Anxiety Relief with Language and Self Talk

One first step you can use to get relief from anxiety is to start by changing the way we talk to ourselves and about ourselves. In this article you'll learn how a common language trap is keeping you in a stuck state of anxiety, and what you can do to get out of it. 

Ever caught yourself accidentally owning anxiety? Even some self-help guides and counsellors will call it “your anxiety.”

Here are some examples:

"I can't do x because of my anxiety"
"Each time I do x, my anxiety gets bad"
"If my anxiety wasn't so bad, I could do x"

Sound familiar?

Possessive pronouns such as 'my' and 'your' are common in the English language and many other languages too.  We say my face, my hands, my wallet, my computer etc. These things are rightfully yours, they belong to you and they are likely never too far away. 

But do you own your anxiety? Do you want to just keep it the way it is?  What if you were change it to simply 'something which you are doing at the moment'. This small tweak, automatically opens up the possibility of changing it and dealing with the root of the issue. One way of doing this is through hypnosis sessions for anxiety but there are other quick mind and body techniques you can start applying before you see a hypnotist or hypnotherapist. 

It can seem like a small semantic difference, but it's important to understand that our self talk is going to create an emotional response and directly impact our behaviour.

A core part of the hypnosis for anxiety sessions that I offer are about separating you and the problem. Anxiety can be deceptive, because of the physical effects we feel on our body. We can even believe that we are sick or that something is really wrong with us. When in reality, it's just the body's way of keeping you safe.  It happens automatically, and will continue to do so until something changes it.

One of the beautiful things about hypnosis is that we can make changes at an unconscious level which means that automatic behaviour and pattern of anxiety is changed, naturally, using your brain's own ability to learn.

Some of the tools I share with my clients can be found in the following guide:  5 Effective Tools to Reduce Anxiety in Minutes.  I explain in more detail about how anxiety is naturally occurring, as it's part of the body’s natural protection mechanism, and consequently it’s something your body does automatically.

There was once a time where you had to think about riding a bike or even how to tie your shoes. Over a short period of time, your brain learnt how to do this automatically. I am sure you can already begin to see the very handy advantage here. However, our brains can also learn less useful patterns of behaviour quickly too, such as over-thinking, catastrophizing outcomes, and feelings of self-doubt.  

Practical Exercise:

Let's take a typical sentence you might say or think.

 "my anxiety is stopping me from doing x"

Change it to:

“I can’t do x at the moment because of that feeling of anxiety my body is doing now”

In doing so, you will distance and seperate yourself from the issue. 

You can take it a step further, as you think about that feeling:

Where do you feel that feeling?
What shape is it?
How big or small is it?
What colour is it be?

With your eyes closed, now imagine shrinking it down smaller, changing the color to something you prefer, imagine pushing it out of your body.

How does it feel now?

Play with it and notice what happens. By doing this on a regular basis, you begin to interrupt the typical pattern of anxiety and create new neural connections in the brain. 

You can use this in addition the guide above which contains more natural techniques to help with anxiety in a short space of time. These techniques work on the ability for your brain to learn new skills.