1   Learn how to create separation and space between the activity of your mind, body and your true self - which can never be affected by anxiety.

You will learn how to step back and observe your thoughts, to the point that your mind loses its energetic hold over you.

This will allow your body chemistry, which you experience as anxiety, to begin to change. Just as shaking a bottle of muddy water keeps the water dirty. So to, sitting the bottle down on the table and just watching it, will allow the mud and sediment to settle and the water will clear on its own- you don’t have to do anything.

2 Understand that your mind wants to stay in its own bubble of consciousness and believe its own stories.

Essentially your mind does not want to let go of what it has practiced believing. And as each conscious and subconscious thought you have, has the energy behind it to change your body chemistry within seconds. You end up unconsciously, or without noticing it, feeling the way that you’re thinking and your brain and body gets locked in anxious survival mode.

3 Help you learn how to return to the present moment and teach your body that it's no longer the mind - that you're the mind.

By that I mean, learning how to settle your body and brain into this moment – NOW – as you read these words.

For example, if you wake up in the morning and anxiety begins to overwhelm you, yet you couldn’t identify any real threats or danger to you. Then I would suggest that your mind and body are not in the present moment – now. And all your doing is unconsciously recycling yesterday and beginning the day by emotionally living in the past. Which in turn will create a predictable future.

Therefore, each time your able to return your body to the present moment, your will is getting greater than your unconscious anxious program and you will retrain or recondition your body to live more fully in the present moment.

4 Teach your body new information instead of continually recycling old information, automatic thoughts and behaviours.

Which means that your body is responding to new thoughts, which creates a new state of being, or a way that your body feels. Instead of just waking up and emotionally reliving yesterday on autopilot. Autopilot just drags you into a predictable future, based on what you did in the past.

5 Learn how to disidentify from the activity of your mind.

That really means, you will become intensely aware that the anxious voice in your head belongs to your conditioned mind, and in short - you stop listening to it and believing it.

You stop emotionally investing in each thought that pops into your mind. Rather, you learn how to take a step back and watch your thoughts. There is a wonderful quote by Eckhart Tolle that describes it perfectly.

“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered. But when I questioned my thoughts, I did not suffer. And that is true for every human being”

Eckhart Tolle

If your able to be in a place of awareness, rather than simply operating on autopilot. Then your automatic thoughts will lose their energetic hold over you and stop controlling you. eventually you learn how to let your thoughts just come and go without giving them so much attention and focus.

In fact, if all you did was get a little better at putting your attention on awareness, rather than giving your attention to your thoughts, you will be well on your way to freedom.

When you ‘get it’, and experience a shift in consciousness, you’ll never go back.

6 You will learn how to stop analysing and interpreting every thought, idea, and memory that pops into your head.

You’ll learn that most of your thoughts happened to you – you didn’t have the thoughts. Just like you didn’t beat your own heart. The thought just appeared in your consciousness and because you’ve been conditioned that way, you automatically began identifying with the thought, believing it, investing emotion into it. Which in turn generates similar thoughts and off you go, within seconds your body chemistry or physiology changes to look like the way your think.

I will help you get to the point that you learn how to become neutral to your mind’s activity and your automatic thoughts. So that they lose their influence and potency. They eventually become just like a television that is left on in the corner. Something your aware of, however can ignore.

7 Understand that anxiety has been subconsciously programmed into your body.

So that eventually your body has become your mind. In fact, when it comes to a person having an anxiety attack, they can try to control it with their conscious mind, but because anxiety has been programmed into the body subconsciously, they have no ability to stop it in the moment. Because their body has literally become the mind of anxiety.

In that moment, their body is in control, their mind is fully supporting their body and their conscious awareness is that last 5% looking on screaming “I hate this, make it stop”

8 Understand that every conscious and subconscious thought you have, creates a chemical soup that influences how your body feels.

This means that your stuck in a cycle of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking.

9 Understand that much of who we are by the time we are 35 years old, is a memorized set of behaviours, emotional reactions, and unconscious habits.

That really means that many times, we are living in an automatic subconscious program of who we ‘think’ and ‘feel’ that we are.

In fact, as unpleasant as it may feel, it’s quite common for people to wake up in the morning, and unconsciously search for the familiar feeling called themselves. Then when they find it, be it depression, anxiety, anger, fatigue etc, their mind may hate it and begin its steep descent into misery for the day. However, their body, which is essentially their unconscious mind, has been chemically rewarded, it’s as happy as a pig in mud, because now its safely operating in its known automatic program.

10 Understand that many times your brain and body are operating on autopilot.

It is precisely the repetition of your body experiencing these stressful anxiety symptoms, that is continually hardwiring your brain & re-conditioning your body into an altered state of being, which your body gets used to feeling. To the point that you are being re-traumatized each time your anxiety is triggered.

11 Understand that your body is your unconscious mind.

I’ve touched on this before, but by that, I mean that your body has practiced feeling a particular way for so long (anxiety) that you have unconsciously conditioned your body to become the mind of anxiety. That means your body no longer trusts the safe present moment.

So even when nothing bad or stressful is happening in your life, you can’t seem to feel settled or joyful or even happy. You can’t seem to ‘stop and smell the roses’, in fact, you don’t even notice the roses in your life anymore.

Those positive body feelings have now become like a stranger to you, as your body is continually being automatically triggered into anxiety. When you are living in a warzone, waiting for the next bomb to go off, you stop noticing the beauty of life, nature and relationships around you.

Therefore, I will teach you how to turn down the volume of your emotions and create a more peaceful internal state of being.

12   I want to help you realize that happiness and peace are your natural state.

That the peace you are searching for is already inside your heart. It’s already there. However, it has been covered up and crushed under the noise of your mind and the weight of your anxiety.

As you stop identifying yourself with the activity of your mind and body. Plus grow in your understanding of who you really are - what is left is awareness – and in awareness is peace and happiness.

13 Drug or alcohol use or other addictions can become a problem, yet ironically a solution, to a person managing anxiety.

Anxiety is obviously an unbearable feeling and its normal to find ways to get relief and try and control or numb negative feelings and thoughts.

To me, drugs or alcohol become a solution to people suffering with anxiety, as they save you from having to be fully with yourself. Drugs and alcohol work, because if you’re under their influence,you can escape the intensity of your minds activity and the powerful and painful feelings racing through your body. They take the edge off.

If drug or alcohol use or another addiction, compulsion or habit has become an issue in your own life. You will be pleased to discover that as the symptoms of anxiety lose some of their energy and control over you. You will find that your desire to use drugs or alcohol or run to a quick fix to cope with life falls away, without you trying hard, sweating it out or abstaining.

Sure, we’ll talk about it and work through it together. However, l will never insist you quit or follow some kind of rigid 10-step plan.

I often remind my clients that the substance use, or addiction is never the real problem. To just focus on the addiction is missing the real issue.

14   Anxiety recovery is not about forcing yourself.

Navigating your way through anxiety to freedom and a more peaceful state of being. Is not about forcing yourself, working harder, doing more, sweating it out, screaming into pillows, repressing, regressing, denying feelings or trying harder.

In my opinion, that’s all just more stress, pressure and violence on your mind and body. I’ve never seen that work out for anyone.

At its core, anxiety recovery is about learning how to disidentify from your mind and body and learn some simple internal regulation skills and strategies to add to your toolbox.

If you could understand and learn how to witness the anxiety which is fuelled by your mind and overtakes your body. Plus learned how to gently settle and anchor your body and emotions into the safe present moment again and again throughout the day. You would in turn, slowly begin to settle your mind and begin to recondition your body to a new, more peaceful state of being and reduce the symptom of your anxiety.

It’s really about learning how to let it be, let it flow & let it go.

If you have any questions about counselling, what else I cover or my approach to therapy, please don’t hesitate to email me on david@anxietyrecovery.com.au