I had been having chest pains and waking up was the most draining part of the day. After the session I felt amazing, and I could breathe comfortably again. Anxiety sucks but it is not the end of the world.
If you feel that anxiety is something that has a strong hold on you, please try the taps included in this article. Also, consider doing a private healing session with Jen. It helps far more than you might imagine.
SFT tapping to address the root cause of anxiety
Say each statement three times while continuously tapping on the top of your head, a fourth time while continuously tapping on your chest, and a fifth time while continuously tapping on your abdomen.
We release all the negative self-talk; in all moments.
We shift our paradigm from negative to positive; in all moments.
We shut down the negative stream of consciousness; in all moments.
We release internalizing the mind f@#ks; in all moments.
We release reliving our own death; in all moments.
We release waking up in dread; in all moments.
We remove all engrams and muscle memory of waiting to die; in all moments.
We release reliving our worst nightmare; in all moments.
We release hanging on to our sanity by a thread; in all moments.
We regain our sense of joy and enthusiasm for life; in all moments.
We release overproducing hormones that make us feel bad; in all moments.
We restore our brain chemistry to register happiness; in all moments.
We are centered and empowered in happiness; in all moments.