Hope this helps some people. Backstory In 2015, I developed anxiety. I've always been a very happy, sociable person. But anxiety slowly accumulated around the community development work I do and my efforts being "successful" or not. I soldiered on for a year, being the voice of hope for my team, "come on guys, we can do it!", while inside I was crumbling with fear of failure. It came to a head when I started feeling physically ill before activities and I could no longer push the feelings aside and smile through the pain. I wrote out a letter of everything I was feeling and read it to my team, who were shocked because I had always "held the fort" so to speak and kept everyone strong through the challenges. But I had to explain to them, I needed a 3 month hiatus so I could figure out what was going on inside me and heal myself and return to our noble work with my full strength. They were extremely supportive and gave me the perfect amount of space, support and true friendship. Bless their kind and understanding hearts. I then began the search for a way forward...
A friend introduced me to the healing codes. They informed my healing immensely. This is a mix of the thinking behind that and my own experience. How I healed myself I use this analogy to understand anxiety: My mind is a garden. Beliefs are plants. My behaviour is a fruit or blossom of those beliefs, as are my feelings. Anxiety is like toxic spores that have been released in my mind and make me feel sick. So my job is to find the plants/beliefs that grew the anxiety and uproot them. Then I replace them with plants that grow positive feelings and healthy behaviour. I developed a system for this process of uprooting the unhealthy and planting the healthy: 1. Identify the beliefs fuelling anxiety and agree that they are unhealthy and not true 2. Identify beliefs that grow positive feelings and alleviate anxiety and are true 3. Routinely focus on the good beliefs using multiple techniques (meditation, prayer, chanting, writing) at least twice a day for 10mins if not more 4. When unhealthy beliefs surface, force them to do battle with the good belief. Back the good belief and make it overpower the other one. (A different metaphor to plant one but also helpful!) So specifics on what I actually did...
1. I searched my mind for all my beliefs. Most of us live with internal contradictions that show in our behaviours or feelings. Eg. A lot us are morally opposed to P, yet here we are. This suggests contradicting beliefs co-existing in our minds. This baffled me. In my community development work we were always talking about doing it solely because we want to help humanity, that it's just about learning about progress and we need not focus on results...yet no matter how much we talked about that, my feelings were still really anxious for good results. Why? I asked myself. I believe it's not about results. Why am I anxious if I believe it's not about results? I discovered I believe multiple contradictory things at the same time. I consciously believed in detachment from results but deep down I believed my importance depends on making my work show visible progress and being congratulated on it. How I found all my beliefs: Pose statements and ask yourself questions until you get to the belief. I feel anxious about this project > why? > because I don't think anyone will turn up > why does that make you anxious? > because if they don't turn up, the project has failed. > has it? > I don't want it to fail because I don't like people to think I've failed > why does that matter? > because I feel less valuable when other people think I've failed > so your belief is: other people seeing me as successful determines the value of me and my efforts Then I would 2. write all my beliefs down on the left side of a two column chart. I uncovered all my unhealthy beliefs this way. 3. Write true, positive beliefs on right side of each unhealthy belief to replace it. This was pretty easy. So for the above unhealthy belief I would write God has created me to be valuable and this is independent of outer perceptions of success or failure. And maybe a few more for each. Then you should end up with two lists - the beliefs you are throwing in the bin and the beliefs you will nurture and water and tend each day. We can call these beliefs truth statements. 4. Routine for establishing healthy beliefs. Every morning and night for at least 10mins I did the healing codes with their truth statements and my own (the above right side list). This involved a prayer for healing, then holding my hands in certain positions around my face (in healing codes these are energy points) while saying a truth statement over and over for a minute, then moving on to the next hand position and statement. I'm not sure the actual energy point/ movement thing is important. In my view, the truth statements are the most important. However I liked doing the movements as a physical focus element to the whole exercise. Also the healing codes have a great system of truth statements that are general and helpful too. And that's it! I stuck to this system for a few months, doing my focus exercises every day and sometimes for an hour to tackle a bout of anxiety right when it hit me. It healed me and planted strong tall trees of hope and happy relaxation in my heart and mind.
It helped me and I've only felt one other attack of anxiety since, which I counter attacked with the method I outlined. It was gone within a couple of days. I am never anxious now. The important thing is, never accept it as your identity. Always believe anxiety is a mentally unhealthy state and you need to recover to your true, healthy, anxiety-free self.
You are lucky to have some friends who are supportive, they can help you get out of anxiety issues. Just keep in the loop and never fail to communicate with your doctor for counseling. Good luck to you!
Hmm... I'm afraid to fail too... with almost anything in my life, very chaotic lifestyle with lots of risks but high revenue if I succeed. But I cannot write down that god created me, as I'm not capable of believing in him. For me in particular it is the exact opposite of what you wrote down: "other people seeing me as successful determines the value of me and my efforts" I personally find this to be true. "God has created me to be valuable and this is independent of outer perceptions of success or failure." And find this to not apply to me. I even think there is no solution to this, BUT I'll say the following hoping it makes sense to anyone: If you set your life up in a way that you feel empowered to get to the finishline (whatever that may be), you could overcome anxiety I believe. I think the key is to work on oneself! There are different ways to do it, but I feel like people should not be too harsh with themselves and try out more things and techniques to help themselves be healthy. I also think that very empathic people seem to sacrifice themselves too much. I don't want to praise myself, but I did that too. Always trying to make things work out fine for others, even if it means to go through pain silently. The first step seems to be, to help yourself really, only then you can really help others in the best way. Well that's my take on that, I hope for you to help yourself as much as you need to be the healthiest you can be, to do one of the greatest things people can do and that is to help others in whatever way that may be. Have a nice day!
Thanks for sharing this. I've had anxiety for a while myself. I found several techniques that have helped. I found one key thing to do is challenging negative thoughts. In my experience of anxiety I have racing thoughts. They often start with a negative thought. If I let the thought go unchallenged, or in a mental sense run away or avoid it, then it grows. I have to immediately identify the thought and mentally dismiss it. I like your systematic approach and I think I will try it. I've been to counseling and they have suggested these basic concepts but not as systematically as you lay them out. I don't know about the healing codes you mentioned but personally I would be wary of this. It sounds like something that may be associated with a religious practice. Even though you aren't purposefully doing it religiously could be dangerous. However I will say that I tend to touch my face, particularly my mouth, to self comfort. So I could see how doing this would be comforting. Again, thanks for sharing as based on my experience this should be very helpful for a lot of people.
The Healing Codes was developed by a couple of doctors and I believe one was a Christian psychologist who wanted to help his clinically depressed/suicidal wife. So he definitely believed in God and the healing power of reliance on God and that is included in the system in the form of a prayer at the beginning and the truth statements they offer which are often worded to include God. But the system encourages clients to alter the statements and prayer according to what you believe to be true. It is very difficult to help your mind heal if you feel as though you're being inauthentic to your beliefs. They cite various scientific studies around the efficacy of using your hands at energy points around your head and neck while focusing your mind. But people can back anything up these days. I cannot say with certainty that those movements were doing anything, however I did conduct the entirety of the exercise (focusing on a healthy truth and doing the hand movements) and some part or all of it absolutely healed me of anxiety. I have never taken medication for mental health issues. This worked for me and that's why I'm sharing it. @Phil Calmarto you definitely don't want to try to force yourself to say something you don't believe in. For me though, I'm always searching for the truth in all its healthy, life-affirming power, and acknowledging the greatness that lies beyond human beings, an Unknowable Essence greater than anything we can begin to comprehend, is the singlemost enriching belief in my heart. Humbling looking beyond is what fills me with hope and strength to strive for more. I believe it has been essential to my spiritual and intellectual progress. @LavaMe yes, you're right, we should be wary of any kind of empty ritual or indoctrination in the Healing Codes. However, in my experience it has been healthy and doesn't demand rigid prescription to its methods. It is more of a tool to be used to gain more control over one's beliefs so as to be actively cultivating healthy beliefs. I believe in God and seeking spiritual progress. Beautifying my mind and heart is very much a goal in life.
Great thread @Sweet! I too developed and defeated anxiety in much the same way. I used exercises like the one you cite. I found them in the books When Panic Attacks and Feeling Good, both written by David Burns. Glad to read of your success in recovering from anxiety, which I know all too well is a terrible affliction. Best of luck to you moving forward!
This is actually a form or school about NLP or NeuroLiguistic Programmation. I read a book like 6 years ago that helped me to understand why I was so shy, and why many people didn't have problems socializing. That book really helped me, and was very short. I don't know if there's an English version, but the title is (in Spanish) El Éxito no llega por casualidad (Success doesn't come by chance) by Dr. Lair Ribeiro. Is actually a good book, annd very edible. Then I realized that beliefs actually impact our behavior, and in order to change our response to some events, one must think in some way. For example, a car crash. In might expect to be angry with "life" or "destiny" to be involved in a crash accident, but... even though you can blame a mystic force of the universe, you can think differently, and instead of being angry about being delayed, thinking in the bill for repairing, or whatsoever, you HAVE the choice to thought otherwise; "I'm OK, hopefully the other guy too... Wow, this will helped me to understand different this situation in the future... etc." I don't think that this can really be a core in Christianity, but although in Buddhism it is. Knowing about what you are thinking, and then being aware of the feelings it gives you, and therefore the actions you will develop, makes you more mindful about what to think and what not. Very interesting topic, though. And perhaps there may be some rational beliefs, one must have to train his/her mind to get more insights of the mental process that starts at certian situations or events.
I found that i have a type of anxiety that has almost no root cause. It just floats around and tries to find something to be anxious about. It's a bummer, but the realization that there was no root cause was a real life-saver. Instead of constantly trying to find out the "why" i now address the symptoms with deep breathing, meditation, and prayer. It sounds counter-intuitive but it works for me. (I used to spend a lot of time trying to find out the why, cutting things out of my life, moving, changing jobs, etc. etc..I find this solution is much better)
