There are many temptations to organize our life around the experience of earlier trauma. But that may short-change the future—which starts by our envisioning something better.
OCD wants you to feel stuck in your rituals. It can make you feel lost, frustrated, and out of control. But what OCD doesn't know is that you have the power to overtake it.
We need to employ this absurd approach with Anxiety: to tell it what it doesn’t expect to hear. Ask for more worries, more symptoms, more discomfort… and we want it now!
Speak directly to your obsessions with a simple, paradoxical message. Whenever you can engage the symptom without fearing it or fighting it, you have the best chance of beating it.
Cut yourself some slack. This isn’t easy. In fact, it can be downright scary. So if you experience some regression in your work to control worries, give yourself a pass. Tomorrow is a new day.
Part 1: If you want to take your life back from anxiety, don’t wait until you are certain that everything is safe. Learn how to step toward the threat while a part of you feels insecure.
You must courageously step toward what scares you. But you don’t do it in order to habituate. You do it as a means to practice this shift in your point of view.
Anxiety picks a topic that has significance to you because it's a powerful means of hooking you. Don’t be surprised if it relates to something you value.
I surrender that I’ll never get rid of the desire for certainty. I suggest that you do too. We’re forever going to want to feel safely secure and comfortably in control.
Like all components of our minds and bodies that play a part in our anxiety, the amygdala is doing precisely what it’s supposed to do. And for that alone we should be thankful.
Too often we resolve the issue of threat by relying on safety crutches. Our top-choice? Avoidance. We want to get rid of the threat—and to avoid seems like the safest bet.
Worry motivates us to act on our plans, to stay on task, and to solve problems. It can trigger planning, preparation, and action—but worrying in itself is not acting.
We “act as though” all day long—that the coffee we purchased is uncontaminated, and that gravity will keep our feet planted to the ground. When stuck, let it help you take action.
Ali wasn’t victorious because he was stronger or more athletic. After all, Foreman was in his prime. He was a 3-to-1 favorite. Ali was victorious because he was cunning.
“Whatever it takes, I’m going to finish this.” When you face a daunting task, that message doesn’t instruct you; it encourages you to push through resistance and continue on.
What is a ready-for-anything competitive spirit? It’s when we step forward with a point of view that says, “I have the skills to take on this challenge. I have a chance here.”
Paul Hamm had been training for this specific competition for a decade; he was on the road to a gold medal. And after his fall, the way he gets back up is inspirational.
Follow a young woman who struggles with anxiety & applies treatment principles to her everyday life. She engages Anxiety in a competition to win her life back.
Worries take two forms: signals and noise. Signals prompt you to take action because signals come with solutions. Noise comes with no solutions. Simply put, noise is static.
If we’re truly interested in living in the real world, we must train ourselves to cope with the insecurity of not knowing and the sensations that come with awkwardness.
It’s 35 degrees this morning, and partway through a 3,000-meter race, I go into panic mode. I can’t breathe. Suddenly, the battle is not on the water but is inside my own mind.