Most of us who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks often have to deal with the negative side-effects of unwanted thoughts that continually creep into our minds over concern for loved ones, concern over our own health or even fears that have no rational sense, but continue to linger in our minds.
Barry with the Panic Away system guides us though a two-step process, that is in part related to his ONE MOVE step in his program for getting rid of anxious intrusive thoughts. You must eliminate the negative thinking patterns by producing a shift in attitude along with specific visualization tools.
THE ATTITUDE SHIFT:
The distress we feel does not come from the intrusive thoughts we have, but how we respond to those thoughts. Our reactions to the thoughts are what enables them to have influence and power over us. It helps to paint a playful visual picture to better understand how these unwanted thoughts come about.
Think about you standing on a street corner watching as thoughts just lazily float by. These thoughts can be your own or ones from an outside source like a news report, magazine, gossip. You notice a thought will gravitate closer to you as you give it attention as the rest of the thoughts just float on by.
As you focus on a thought more closely, notice how it attaches to similar thoughts thus leading to the jumping from one thought to another. These can be everyday chores, bills or can be themed as a fantasy/daydream.
In our imaginary scenario you now notice a thought unexpectedly in front of you that "scares" you. We will call this fear X. X can be ill health, panic attacks or even something bizarre. The thought begins to come closer and closer because you can't help but focus on it which produces fear because you do not like what you see. This sets in the "what ifs" as you examine the thought more and notice how this only connects more worry and no matter how hard you try to push it away or focus on pleasant thoughts your mind keeps coming back to the fearful thought.
HOW TO TACKLE ANXIOUS INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS:
There has to be a change in Attitude. You have to change the way you react to intrusive thoughts thus disarming the emotional reaction to Fear X. Once the reaction has been significantly reduced the anxious intrusive thoughts will dissipate.
The trick, is to have a new reaction to them when they run through your mind instead of trying to free yourself of them. We can't control what goes through our minds but we can change how we react. This is the key difference of someone who gets caught up in fearful or anxious thinking and someone who does not.
Next time Fear X or any thought your mind can conceive comes to mind understand these thoughts are not a realistic fear, and you want them to stop interrupting your life. Do not push the thought away. THIS IS IMPORTANT:
Say to yourself: Today I am trusting that all is well and all though this thought/fear is a possibility it is a remote one and I am not going to worry about that right now.
What is most important here is not to get upset by the emotions or fears as they arise, you want to avoid any emotional reaction to the fear so try giving the fear some cartoon characteristics.
For example, imagine Porky Pig telling you "Something awful is going to happen to you today. Aren't you scared?" with all his stuttering? Make it a totally ridiculous scene as to take away the initial emtional reactions..How can you take Porky Pig seriously, he is so funny! By doing this you are taking the thoughts authority away making it no longer a threat. When this is done go back to what you were doing before the thought entered. You are not pushing the thought away or trying to side track it you are targeting it and taking it's authority to affect you away.
This will take practice especially in the beginning but you will soon find you are not checking yourself as much during the day to see how you feel. You are changing the fearful emotion leaving less troublesome thoughts that just float on by with the other thoughts. I strongly recommend going to the panic away program to get more in depth information on this technique.
Only WE can choose to Support One Another,
Sincerely,
Melinda Pearson
PS: If you would like more information on this technique then please CLICK HERE!
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