An over active mind is a very common side effect when you have anxiety, as your mind frantically tries to fathom out what's wrong with you, tries to fix the thoughts that come in thick and fast, tries to find an answer to these dreadful feelings you're experiencing ........ but sadly all you'll be doing is adding more thinking to the thinking. This head chatter will keep you ill, will keep the anxiety cycle rotating over and over, because the thoughts will cause anxiety and the anxiety will cause the thoughts. It has to stop somewhere in the circle, and that falls first with the thoughts. You can't stop the thoughts coming into your head, and if you try stopping them then you just make this situation worse. Ask yourself - have you been trying to stop them? Has it worked? Have you been battling with this for a long time? I guess the answer will be yes you've been trying to stop them, no, it hasn't worked and you're still plagued by the thoughts, and yes you've been doing this for a long time ..... which means you're doing it wrong. Isn't it about time to approach this from another angle? If nothing has helped, then what have you to lose by try this? We can't control what thoughts pop into our minds, BUT we can control how we deal with those thoughts. That is the answer. Whatever thought you have about your anxiety, your fears, your compulsions, your questions, your affirmations ..... anything ..... whatever thought pops into your mind, take it no further. I have talked about primary and secondary thoughts before, and as this is something people ask about the most, I thought I'd do another post on it. The primary thought is any thought that pops into your head, whether its about your shopping list, your family, what you're doing, your holiday ....... or whether its about anxiety, your fears etc. All these are thoughts and they're primary thoughts. You cannot stop these coming - your mind creates them. The secondary thought is any thought about the original primary thought ie: Primary thought - I'm going on holiday next week. Secondary thoughts - what shall I take, when shall I start packing, I wonder how hot it will be, who'll feed the cat ....... etc etc. This is how our thoughts work, and this is perfectly normal to think this way and should carry on. However, your anxiety thoughts might be like this: Primary thought - I want to harm someone. Anxiety will spike here...... Secondary thoughts - why do I think like this, I don't want to do this, yes I do want to do this, no I don't, I'm going crazy, when will it stop, I feel so frightened etc etc. In order to stop our intrusive / anxious thoughts, we need to allow the primary thoughts to continue to happen, observe them, let them be in our head, but we need stop the secondary thoughts / stop the HEAD CHATTER. We stop thinking about the think. You need to understand that the primary intrusive thoughts WILL continue to come for a while, and the feelings of anxiety will continue to flow each time you have one of these thoughts. So allow the primary thought to pop up, expect to have a pang of anxiety, know that thought will be in your head ..... BUT do not be tempted to revisit that thought with any head chatter about it at all, no replaying any scenario's over in your head, no affirmations 'it'll be ok' etc, no chatter about that thought at all, even though you're aware the primary thought is present in your head. Yes you can secondary think about your normal day to day thoughts ie about that holiday etc., but I want you to resist secondary thinking / head chatter / actually 'saying' the secondary words in your head about anything to do with any primary intrusive thought that's connected to your anxiety. Understand this is NOT to give you any instant relief from your feelings or thoughts, but it is changing the way you deal with your intrusive thoughts which will in time give you relief. You will feel frustrated and you will question 'am I doing it right'. Try it for an hour or try it for just a day. What have you to lose? I was quite surprised by doing this and found relief came quicker than I thought. Yes you will have to repeat this over and over, and you will despair at times. You may start to feel a difference and then find yourself slipping back into the secondary thinking again. That's fine, it will happen. Just pick yourself up again and try again. You are changing the way you deal with these intrusive thoughts, and over time they will lose their grip on you, will slowly stop coming, the anxiety will ease and as even more time passes the anxiety and thoughts will stop and they won't bother you anymore. Why? Because the anxiety stops, this in turn stops the thoughts, so no more thoughts also equals no more anxiety. The intensity of the anxiety will no longer come. You have broken the anxiety cycle. If you're taking SSRI medicine, then this has the same effect too by breaking the cycle, but isn't it fantastic if you can do this yourself? This will ALWAYS stand by you whatever happens, and you will no longer fear going into the anxiety cycle because you will know your way out. That fear will be no longer. You can do this whilst taking medicine or not. Medicine is there to help you too. For more information on this method read Paul David's book At Last a Life and more specifically Will Beswick's book The Mind Works. Link for comments is above by the title ...
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