5 Mental Patterns that Perpetuate Anxiety
Dear Self,
When you feel anxious, you tend to do A LOT of thinking in attempt to make yourself feel safer and more comfortable. But no matter how hard you try, this never works because the feeling of safety exists in your body, not your mind.
You can’t think your way to feeling safe.
You can’t rationalize or analyze your way to feeling safe.
The only way to feel safe is to connect to your body and regulate your nervous system.
Please stop engaging in these mental patterns, because they are actually making your anxiety worse, not better.
5 Mental Patterns which Perpetuate Anxiety:
1. Mental Tennis
Going back and forth in your head, making it nearly impossible to make a decision
Example: “I want to go to the party because I like my friend, but I don’t want to go because there will be a lot of people I don’t know there. But I’ll feel guilty if I don’t go. But I’ll feel uncomfortable if I don’t know anybody…. etc.
2. Snowball Thinking
Catastrophizing
Example: "If I go to the party and I don't know anybody there, then I will be standing by myself the whole night, and everybody will think I'm a loser and then nobody will want to be friends with me anymore and I will basically become the social reject of all my peers and die alone."
3. Mind Blending
Your mind is running too quickly. It doesn't even matter what the thoughts are, with this type of racing, your nervous system will become dysregulated. The job here is to calm your nervous system and slow your brain down.
Example: Think of a blender. It doesn't matter what you put in the blender, it will get blended no matter what.
4. Inner Critic
Your critical voice, or negative thoughts about yourself, becomes a large activator of your anxiety
Example: "You're never going to succeed. You'll always be a failure.
5. Windows X
A belief system that becomes the lense in which you see the world. When you see the world through the lense of a certain narrative, you will always find evidence to prove the narrative.
Example: At one point in my healing journey I did a neurofeedback assessment to determine if my symptoms were trauma-based or neurological. After looking at my test results, the therapist said, "This is one of the healthiest brains I've seen. There are no signs of ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc. Neurofeedback would not be a helpful treatment for you because everything looks great." Instead of feeling happy about the good news, I left thinking, "Wow, I am so screwed up and there's nothing even wrong with me. I can't believe I'm this messed up just from trauma that happened years ago."
For your body to heal, you have to be IN IT.
Every time you leave your body to “rationalize safety” in your head, you actually move further away from safety, ease, and relief from your anxiety.
xoxo,
Self