For many years I struggled to find relief for anxiety, worry, stress, and fear. For years I thought "This is just the way I was made and I'll have to find a way to deal with it." That was very deflating and to be honest quite depressing. But, I didn't know any better. You don't know what you don't know.
I tried many many things from NLP, to meditation, to breath work, to picturing scary things when my body went into fight or flight mode, to journaling, to tapping, to many others. The thing is, I did get some temporary relief but the "unwanted feelings" always came back. I also had some stressful and anxious thinking around "will this tool or trick work this time and how fast will it work?"
I didn't get any real relief until I learned the nature of Thought. As human beings, we were given the gift of having thoughts. We all have our own personal thoughts. Some modalities focus on the content of our thoughts. Think of affirmations and positive thinking. They are focused on "what" we are thinking, not the fact that we "are" thinking. The way I think of it is this...we are living in the feeling of our thinking from moment to moment. Have you ever been in a foul mood and then something catches your attention and all of sudden you are no longer in that bad mood? What happened? Did the world around you change? Did your circumstances change? Or did you have a different thought?
"We human beings get caught up in an unwanted feeling, created by our thoughts, that appear to be based in reality".
-The Secret to Mental Health by George S. Pransky, PhD
Before I understood the role of thought I thought I had "to do" something about unwanted feelings. And I thought those unwanted feelings were because of things that were happening to me in my life. When I thought that way, I had to focus on "doing something" to "deal" or "process" those feelings. But I don't need any tools, tips, techniques, or tricks. Tools, techniques, etc. may be helpful when you are "in the moment" of an unwanted feeling. But we only feel we need them when we think our unwanted feeling is coming from "out there" instead of from our thoughts.
What if just by understanding the role of thought in your life, you could find the joy and peace that you have been looking for all along?
I'll end this post with this. "Understanding the source of experience is the antidote available to all people at every moment."
-The Secret to Mental Health by George S. Pransky, PhD
Until next time.
Jackson
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