We lead complicated lives so we expect solutions to our problems to be complicated too.
You can spend thousands of dollars on elaborate therapies to end anxiety and still get nowhere. Then years later you stumble across something that just seems to be too ‘simplistic’, yet it gets real results.
That’s what I see all the time when I am teaching people to end panic attacks and general anxiety.
Our mind tricks us into believing that we have to spend a lot of money to get great help and that if the answer is complex it must be better than something simple. “It costs $5000 so it must work!” goes the logic.
One of the simplest truths in treating anxiety is that by allowing anxiety to be present you can transform it. It’s not a sexy idea nor is it very complicated but it does work extremely well. The problem is most people do not even want to attempt it.
Some may try it in a halfhearted manner just to prove to themselves that it does not work. Then a week later they go back looking at the expensive and complicated treatments.
Ending anxiety is not a complicated process. It is a simple decision you make to get your mind out of your bodies way. Your body wants to heal itself, you just have to allow it to do so.
Acceptance takes your mind out of the way so that your nervous system can relax , its that simple. Once you start to desensitize from high anxiety you start to see the world in a different way. You start to feel normal again.
“But I have XYZ disorder and its much too complicated to be healed by accepting my anxiety” people say.
Watch how your mind might come up with excuses and trick you out of a real solution just because it’s simple. Often it’s the fact that something takes work and discipline is what your mind is really fighting against. It wants a quick fix magic pill.
My approach is about learning to stop your mind from kicking the hornet’s nest of anxiety so you no longer get stung by anxious bodily sensations.
It’s a simple yet radical shift in your perception of the anxiety you feel. You learn to sit with it and you permit it to be. You are not expected to love or even like it you just have to sit with it. Gradually you heal it.
Its not complicated. It just takes practice and disciple.
Simple? Discipline?
Now watch your mind do a dash for the door!