Overcome Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety can span the continuum from mild unease to intense fear. If the anxiety you experience falls closer to the latter, you may want to consider setting up an appointment with a health care professional. If your anxiety more closely resembles mild unease, then this article is for you.

There are many, many physical and psychological triggers that can causes anxiety and depression.

If you suffer from general anxiety it could be a result of negative thought loops or “trances” as referred to in Neurolinguistic Programming. Negative thought loops are common in people who tend to worry and anticipate the worst-case-scenario.  This becomes a form of negative visualization. You’ve heard that high level athletes and achievers often visualize positive outcomes in sports and business. When we allow ourselves to worry about various possible worst-cases scenarios we’re doing exactly the opposite. And if you have heard of the Law of Attraction, made popular by the movie ‘The Secret’, you know this makes the imagined worst-case-scenario even more likely to occur. Our reality becomes what we think about most.

I also mentioned “trances”, a term made popular in NLP. Trances are states of waking hypnosis and they occur many times thr0ughout the day to just about everyone. Have you ever stared blankly ahead as you drove down the highway and found your mind wandering in many different directions? This is a form of trance. Have you played a video game and been so enveloped in what you were doing that hours passed in what felt like minutes? This too is a trance. It’s important to become more consciously aware of the thoughts that pass through our mind at all times of the day, especially when we’re in trances because we are particularly vulnerable at these times. When we allow negative thoughts of worry to cycle through our mind, we only perpetuate the anxiousness we want to relieve.

Start by practicing becomming more aware of your thought. When you notice your spacing out in a trance-like state, stop yourself and bring the thoughts that were occupying your mind to your conscious awareness. Whenever possible eliminate negative thought loops or, at minimum, try to replace them with more realistic, positive thoughts. This will take some effort at first, but eventually it will become habitual.

It’s also important to eliminate or at least cut back on stimulants like caffeine and prescription drugs like Adderall or Ritalin. These substances can affect the delecate balance of neurotransmitters in our brains responsible for feelings of pleasure and anxiousness. They also have a tendency to amplify the intensity of anxious episodes experienced by anxiety sufferers.