Blueprint for hope and optimism
Today we’ll be looking at 2 questions about feeling hopeless, fearful and overwhelmed. After creating a step-by-step plan for my clients I decided share some of the tips and answers I have given them in the beginning of the process. I hope they are of benefit to you if you are suffering with depression, fear or panic. There are many different tools that are needed in order to completely reprogram the triggers that cause fear, overwhelm and depression. And when the triggers are gone, it is so much easier to change the old pathways into new life enhancing ones.
We start with a few tips you can put into use right away.
Rennith’s Question #1: This week I’m feeling anxiety again. After our sessions I usually leave feeling like a new person. Like there is a ray of light. But this week I’m feeling like I will never get better. It feels like there isn’t any hope for true relief. I feel like I’m backsliding into anxiety and fear. I followed up on 2 of my action steps and started to be fearful about moving ahead with my plans. What is wrong with me?
Question Client 2: I’m feeling disconnected, whenever I start to feel good, I start monitoring my body for signs of anxiety. I can be really happy and at ease, then I start to check to see if I am really feeling that way, within moments the good feelings disappear. That’s when I get disconnected. Even though I find I’m calmer physically my thoughts still get overwhelming.
Is there an effective strategy for breaking the cycle of monitoring my thoughts, that you can give me until we meet again?
Here’s My Response to the Questions
The following steps will begin the process of gaining hope and optimism in life. I am happy to see that you did give yourself a bit of credit for small positive steps you are taking. When you get a moment where you glimpse how it can be, it gives the mind a new pathway to look forward to. Remember the more you make this new pathway familiar, the stronger the positive path to hope and optimism will become. I am delighted to give you a couple of tips you can use until our next session together. The big goal is for you to once again will feel optimistic and hopeful.
Steps for hope and optimism:
Step 1: Start jotting things down that would have to happen to make you feel hopeful. Not just the major changes, but also the smallest things that would have to change for you to feel even the tiniest bit of hope.
In this way you’ll begin to notice these small changes, in the positive direction, and to remind yourself that you are moving in towards your goal.
Step 2. We’ve talked about the times recently, where you felt a reprieve from overwhelm and anxiety. Think back to those times you felt the reprieve. Make a list of the thoughts and images that went through your mind in those brief moments of positive feelings. Remember the see, hear and feel exercises where you step into the positive moment and just note whatever you are seeing, hearing and feeling. This way you are making the positive pathway stronger and in addition you are setting up the next step where we can use the memory to trigger more positive feelings. We’ll be talking more about how to anchor positive feeling so you can trigger then at will in our next sessions together.
Step 3. Fear, negative thinking and checking your feelings are all old patterns. In this step you begin to explore a new way of thinking about the pattern of checking and negative thinking. I call it a reframe where I look at the fear as your unconscious mind giving you information about the next thing we want to look at. It is truly valuable information when you look at it in this way. Use this question, I’m curious what the fear is about? Don’t try to find the answer just stay curious and notice what your unconscious sends you as an answer.
Step 4. Look for the thoughts that are running in your mind just before the fear starts. It’s interesting that the upset resurfaced when you were feeling happy. I imagine that the little voice in the back of your mind started giving you negative messages. If you think back and notice you’ll probably hear some sort of thought that is creating the shift back from the happy state to the fearful one.
When that pattern happens, more thoughts flow and the old panic cycle gets going. The mind can work so quickly that you are not aware of the thoughts unless you stop and become curious about what the fear is about. When you are feeling afraid, stuck or fear you’ll never get free of the panic it’s just you old patterns surfacing. This is normal, we can use the fear track it back to the root. So see the uncomfortable feelings as information the will lead us to the next step and finally to getting you totally free of the panic that has been limiting you in your life and career.
Whenever you feel overwhelmed with any emotion or task, remember to practice the Mind Calming Exercise, this will help to re-set the pathway to calm. If you’d like to review it here is a link to the video guide I gave you.
Remember this is a step-by-step process. To get totally free we will use what ever emotions come up as information that will help us to get to the root of what is triggering the thoughts and feelings. Once cleared at the root you’ll no longer suffer with the churning, scary thoughts that seemed to come out of the blue.
I hope you enjoy these articles and tips. If you have questions you can sent the to me by clicking here. Or to the contact Audrey tab on the side of this webpage.