Do Want to get over anxiety? Get angry!
I always maintain that anyone struggling with anxiety can make massive progress in feeling better. Not only that, most people can get over it full stop.
One of the best ways of doing that is to get angry. In this video I explain why that is important and exactly how to do it.
If you prefer to read, rather than to watch, you’ll find a transcription below. This is an automatically generated transcript so please excuse any errors.
I always maintained that anyone who’s struggling with anxiety can make progress in feeling better, and most people can get over it full stop.
I also maintain that in most cases, it isn’t difficult. But let me clarify that by difficult I mean that it’s not intellectually challenging and it doesn’t necessarily have to take a long time.
Once again, let me clarify that. Overcoming anxiety is a process and that process can take a while, but it doesn’t have to take a lot of time out of your day.
So going back to what I said a few seconds ago, it’s not difficult, but it can be hard. And let me be really honest with you, there might be some days when it’s really hard.
It can be hard because it takes effort. There are things that you will have to do they, you might need to do some relaxation exercises, you might need to do some journaling to help you understand your thinking. You might need to question your own thinking, you might need to create some new habits. None of these things on their own are difficult.
But here is the trap. To do these things. takes commitment and above all, it takes energy, feeling anxious, having anxious thoughts, this can zap your energy. So finding the energy to do the things that you need to do can be difficult. And in some cases that leads to people beating yourselves up because they know there were things they need to be doing, but they’re not doing them and that makes them feel worse. So they get on a downward cycle.
Here’s one way to get more energy. Get angry, and I mean that. Anger is a very powerful energy. When it’s mis directed it can be very destructive, but when it’s correctly directed, it can become very powerful.
I’m not saying get angry with yourself. I’m not saying get angry with other people or the world. Get angry about the way that you are feeling. The first thing that you need to do is to get it out of your head.
When you make it something outside of you, you can get angry at it. And a great way to do that is to get a piece of paper and draw how you’re feeling. It doesn’t matter if you’re not an artist. It could just be a big scribble on the paper like aggghhhh and you can use different colors to do that.
I did this when I was struggling and I drew a creature. It looked like some kind of alien. And I said this thing that is living inside of me is making me feel this way and I gave it a name. I called it Sally. Now apologies if you happen to be called Sally it was just a random name. You could call it anxious you could call it a depression. You could call it Anxi. You could call it stupid $$!£££##@ if you want to.
Then I looked around at other people and I imagined that they were having a great life. And I held this picture of Sally in my hand and I said out loud “How dare you be making me feel this way?” “How dare you be robbing me of my quality of life?” And I probably said a few of the things that I’m not going to repeat in polite company. I got angry at Sally. The more I got angry the more energy I had and I directed that energy.
Firstly, I made a pledge. I made a pledge that I was taking control that I was not going to let Sally ruin my life anymore. I had to do that over and over again. But eventually it became part of who I am. I already had plenty of tools, I’ve been collecting them for ages, and in that moment of feeling angry and feeling energized. I’d ask myself, which one of these tools is the one that’s most likely to help me right now? What do I need to do to get over this?
When you are that focused, it’s easy to find that mental clarity that will help you to figure it out. In times when you don’t like how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking. If you don’t do anything you will stay feeling that way you’ll keep having those thoughts. You have to do something. In order to do something you need energy to do it, and anger can give you that energy.
One last thing. It’s important to remember, you’re not blaming yourself, you’re not blaming anybody else. You’re not blaming the world in general, feeling anxious is not who you are. Thinking anxious thoughts is not who you are. There is an imposter who has been causing you to feel that way, name the imposter and get angry at it and then use that energy. Then let that anger dissipate away.
You can do this
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