Anxiety stems from a fear of loss from a source that challenges, rather than supports. Our personal challenge is to find the courage to face fear and do away with our anxiety by embracing the good and bad in the daily events that affect us.
Stress and anxiety affect every aspect of our lives and in all seven areas of life which are: spiritual, mental, vocational, financial, family, social and physical. So, what can we do to moderate the immediate and long term effects of this inevitable, life-affecting feeling of anxiety and stress to reach emotional fitness?
CAUSES OF ANXIETY
Firstly, it’s important to clearly define what causes anxiety. It is best explained as the inability to adapt to an ever-changing environment.
Each of us has a unique hierarchy of values, meaning things that are most important to least important to us. Our hierarchy of values or priorities literally dictates the way we perceive our world, make decisions in it and act upon those decisions. Our values govern our destinies and our adaptability to changing environments and therefore our anxiety and stress levels.
When we have difficulties adapting to change we feel anxious and stressed. We perceive an event as challenging without equally and simultaneously perceiving its supportive side. Everything has two sides. If we perceive both sides of the situation equally, the mind is brought into balance and the unbalanced feeling of stress and anxiety dissipates.
Anxiety can erode productivity and initiate apparent chaos in any one or more areas of life. It is common for people to both infatuate with (seek) and resent (avoid) certain people, activities, events and beliefs. These maintain balance through our lives. When we unrealistically expect supportive without challenging events to occur we add to our levels of distress.
Our infatuations occur when we perceive more support than challenge from a specific source and distress occurs when we experience the fear of loss of that source. When our values are supported, our dopamine and oxytocin levels are elevated in our brains. Our infatuations are actually forms of addiction to these elevated brain chemicals. Conversely, our resentment occurs when we perceive more challenge than support and the subsequent distress is a fear of the gain of the source of resentment.
Both our infatuations and resentments take up space and time in our minds, distracting and clouding our thinking. It is imperative to neutralise the intensity of these in order to gain a balanced and poised state of mind and being. The stronger our infatuations and/or resentments, the harder it is for us to adapt and the more chaotic our minds become.
These two poles can be termed likes and dislikes. The stronger these attachments are, the more distressed and anxious our lives become. Knowing how to calm those attractive and repulsive emotions down can reduce their effects. Stress is actually a feedback mechanism to help us to be more authentic, productive and inspired, or more balanced or poised with our perceptions.
Infatuations and/or resentments can occur in any of the seven areas of our lives and can be connected to anything that is perceived as offering more challenge than support or more support than challenge; business deals, relationships, family situations, and fantasies of anything that is unrealistic.
DISSOLVING DISTRESS
In order to assist people in neutralising the often highly emotionally charged effects of distress, I have developed a methodology which is basically a series of questions designed to neutralise the emotional charges caused by these infatuations and resentments, in order to bring back balance and poise. The Method contains a total of 48 questions; however, the first three below will assist in dissolving some of the distress caused by highly charged emotional responses to infatuations or resentments:
1. If something has happened where we see more challenge than support, it’s wise for us to ask what the benefits to us are. It is essential not to stop asking this question until we have managed to balance the perceived negative aspects with benefits. This will neutralise our emotional and distressing charge. There are truly equal benefits to every situation and action. I have dealt with thousands of cases, involving some of the most challenging events that could occur and have consistently found a balance of benefits to drawbacks once an honest and thorough investigation was pursued.
2. We then would be wise to ask ourselves where we do that particular challenging action. We judge people more harshly when we are unable to see that what is in them is also in us. As Aristotle believed, the see-er, the seen and the seeing are the same. Every human being has every character trait in some form. I have seen this time and again during my seminars and workshops and through nearly four decades of research. Sometimes we are too proud or humble to admit that what we see in others is in fact inside us. When we keep looking we will find that we have done that same thing we are resenting and challenged by.
3. Finally, ask what the drawback would be if that particular event hadn’t happened. This is a powerful question to ask as it brings a new perspective into play in any situation.
CONCLUSION
We all deserve to have balance and this can be achieved quite easily by asking quality questions and not allowing our emotions and misperceptions to cloud our minds and unnecessarily distress our lives. This was one of the purposes of creating the Demartini Method – to transform poison into poise.
Editor's note: For more articles on anxiety, read Treating Anxiety and Mild Depression – the natural way and The A to Z of Nutrition can Calm our Anxiety
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