Perhaps the biggest obstacle stopping you from being anxiety free is the mind-body trap.
If you can imagine, for a second, anxiety as a small ball of energy. Now, picture it racing in a circular motion between your head and your gut, and every time anxiety hits your gut you think, “I’m going to die,” and every time it hits your head you think, “I’m going to go nuts.” This pattern then becomes a loop that never stops – basically this is the “trap.” But, like the Great Houdini, you can learn how to break this loop and make your great escape.
First though, I have to tell you something. The escape technique – upon first inspection at least – seems lame. Yeah, I said it. I won’t beat around the bush, the best trap buster is simply distraction. But remember, simple doesn’t mean stupid – I’ll explain in a second.
Over the years I’ve found that I’m rarely, if ever, hit by both the fear of death AND insanity at the same time. They usually come alone but packing plenty of heat nonetheless. And despite the fact that I knew for a long time that my fears and anxiety symptoms wouldn’t kill me – I would remain afraid of it all and get caught up in trying to think my way out of fear, panic and the like.
The reality is that sometimes thinking is the last thing you want to do when it comes to anxiety. This is because anxiety isn’t all about palpitations. It’s also about deep thinking and reflection, and this only serves to hype you up even more. It makes all your anxiety related problems seem like disasters.
And here is the problem with heavy thinking: it sets the trap. For example, say you’re having anxiety induced chest pain, well then chances are you’re going to start formulating exaggerated narratives in your head about different ways that your heart will kill you.
These thoughts, feed assumptions, which later become embedded fears. Then, the trap is not just sprung, but it also gets put on replay. And from then on when you’re not experiencing physical symptoms you’re thinking about them, and when you are having physical symptoms your building ever stronger thoughts about how scary and bad anxiety symptoms are – sucks huh? Anxiety symptoms lead to anxious thoughts and anxious thoughts get put on steroids because of the symptoms. Anxiety is tricky like that.
Well, to break this pattern you have to hypnotize anxiety. Lull that evil baby to sleep with effective and intentional acts of distraction.
Hypnosis for anxiety can take on many forms, but the form of distraction isn’t as important as the outcome – namely a mind which is focused on a task that requires attention. So, right there you know that daydreaming is a no go. Instead, distractions that require bodily movement or activities that take your thoughts elsewhere are needed.
Here is short list of acts of distraction:
- Splashing your face with cold water!
- Exercise – walking or running would foot the bill.
- Talking to someone smarter than you.
- Watching something educational on T.V. that requires you to learn as you watch – think Discovery Channel.
- Writing or reading.
- “Busy work” of a detailed nature, like filing away all those bills that you don’t normally keep track of.
- Clean the house! Just don’t do it all at once since people might think you went the crack route – just kidding.
Whatever way you choose to hypnotize your anxiety, just do something.
It is true that being brainy about your anxiety problem can be helpful, but let’s not forget that anxiety is a primitive emotion that sometimes requires a basic primitive response. And what’s more basic then getting distracted with mundane tasks?
The last thing you want to do is complicate your life with anti-anxiety techniques that require too much preparation or time. Plus, all these forms of distraction are cheap as hell.
Don’t get stuck in the mind-body trap. Try not to waste your time trying to understand everything all the time. I’ve always thought that a great way to cut down on anxiety is to get outside your head. And whether that means washing dishes or listening actively to self-help tapes, so be it. Just do something. Because trust me, unlike the Buddha, enlightenment about your problems isn’t going to appear simply because you think a lot about them. The solution to your anxiety problem will come precisely when you’re not thinking about it.
Great article. The BIGGEST MISTAKE that I CONTINUE find myself making is thinking while under anxiety while indulging in my anxious, scary thoughts. Once I do things that “hypnotizes” or “pauses” my anxiety such as playing video games or exercising is when I see the best effects. What was said in the article is soo true which is your solution to your anxiety problem comes when you are NOT THINKING ABOUT IT! 🙂
I just need work on remembering and reminding myself that!
One large thing I’ve learned recently when dealing with anxiety…it’s only a problem when/because you think about it. It’s one of the toughest things to NOT do, but distracting yourself is a step in the right direction. The more you think about it, the deeper it gets.
Hi Rachel, I love your last sentence… “The more you think about it, the deeper it gets.” Truer words have never been spoken. Well said.
I think you are totally right. Physical activity or thinking to jog yourself out of anxiety can really help. I did martial arts and found that it really helped with my anxiety because it both got endorphins going from the exercise and required me to learn and think about my body and breathing all the time. Really good point!
Something I have been using called the Linden Method talks about the same thing actually. By doing certain things (like changing your patterns of thinking) you can actually change the chemistry in your brain to help your anxiety.
Hey Paul!!
Great post. Your exactly right about the mind-body trap, it’s real and this is a key component to understanding and turning off anxiety. I have suffered for many years with anxiety,obesessive thoughts ,crazy body sensations, you name it i’ve had it. But until I figured out what was going on i was powerless to step out of it. Here’s how it works, the amygdala(a part of you deep survival mechanism brain) is wired by mother nature to guard, watch for, and respond to threats, and it doesnt care were they come from (real physical threats or imagined ones), something triggers the wire of the amygdala (stress,money worries, physical sensations, whatever it may be) you respond with fears, it perceives you are afraid of these and ramps up the outgoing signal for action. the amygdala has output wires branching into you autonomic nervous system, muscles, endocrine systems almost everywere. once ther is a threat detected it sends out the signals, however by you reponding that there may be a threat you are ramping up the incoming signal back to the amygdala, so this feedback loop goes round and round and the verocity keeps increasing and it can affect thinking patterns and everything, the amygdala receives info from you senses, so by you behaving anxiously or becoming upset or scared of how you are feeling you are training the amygdala to become hypersensative to physical and imagined stimuli, makes sense doesnt it? the trick is to fool you sensory organs into sending the amygdala the right signals for stand down. the pattern that created the anxiety in the fist place must be reversed. and this could take time because by the time most of us found out we had a anxiety disorder the habit of fear and the sensitizing of the amygdala and the body by you output of stress hormones was already in full bloom. that why we can experience weird thoughts, strange sensations and whatever, youve trained you brain to be on high alert all the time, and by being on alert all the time certain stress hormones are keeping the body in a continued state of hyper arousal( sensitization) spoken of by Dr. claire weeks. Many people dont know this but dr. weekes also had an anxiety disorder, and by here superior intelligence and research capabilities( she was first a research scientist in her early years, she was able to research and back track the patterns that cause anxiety and therefore create a process to reverese the pattern that caused the disorder n the first place, also the linden method does this too, in my opinion the linden method has hit the nail on the head about this condition, im just sorry it took me many years to hear what these two giants in the anxiety field were teaching. Some people say way to i keep experiencing anxiety when i believe these things are not going to harm me? Well it’s hard to forget how to drive when we have driving for many years isnt it? we may never forget how to drive, but we can learn a new way to drive or drive a differnt vehicle. dr. weekes explains this in all her books. Habit is a hard animal to corral once it’s out of the ring. but it can be and also can be retrained to be calm again, once I learned what these two giants in the field of anxiety research were saying, man I got it and did it work wonders, does the habit try to reassert it self at times? yepp! however this is a process and it will take time, but i believe this is the answer to our delima. I practice it everyday.
Thank you paul for a great article.
Brett
Hi Rachel,
U are so right. Not thinking about your anxiety is so tough to do. And you were also indeed correct that the more you think about the anxiety, the deeper it gets.
Hello brett!
Thanks for the breakdown on how the amygdala works in conjunction with anxiety. Great stuff.
Another great one, Paul. Keep it up!