How to Accept Yourself and Crush Anxiety in 3 Steps
There are so many ways to deal with anxiety and many stages you will have to go through in order to combat it. There are millions of people all over the world who suffer with anxiety in varying forms. It is a condition that can consume every thought, feeling and action depending on the severity of the disorder, but no matter what level anxiety is felt it is something we have to deal with straight away as putting it off will only make it worse.
There will be so many people out there not even knowing or understanding the fact that they are suffering from anxiety for many reasons; one is that anxiety still has a social stigma surrounding it. This means that anxiety is something that is either belittled by others so that a person is reluctant to seek help or deal with anxiety, so it grows from this or two, an individual will not admit that he or she is suffering from anxiety so will therefore ignore symptoms but, in turn will grow more anxious as the brain learns from this. Both these reasons rely heavily on the fact that we commonly worry about what others think about us in a negative way.
Another reason why we do not take action against anxiety is that we believe it is easier to carry on living like that rather than facing fears and dealing with the problem as there is an element of the unknown, hard work and adversity so we stay in our comfort zone even though it is one made of fear. There are 3 mains ways this can change and anxiety can be battled head on:
1. Accept Yourself for the Good and the Bad:
More often than not we will focus on the negative aspects of our character and behaviours rather than the positives. This is something we all do for many reasons but what we should focus on is how we look at these negatives. Anxiety is caused by fear, worry and stress about issues we feel we cannot control. Our negative behaviour and thoughts can sometimes fall into this category.
We fall into the trap of resenting our negatives and beating ourselves up about them. This is such a common thing to happen but by taking a new approach to them we can change the way we think. What we need to do is accept the bad things. Think of it like buying a vintage car. A vintage car will never be pristine and will need a lot of work and maintenance but you buy it as an investment and because you accept both the negatives and the positives about it. This is what we need to do to ourselves.
By accepting our negatives and approaching them as part of us we can then see them for what they really are and move on from them. If we do not focus and accept the positive things about our lives, our thoughts and our emotions how do we expect others to be around us? How would you want them to treat themselves, especially your loved ones?.
2. Don’t Accept That Stigma
Just by understanding how, what and why anxiety happens can make major breakthroughs to your coping with life and disorder. We can shy away from asking or seeking help for the disorder as we fear what others will think. This can sometimes be reiterated with others reactions who also do not understand anxiety, they will undermine the affect it has over someone by saying ‘oh just get on with it, you’re fine’ for example.
By knowing, understanding and acknowledging however that others suffer from anxiety, that we are not the only ones so there is nothing to fear we can begin to be honest with both ourselves and others around us of how we feel and think about things, learning to cope and face those anxious behaviours.
3. Everything is Not as it Seems
We are all different and what we think and feel towards one thing may be caused by something completely different. We can so often confuse negative feelings towards one thing with what we really think for another. For example, if we suffer anxious feelings when it comes to committing to a romantic relationship when really we resent the relationship we had with one or both of our parents or that we panic when driving on the motorway when really it is our worry and belief that others are judging us in some way. We can find it hard to deal with anxiety as we try to control the wrong feelings and memories; not getting to the route cause.
Acceptance is an absolute fundamental to coping with anxiety. If we constantly dwell on the negatives and only see them on face value and perpetuate them with a sole focus on how inadequate we are because of these negatives we can never accept ourselves and we can never accept a future where we are happy, with no anxiety.
