This concludes the thought adjustment sessions and anxiety articles. Thank you for giving the course a try!
Several powerful ideas have been presented, and you may want to review from time to time to make sure you're getting the most from your personal "Self Therapy" sessions. The anxiety relief techniques you have learned can be truly life changing, especially in that they are extremely practical.
Don't be frightened if lingering anxiety appears from time to time, even after you've been using these methods for awhile. In most cases, you'll be able to identify an episode of negative expectation as the cause. At other times, certain sights or sounds might trigger emotional memories of anxiety. I once had an anxiety attack while listening to a certain song on the radio and for years was uncomfortable listening to that song. The same thing can happen with sights, smells, sensations, or any other memory triggers. If something similar happens to you, remember to not try to suppress, avoid, or run from your anxiety. Just engage your self-listening skills (that you learned in the audio program) and know you can go through it. With growing confidence in your ability to handle those episodes, along with your new anxiety resistant thoughts and behaviors, such occurrences will become less and less common.
You are learning NEW behaviors, changing long time thought patterns, and breaking strong habits. So don't be surprised if panic pops up from time to time as you fall back on your old ways. Welcome the opportunity to practice your anxiety relief skills and reinforce your knowledge that YOU CAN HANDLE IT.
Thomas Paine once wrote "The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark." Now that you have the tools to cope with anxiety, you no longer need to fear it. And now that you understand the cause of anxiety, you no longer need to create it. The worst point you have been to is where you felt trapped in your anxious feelings without knowing how to escape them. Now you have the key.
One of the greatest gifts we have in being human is the ability to feel emotions. In my opinion, true happiness comes when one is able to experience the whole range of emotion without avoidance behavior. When we can do that, even with anxiety, then anxiety itself will disappear. The self listening method you've learned is a powerful tool for experiencing any emotion, and eliminating the ability of any emotion to overwhelm you.
Your general emotional state, your relationships, your career, and all other areas of your life will go through cycles. As smooth as things seem now, there will be dips. If you are living an active life, then disappointments, failure, loss, and other such events will inevitably come. This is the nature of our physical lives. Your ability to feel the emotions that come with such events is also the measure of your ability to live fully and succeed, regardless of what your definition of success may be. When you know that you can handle anything, you will be free of fear, free to live in and enjoy the present moment. The depth at which you are able to experience the lows, and the height at which you can tolerate the highs, together will define your spectrum of experience. Eventually you'll reach a point where you know that each failure is just a stepping stone to your next success, each rejection a stepping stone to connection, each low a stepping stone to your next high. And you will no longer fear these setbacks. You will find yourself moving more and more rapidly from peak to higher peak in your life, while even appreciating the valleys in between.
Your assignment now, and hopefully for everyday of your life, is to continue building your emotional self-awareness to deeper levels, to consciously put energy into producing more positive and empowering thoughts, and finally, to never stop taking action toward becoming the person you want to be. You can move beyond anxiety and fear, and become a person for which there truly are no limits.
I wish you success with your anxiety relief efforts!
