Transforming Anxiety- Working With Your Mind

What are the stories we tell ourselves? Do you get stuck in reoccurring thought cycles? Grab a journal and join me for some cognitive exercises to begin to bring awareness to the ways we think and create new thought patterns.

Transcript

Hi,

Welcome.

Welcome to transforming your anxiety,

Working with your mind.

So,

So often when we have overwhelm or stress or anxiety,

Our mind runs,

Runs,

Runs,

Runs,

Right?

We can go down a rabbit hole so far in one direction.

And a lot of times we may be thinking about the future and what possibly could happen,

Or we may be reminiscing on the past,

Maybe a conversation we had with someone and wishing we said something else.

And so often when we're going about the future,

We are imagining all these possible outcomes,

But the likelihood of them happening doesn't actually happen a lot.

If you look back at your thoughts,

I know that when I've been in time of anxiety and I'm like,

Oh no,

This is gonna go like this or could go like this,

99% of the time none of what I imagined happens,

Which means I'm creating so much energy towards nothing that's actually going to happen.

So we really want to begin to look at what are our thought patterns and how can we begin to reprogram some of those thought patterns.

So today we're going to be doing a little bit of a journaling exercise,

Working with an obsessive thought that we may have,

That we may use over and over again,

Right?

So we may have a thought of,

I'm never gonna get this done.

And we may think again and again,

I can't do this,

Oh my god,

It's gonna be so overwhelming.

And we just sit in the fear of it,

Which may cause us to procrastinate,

It may cause us to freeze,

It may cause us to just like do the thing right away but be so stressed.

So we really want to start talking back to this thought,

Right?

If I have a task ahead of me and I start thinking,

I can't do that,

I can't get this done,

Oh my god,

I'm gonna fail.

What if I pretend I'm my best friend that would maybe say to me,

Hey,

You don't fail often,

You actually work really hard,

You just need to put one foot in front of the other and you're gonna succeed.

I've never seen you not get an assignment done before,

Right?

So we want to start to create new scripts to talk back to that thought.

So when that thought comes of,

I'm gonna fail,

I then have this script that comes up,

Actually,

You don't fail often in life,

You get things done,

You're a hard worker and if you just take one step at a time,

You will get it done.

I believe in you.

And you'll start to notice,

At first it may sound a bit corny,

But if you start to work on utilizing the script in your life,

So maybe every morning you wake up and you read this script,

Then when that thought comes,

You're gonna automatically counteract that thought and begin to regrow a new viewpoint.

That same thing may come through,

We may have a thought of,

Oh no,

What are my friends gonna think of me?

What will they think of me if,

Oh my god,

And we go off in a whole thing.

And what if we say to ourself,

Hey,

You're really great,

They're friends with you for a reason,

And if they don't accept you for you,

Is that really the person you want in life?

Just be you,

Right?

And we just want to keep saying these things to ourself to begin to talk back to those obsessive thoughts,

Because so often we just let those thoughts loop and loop,

Where we want to work on first being aware of them and then counteracting them by having a different thought.

So I'm gonna invite you right now to take out your journal or piece of paper and I want you to write one thought that you have on the top of your page,

And then I want you to work on maybe a two to three sentence script.

You can think about what your best friend would say to you to rebuke that thought,

Or just what comes up for you.

How can you prove that thought wrong based on your past experiences?

So let's take a little time to do that now.

Slowly beginning to wrap up that script,

Knowing that we can work on it more a little later,

And I want you to look at it and read it out loud right now.

And read it out loud one more time.

Feel what you're saying.

So this is a script to begin to reprogram your brain.

I invite you to put it somewhere in your house where you see it every day.

The only way we really begin to reprogram our thoughts is through practicing,

Right?

So if I'm working with a thought that's recurring,

I actually put it next to my bed.

I wake up in the morning and I read the script,

And before I go to sleep I read the script.

That way throughout the day when it comes up,

I automatically go into the script.

It's learned programming.

And as we work with scripts,

I think it's always important to bring a little bit of pleasure in.

So we're gonna do another little practice of just writing gratitudes.

So I'm gonna invite you to turn to the next page in your journal or open a new page,

And you're just gonna write a page full of gratitudes.

And I invite you to get really specific,

To go beyond,

You know,

I'm grateful for my family.

I'm grateful for my health.

Get specific.

I'm grateful for the way my sibling showed up for me.

I'm grateful for the interaction I had with the barista with my coffee today.

I'm grateful that I got out of bed.

I'm grateful for the great cup of tea I had this morning.

So getting really specific with those gratitudes.

So let's take a moment now and write down some of those gratitudes.

You slowly wrapping up your last gratitude.

So this is another cognitive tool that you can utilize when you're going through a hard time.

When I begin to check in and know I'm really struggling,

I'm having a lot of stress or overwhelm in my life,

I actually make myself sit down every day and just write a full page of gratitudes,

Even when I feel like it's the last thing I want to do.

And I notice that through maybe doing this for five days in a row,

My lens starts to change.

My perspective shifts of the way I'm viewing the world around me.

And it's something that seems so simple,

But actually it gets our cognition,

It gets our brain rewiring in entirely new ways.

That's why we get specific with them.

So you can either set a timer and do gratitudes for that long,

Or do a full page or two pages,

Whatever feels right to you.

But these are a great two practices to really begin to shift our cognitive thinking.

Thank you so much for joining me in this practice.

And most of all,

Thank you for showing up for yourself today.

Have a beautiful rest of your day.