8 Things You Do That Makes Your Anxiety Worse I Anxiety I Panic Attacks

Hey there. Welcome back. Danielle Thornton here, where I help you heal from anxiety and relationship ocd. So last week we talked about the whys behind why you might have anxiety. And this week we are going to talk about the what. So what is anxiety and what are the eight things that are most likely making your anxiety worse?

So again, anxiety is just fear. It is your body's reaction to fearful thoughts which really come from limiting beliefs that are underneath those thoughts. And so there are eight things that you're most likely doing that are making your anxiety worse. And the first one is that you're listening to it, you're buying into it. Our thoughts are just thoughts. They're not necessarily true. And so when you think that every thought that you have is true and you're buying into the anxiety that you're feeling and thinking that if you have this reaction and there must be truth to whatever the fear is, then that is going to make your anxiety worse. So it's really important that when you have anxiety, you just accept it as fear and doesn't mean that your thoughts are real. So that's number one. Number two is listening to the what ifs. What ifs are really, really huge when it comes to anxiety. They're usually, you may bew aware of some of them and you may not be aware of some of them, but there are always those what ifs going on. Most anxiety is fear of the future, fear of what if this happens? What if I get in my car and I die? What if I'm with the wrong partner? What if somebody comes over and sees my dirty house? What if people think I'm not perfect? There could be a thousand different what ifs. Yours may be the same or they may be different, but whenever you're buying into those what ifs and you're not really aware of what those are and turning those around, it's going to make your anxiety worse. Number three is really buying into your limiting beliefs. And one of the big things with people who suffer from anxiety or even relationship ocd or all kinds of other struggles with mental health or even self esteem or self doubt is that they have a lot of limiting beliefs that they don't even know what they are, but they're really riding your behavior. And so we'll go a lot more into the limiting beliefs next week because those are really huge when it comes to people suffering from anxiety. Number four, the number four thing that is making your anxiety worse is not getting comfortable with uncertainty. We all have uncertainty in our life. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't know what's going to happen an hour from now. We don't know how other people are gonna act or react. And so getting comfortable with that, really comfortable with that, is super important with anxiety because it's just a reality that your mind probably doesn't wanna accept right now. But until you start to get comfortable with that uncertainty, you're most likely gonna have anxiety. The number five thing that's making your anxiety worse is avoiding the things that you are afraid of. When you're afraid of driving and you avoid getting in the car, your anxiety is going to get worse. You're basically reinforcing that part of your brain that is.

Scared. When you listen to that part of your brain and reinforce it, it's going to just reinforce that fear. Some people are afraid to leave the house. And so people are afraid of relationships, people are afraid of their partner leaving them. They are afraid of success. And so when we really kind of feed into those fears and then we avoid the triggers and the things that are scaring us, the more we do that, the more it reinforces the fear. It reinforces that part of our mind that is sending us all those fear signals and it's going to just reinforce that fear and make it worse. In fact, a lot of times what happens is, is it reinforces that fear and then it just creates a whole new fear outside of that. Number six thing that is making your anxiety worse is only seeing the proof that your anxiety is trying to show you and not seeing anything else. So this, it's called selective listening or selective perception. And when you're only seeing the things that you think are proving your anxiety, true, there's usually maybe one or two, but then there's about a hundred other things that are proving that it's not true. But you're only focusing on the things that are, that you think are proving your anxiety true that's gonna make it worse. It's really important that you start to focus on the things that are that are on the opposite side of whatever that fear is. Because there's a lot of it there. You probably just aren't necessarily seeing it. Number seven thing that is making your anxiety worse is being hard on yourself and judging yourself. We talked a little bit about that with self compassion and this is huge because when you're struggling with anything, stress, depression, anxiety, any sort of pain, when you judge yourself and you're really hard on yourself, that only just adds more pain and more struggle to what you're experiencing. So it's really important that you don't judge yourself and that you are compassionate with yourself through the process. And then the last thing, number eight, that is making your anxiety worse is relying on things outside of you to heal. So asking other people questions.

Drugs and alcohol, food, even medications, you know, medications, prescription medications can help your anxiety. It can help the symptoms, and sometimes they can help you on that healing path, but it's not going to heal your anxiety at the root because the problem is are the thoughts and the limiting beliefs that you have. And so, you know, prescription medication can help with the symptoms, but it's not going to help you heal permanently. Same thing with any sort of substance that you're using to kind of alleviate the anxiety, whether it's drugs, alcohol, food, sports, tv. I mean, there's a zillion things that people do to avoid.

Addressing life. And so, you know, whenever those, those things, you're relying really heavily on those and not kind of focusing on what's really going on. It's only going to either just kind of keep you stagnant or keep you from healing. Number eight on the list of things that is making your anxiety worse is really focusing on anything outside of you to heal. So that could be asking other people questions. It could be hoping someone else will fix you. It could be focusing on, you know, really anything that alleviates your anxiety. Drugs, alcohol.

There'S a million things, food, there's all kinds of things that people kind of get into. It could be, like I said, simple as food or tv. Those are kind of normal, more acceptable things that people end up really kind of checking out and not really focusing on what's going on with them. When it comes to prescription medications, those things can be helpful in regards to helping your symptoms of anxiety, but they aren't going to heal it. You know, they're going to cover up the symptoms and help you with the symptoms on a short term basis. But the problem is there's typically side effects. Your body gets used to them, then you have to try something else. And so, you know, they can be helpful in the short term, but in the long term they're not going to help you really heal at the root. So hopefully you got something out of this video. If you did, please click like below. Subscribe to my channel for more information. And next week we'll be talking more about limiting beliefs. Hope you have a great day.