PEACE with Anxiety Podcast Episode 17
Let's explore the common behaviours that make anxiety worse, such as overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination. These coping strategies often keep us stuck in a cycle of false safety, preventing us from addressing the root causes of our anxiety. I’ll share my favourite self-care tool that helps break this cycle and bring balance to all areas of life along with 4 more self-care tools you can immediately start introducing to your life. This episode offers a sneak peek into my PEACE with Anxiety method, which I’ll present in more detail in my upcoming live workshop. This episode is for you if you’re ready to transform from feeling overwhelmed to becoming empowered, calm, and confident!
Listen as I talk about:
The importance of understanding the connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions.
How common behaviours like overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination make anxiety worse.
My favourite self-care tool to ease anxiety
5 self-care tools to reduce anxiety naturally
Click 'PLAY' to Listen
The Connection between Thoughts Feelings and Actions
So most commonly when someone is struggling with anxiety,
they tend to set unrealistic expectations of themselves,
they very frequently make assumptions about what others think or feel about them,
they also use should or must statements such as “I should have known” or “they must think black of me”,
or they make never and always statements, like “ He never does this”, or he always does this”.
Now the reason why I am talking about this is so you can understand that our thoughts have a direct impact on our emotions and our actions. The reason why it’s important to understand that connection between thoughts, feelings and actions is because that would mean that you are not just an anxious person. You have anxious thoughts that lead to anxious feelings that cause you to act anxiously. So if you tend to overthink, people-please, procrastinate or strive for perfection, these are just anxious actions, they are unhelpful coping strategies that you learned along the way to cope with the anxious feelings that you were experiencing.
What makes Anxiety Worse?
Have you ever thought about what makes your anxiety worse? Well, you are not the only one!
When I work with my clients one of the first things we do is to understand and uncover the root causes of their issue, and sometimes they know, or have a pretty good idea, and other times they thought they did, but after working together other things come up. And quite understandably many of you see anxiety as the enemy, as a life-long sentence, but I want to encourage you to remove any labels, or judgments and just keep an open mind and start to get curious about anxiety. So overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination, these coping strategies make your anxiety worse.
They do this by keeping you stuck in a cycle of false safety. Think about it, these are behaviours that you may engage in, give you temporary relief from anxiety and a sense of safety, but by doing these, they prevent you from facing the anxiety, and working on those thoughts and feelings, until eventfully they become automatic actions, that you don’t even realise that they’re harming you in the long run. And of course, you would not want to feel anxiety or stress, so any kind of behaviour that manages to numb the anxiety sounds like a no-brainer. But they are not really protecting you, and they actually make your anxiety worse, because you do not learn to face it, instead, you learn to fight or flee, and those thoughts, feelings and actions just keep repeating themselves in different situations without you even being aware of them.
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5 Self-Care Tools to Overcome Anxiety Naturally
1. Affirmations as a Self-Care Tool
Find a photo of yourself when you were a young child, and then place that photo somewhere you can see it easily. The best place would be in your bathroom mirror. So, once you start speaking negatively to yourself, or about yourself, I want you to look at that photo and understand that everything that you say to yourself, you are saying to that little girl. Every statement you make about you, you are making it about her. So then I want you to tell that little girl in the photo something kind about her, start with 1 thing, then 3, then 7 and keep going until there’s nothing else you can say. And now, because you said all of those beautiful things to her, you said them to yourself.
The reason why self-talk is powerful is because the way you talk to yourself or about yourself is directly impacting your feelings and behaviours.
This practice is changing the way you talk to yourself and also helps to ease the anxiety because it’s all about the perspective and how you see yourself, others and the world around you. And the more you do it, the more comfortable you will become in saying kind things to yourself. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Is just about doing it.
Take your time with it. Do not push yourself if you’re not ready. And when you are you can always come back to this blog.
Use this simple exercise whenever you feel overwhelmed—it’s a great way to learn how to be more compassionate with yourself.
Your body needs the same attention as your mind. You cannot change your actions without changing your thoughts and your emotions.
2. Sleep
It is recommended for adults to be getting 7-9 hours of sleep every day. But on that, I would say listen to what your body needs. Some people, depending on their jobs may need more sleep than others which they can not get during the night so resting during the day may also be good for them. The reason why sleep and rest are so important is because when we are asleep the parts that get activated by anxiety are deactivated or less reactive.
3. Movement
Same as before, when you move your body you deactivate the anxious parts of your mind. So at least 30 minutes a day is enough and essential to improve your well-being.
4. Spending Time Outdoors
Spending time in nature, going for a walk in a park, on a hike, or walking on the beach, during the day because that’s the only way you can get that vitamin D which helps us stabilize our mood and just makes us feel good. So if you walk outside while getting direct sunlight, you have incorporated the third and the fourth tool at once.
5. Nutrition
When I talk about nutrition I mean to be mindful of what you are feeding your body because you are also feeding your mind. Additionally, your water intake is equally important, you need to be hydrated, if you want to feel calm and regulated.
All five of these tools are simple things you can do by yourself to start feeling calm, present, and confident. And as you realise they are not new things. Every single one of them has been scientifically proven to help reduce anxiety naturally. So there is nothing stopping you from trying them out yourself and seeing the results with your own eyes. Even if you don’t want to. Even when you have those anxious thoughts, because you will not feel good by thinking of them, you will only feel the difference while you are doing them. So even if you’re mind tells you that they’re not going to work, or finds excuses not to do them, just remember that neuroscience has shown that you can rewire your brain by creating new neural pathways to reduce anxiety. This basically means that you have control of your mind and therefore your feelings and therefore your actions. And it may not be easy, and it may take a while sometimes, but let me tell you, it’s worth it. I’ve seen it on myself and on my clients.
But if you feel stuck, unsure what to do first, if you find it challenging and you are ready to feel calm, confident and in control of your mind, then I want to invite you again to join my peace with anxiety workshop, where I am sharing with you my Peace with Anxiety method that I have used for myself and for my clients, which will help you uncover what is happening with your mind and body when you are anxious, I will also share with you my 5-minute anxiety reducing exercise and finally since this is the first time I am doing a live workshop about my method, I want to offer everyone exclusive discounts and a bonus offers when they join me live.
So if you want to know about:
the most common misconception about coping with anxiety that gets in the way of your healing,
what to do about your anxious thoughts, feelings and behaviours,
and finally to learn about the steps to connect with your mind and body and feel calm, confident and present,
sign up for the upcoming Peace with anxiety workshop.
Important Links
🔗 Join our Facebook group! PEACE with Anxiety: Heal High-Functioning Anxiety Support Group
🔗 Find more mental health tools and resources in my Etsy Shop
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Need more anxiety support with overcoming anxiety naturally?
➡ Apply for a 30-minute FREE Anxiety Relief Call to explore working with me as a private client https://www.ireneevangeloutherapy.com/free-anxiety-relief-call
➡ BROWSE MY BRAND NEW PROGRAM.
Are you finally ready to overcome anxiety, and feel calm, and confident? Browse my brand new program and let’s get to work! Check it out here.
➡ If you are not ready to commit to the 3-month program, I also offer a 30-day RTT Package
➡ If you are looking to book just an individual one-on-one Online Anxiety Counselling in Australia then click the link here ➡ Book your Session
All content here is for informational purposes only. This content does not replace the professional judgment of your own mental health provider. Please consult a licensed mental health professional for all individual questions and issues.