Discover 5 of the most important areas that you must take into account to be free of anxiety, and get peace of mind every day of your life!
Welcome to your mini-course “5 Areas You Must Work
To Alleviate Anxiety ”, in which I will describe to you what are those most relevant areas that you should focus on if you want a calm and peaceful life.
If you are really interested in being anxiety free, where you can control yourself and can even decide what you want to think and feel, pay attention to the advice that will be given to you on the following pages.
My name is Guillermo Mendoza Vélez, I am a medical specialist in Family Medicine and Psychiatry, a master in mental health, a psychotherapist and a diploma in logotherapy.
I like to clarify this from the beginning, since a large amount of information circulates on the web where they mention numerous tips and recommendations, and many of these people are not experts in the area, or just read some things online and get a report talking As experts, but they have never had the privilege of working with people who suffer from anxiety.
This is why I bring you this free report. Likewise, you will receive every week a practical advice to improve your mental and emotional well-being.
These reports are part of an educational and therapeutic strategy of Mental and Emotional Health, which is a web page where you can read numerous blogs on various areas of this topic, and where you can purchase more advanced courses and be a user of Therapies Comprehensive Approach.
Without further ado, I present the 5 areas that you must work to be free of anxiety.
Your friend, Guillermo Mendoza Velez
5 AREAS YOU MUST WORK TO RELIEVE ANXIETY
We have all felt anxiety. It is one of the primary emotions, and in many occasions it has adaptive functions. Anxiety is a state of apprehension and anticipation of events that can be threatening or dangerous.
Of course, basic anxiety is required to function. If it did not exist, we would not be aware of the dangers and adverse events. With anxiety, we can take the necessary steps to get out of trouble or solve a problem.
Like all kinds of emotions, anxiety has its adaptive functions. However, when this anxiety goes further, and makes one not work well, but we live thinking the worst, or with constant nervousness, and one loses peace and stability, it is when one must intervene.
When this is so, anxiety can manifest itself in 4 large groups:
- Cognitive anxiety: refers to anxious thoughts, like tragic ideas, that bad things are going to happen, imagining the worst scenario. There is also thoughtfulness all the time and concerns about even minor events.
- Emotional anxiety: refers to anguish, nervousness, restlessness, the desire to run away, feeling imprisoned.
- Somatic anxiety: anxiety can also manifest in the body, with multiple pains, headache, neuralgia, gastrointestinal problems, sleep difficulties, tiredness, suffocation, sweating, chest tightness, tachycardia, among many other things.
- Behavioral anxiety: Anxiety can also manifest itself visibly through behaviors, such as motor restlessness, excessive walking, repetitive movements of hands and feet, irritability, anger attacks, aggressive behavior towards others, etc.
Next, I will mention 5 of the areas that we commonly work in therapy to manage anxiety symptoms in their 4 variants. Of course, there are more areas, but these 5 are mentioned for their high relevance.
Area No. 1
Control of Thoughts
We base ourselves on the idea that all negative emotions usually start with some thoughts and a belief system.
For example, there are some things that give you joy, but others give you anger, anguish or even sadness, and it is because for you, for your belief and thought system, what happened generates you a lot of joy; but for the other, that's a bad thing. A clear example of this is when a pregnancy is diagnosed; Depending on your life situation and what you think about it, it may be the best news of your life, or it may be the worst tragedy.
So the first area of work when you want to alleviate anxiety is thoughts. Typically, in anxiety, the person thinks the worst, that bad things are going to happen, there is pessimism, the solution is not seen, and everything that happens around confirms the terrible situation.
In general, there are three ways to handle negative and tragic thoughts. The first is through distraction. When an anxious thought comes, immediately do something different, to direct your mind towards something other than the negative idea.
The second way is the replacement of thought. By definition, one can only think of one thing at a time. When the negative thought arrives, immediately change the thought for something else, be it an opposite or positive thought, or on another subject that you have to solve, but that does not generate so much anxiety.
The third way is confrontation. Through it, you make logical and realistic arguments about why tragic thinking is not likely to happen, even if possible. The vast majority of things we care about never happen. And it is with these arguments, with evidence, that you confront negative ideas.
Area No. 2
Behaviors that Promote Well-Being
Behaviors are said to define feelings and emotions. That is, if you act like a happy person, happiness will inevitably come. This is actually much more complex, and depends on many other things, but there is some truth to this.
When you are distressed, not only negative thoughts come to you, but a series of very annoying emotional states that affect your quality of life, including the bodily symptoms we mentioned.
Many times it is not possible, using the 'power of the mind', to be free of these symptoms. They just come, and wreak havoc.
Therefore, one of the areas that must be worked to alleviate anxiety is behavior. It refers to doing things that are incompatible with a state of anxiety, that promote well-being and calm, that do not give ground to worries.
So, for example, if you are very distressed, some activities you can do to calm down are:
- Relaxation, breathing or meditation activities.
- Take a walk in the park or in a very quiet place that evokes peace.
- Listen to soothing music or watch calming videos.
- Talk to a person, be it a family member or a friend.
- Do some exercise or physical activity.
Of course, there are many activities you can do to ease anxiety and calm yourself down. Some of them are unfavorable and do harm, such as consuming alcohol or drugs, or hitting the wall; But there are others, like the ones we mentioned, that are very beneficial for you, and some even bring you some extra benefits.
Area No. 3
The Project and Life Plan
This is one of the most important areas since one of the main negative ideas that people have is about their future. Uncertainty causes more worries than not many things, and is a major cause of suffering.
When the person does not have a clear project and life plan, his life is endless, many of them negative, and he sees himself as out of focus. This takes away peace and quiet.
This is why the elaboration of a life project and an action plan is something so important for people. Everyone likes to feel that they are important, that they are worth to society, that their life is useful to others.
A life project gives a sense of purpose and a plan to execute. When there is a project, everything you do has a reason for being, everything you achieve is relevant, and little by little you realize what is really important in life.
When you reach this state of transcendence, very soon you stop worrying so much about banal things, you realize that so much thinking is just a waste of time and mental energy, because your heart and your whole being are focused on bigger things, in more sublime purposes, and you don't have time to think about small things.
Also, when you have a north, uncertainty quickly disappears, which is a killer of peace of mind. It is true that nobody knows what will happen in the future, we do not know what life holds for us, and we cannot predict everything. But when you are focused on a life plan, you better structure your thoughts and you no longer live in distress about the future, because you have it already designed.
Area No. 4
Freedom and Responsibility
A common denominator factor in people suffering from chronic and recurring anxiety is the idea that no matter what they do, their lives are predestined to suffer anxiety. They do not believe that they can be free from these emotional states, since it is already a kind of condemnation.
These people often blame others for their problems, they think that they are like that for their life history, for their parents, for stressful or traumatic events, they blame the situation of the country, the president, the behavior of the people, or to many other things. In cognitive psychology, this is called the external checkpoint.
One of the most powerful areas to work on the subject of anxiety is freedom and responsibility. In other words, you are free to feel what you want to feel, and you are responsible for what you feel.
This does not mean that you simply decide not to be distressed, but that you have the freedom to do something about it, assuming the responsibility that your emotional states remain the same or change. It is up to you to do something to improve, not others.
If you leave other people responsible for your emotions and feelings, then nothing can be done, because you can do very little to change the attitudes of others or to change the president or the situation in the country. And even if you leave the responsibility to your past, it is worse, because a miracle can happen that changes people or the country, but there is nothing that can change the past.
When you are clear about this, and you have changed your external control point to an internal one, then you are not condemned, but you can do something to change, you can do things to alleviate anxiety, you can ask for help, you can change your thoughts, and so with all the things we've seen.
Area No. 5
Expression of what you feel and think
Expressing oneself has always been something highly valued by people, since it allows you to reorganize thoughts, vent, manifest what is in the mind and heart, and find answers to ailments. It is for this reason that therapists often do not speak much, because the person only wants to express himself to organize his mind.
When you express yourself, you can remove everything that overwhelms you, you feel that you have taken a huge weight off yourself, you can know yourself more, and you can find solutions that you have not seen before. This is even without the therapist speaking, but remaining in an empathetic listening posture without judgment.
There are different ways of expressing yourself, I will list the most important:
- Writing what you think and feel. In this case, you take a notebook or a document on your computer, and you dedicate yourself to writing what you can think of, you let off steam on paper, you talk about everything you're going through. Through activities where you show your feelings and thoughts, like literature, painting or music, or through a sport. This is a way of symbolically deriving what one feels towards other activities. You can express yourself to a friend, family member or counselor, who will listen to what you have to say, and will give you encouragement and support when you need it most. Through therapy structured, in which empathic listening, elaboration of information, understanding of conflicts and psychotherapeutic interventions focused on strengthening yourself as a person, improving your well-being,get to know you better and solve problems.
Actually, managing anxiety includes many other things, and the areas of work depend a lot on each person and the type of anxiety they are presenting. But being clear about what I mentioned in this report, you will have more ideas on where you can take action to be free from anxiety.
After reading this report, you may be wondering how to work on the anxiety you are experiencing. I know you are very interested, since you downloaded this mini-course and read it.
Integral Approach Therapy specializes in this, where, in a comfortable and controlled environment, you can express yourself freely, without judgment, solving everything you want to work, and with interventions aimed at obtaining tranquility, peace, self-control, stability and sense of life.
For this reason, I invite you to inform yourself about what the therapeutic model that we offer you is about.
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