End Anxious Thoughts In Just 4 Easy Steps! Part 2

So how can you eliminate these unwanted anxious thoughts?


To begin with:

-when you start to experience anxious thoughts, it is very important not to force the thoughts away.

Let the thoughts in. The more comfortable you can become with them, the better. These thoughts will never go away fully but what you can learn is to change your reaction to them.

By changing your reaction to the anxious thoughts you become free of them.

Once you establish a new way of reacting to the thoughts it does not matter if you have them or not. Your reaction is what defines the whole experience (and that applies to almost everything).

Everybody experiences fleeting thoughts that many would consider scary or crazy. The difference between most people and somebody who gets caught up in them, is that the average person sees them for exactly what they are, fleeting anxious thoughts, and casually ignores them.

The anxious person is at a disadvantage as they already have a certain level of anxiety in their system. The thoughts easily spark feelings of further anxiety which builds into a cycle of fear. You break the cycle by changing how you react to the fearful thought.

Here is an example of how to approach this:

You are enjoying the way your day is going but then all of sudden a fearful thought comes to mind.

Before you would react with anxiety to the idea and then try to force that thought out of your mind.

This time, however, say:

“That’s a fear of X. I could worry and even obsess over that but this time I’m going to do something different. I’m not going to react to it. I’m also not going to try and stop it either. I’m just going to label the thought and not react.”

Then the thought comes again with more intensity and possibly with new ‘scary’ angles you never considered. When this happens you do exactly the same. As if you were observing a cloud passing overhead, you simply

-Observe it,

-Label it (fear of whatever), then

-Watch it as it passes by with no judgment.

then

-Move your attention on to what you were doing.

Observe, Label, Watch, Move on

See the anxious thought for what it really is: -one of the thousands of fleeting sane and insane thoughts every one of us experiences daily.

If you are a more indoors type of person then instead of thinking of the thoughts like clouds passing in the sky, you might try imagining a large cinema screen and the anxious thoughts are projected out onto the screen in front of you. Play around with this approach. Find what works for you.

The key thing to remember is to:

Observe, Label, Watch, Move on

By practicing this approach you gradually stop reacting with fear to the thought and you learn to treat it as nothing more than an odd peculiarity.