Conquering Anxiety With Self Therapy [continued]

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Self Therapy is amazingly simple, but some of the concepts may seem a little foreign at first because they're new.

In a nutshell, you'll be learning a method of communicating with yourself. But the method of communicating in Self Therapy, and what you think of as your "self", are probably going to be much different than what you might expect. What you're about to learn will expand your tolerance level for negative emotions, increase your ability to experience higher ones, and can virtually eliminate your emotional dependence on, and emotional susceptibility to, external events.

As with interpersonal communication, Self Therapy involves both "speaking" and "listening", and this program is divided into two sections based on that. We'll start with the listening component because with those skills you will be able to quickly take control of your emotions, and prevent anxiety from overwhelming you. You will also find it an excellent tool for simply gaining a greater sense of connection with, and understanding of, yourself.

In the second section, "speaking", you'll learn a powerful method of re-programming your mind, and then work on reversing the common thought patterns and behaviors that lead to anxiety.

So, in other words, we start by learning how to manage current anxiety levels, and then learn how to prevent anxiety from taking root in the first place.

As we get started, know that we are not out to "suppress" anxiety, or any other negative emotion for that matter. As previously mentioned, in order to experience the higher emotions, like joy, we must be able to experience the lower ones. I call this psychological phenomenon the "emotional energy pendulum". To swing high, you must be able to swing low. How good can you ever feel if your positive feelings are accompanied by a constant fear of losing that comfort? Everybody experiences loss, disappointment, failure, rejection and other adversity - the feared situations that often lead to anxiety. If you view such situations with emotional avoidance or even fear the possibility of them occurring, anxiety will grow. But you can choose instead to experience such feelings with acceptance, even with an appreciation for the humanness they grant you, and to see them as stepping stones back to the other end of the emotional spectrum. The goal of Self Therapy is to learn how to feel all body sensations with complete tolerance for their presence. Without fear of negative emotions, there will be no anxiety.

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