When it comes to an anxiety-inducing situation, a lot of people’s default reaction is to avoid at all costs! Another more conscious response is “over-exposure” to the situation to try and “fix it” or break through the fearful situation in an attempt to “conquer” anxiety.
Neither of these are all that successful. Avoidance usually leads to further anxiety for these reasons: 1) By not approaching and learning more about what frightens us, we miss the opportunity to learn ways to tolerate our anxiety 2) We don’t learn ways to cope with the specific situation that causes us fear 3) We don’t have an opportunity to learn that the situation may not be as dangerous as we believe it to be 4) We don’t have an opportunity to find out if we are already capable of dealing well with the situation “Over-exposure” as previously mentioned is not all that helpful either. This is when we have the mindset ~ “Ok, well fuck you anxiety! I’m going to dive head first into a chronic anxiety-inducing situation and I’ll just deal with it and come out stronger”. This approach will cause large amounts of anxiety and perpetuate our fear towards the situation. The best approach is to face SMALL anxiety-inducing situations regularly, so you can build a mental database of evidence based experiences where you “were ok” and managed to cope. Over time you will cultivate a habit of challenging anxiety causing situations with the confidence that you know (based on previous experiences) that you’ll be just fine. If you’d like to learn more about better dealing with both stress and anxiety, inbox us and we can arrange a chat to give you some info on our 6 week program ~ “Stress Less: 6 weeks to cultivate more Calm” Have a wonderful day! Mick Comments are closed.
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