Danielle Jhiani, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, walks through a simple method: notice the fearful thought, tell yourself "yep, maybe it will, but I'm going to do it anyway," then approach the feared situation anyway. Avoidance shrinks your life; repeated approach builds comfort and confidence.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people recover from anxiety, insecure attachment and ocd, just like I have so you can live a happy, healthy life with amazing relationships.
Today we're going to talk about a question that I get all the time from people with anxiety or even insecure attachment styles. And that is, what if I do this thing you're telling me to do and something bad happens, or what if it doesn't work out or I don't feel better? This is what your brain is telling you, that something bad may happen, that it may not work. These negative thoughts are just fear based thoughts that your brain is giving you. They're not factual. And so when you are struggling with any of these things, it's because your brain is sending you warnings and messages to avoid to not do a particular thing or to do a particular thing to stay safe or comfortable. The problem with this is that the more you listen to these thoughts and act based on them, yes, you might get more and more comfortable, but you're also going to get more and more uncomfortable in all kinds of very normal situations. And so your life starts to shrink, your relationships shrinking, you're not able to travel, you're not able to go out and do the things that you really want to do deep down. And this becomes a bigger problem as time goes on because you're listening to these negative thoughts and even more because of how you're responding to them. What I want you to start to practice is recognizing when these negative thoughts show up. When your brain goes, what if this particular thing happens? Then you're going to respond. Instead of avoidance or trying to get certainty or trying to get comfort, what I want you to do is start responding with yep, maybe it will, but I'm going to do it anyway. And you can start small here. You don't have to start with something that's extremely uncomfortable, like a 10 out of 10. You can start responding to those thoughts in that way with yep, maybe it will. And then either not giving that thought attention, not doing anything about it, or going and doing that thing anyway. And what you're going to find is that it may be a little bit uncomfortable the first time you do this, it may be quite uncomfortable the first time you do this. But the more consistent you are with this technique, the more comfort you're going to build in that situation. Not only that, you are teaching your brain that you're not going to listen to this negative thought, you're not going to Let this fear or this negative thought dictate your life and your behavior. And the more you do this, the more you're going to be teaching your brain that hey, I can handle it. Maybe that will happen. Oftentimes it doesn't, by the way, but I can handle it. And maybe it will, but I've got this. And what you're going to see is that most of the time that thing doesn't happen. Sometimes if it happens, it's not even close to what your brain is telling you it's going to be like. Or you handle it perfectly fine. And so the more you do this, the more you're going to start to notice that you get less of these types of thoughts. You get less anxious, you get less uncomfortable when you don't avoid. And over time.
These situations become quite comfortable for you because you're no longer listening to those negative or anxiety provoking thoughts. Your brain starts to realize that you can handle it. You feel more confident, you start doing those things you're uncomfortable with, you're more comfortable with them, your brain stops being so anxious and fearful and avoidant and you start feeling very good about yourself, very good about your life. And you continue to grow and build comfort in all kinds of areas. I want you to let me know down in the comments how this is going for you. Let me know what you thought of this video. If you need help with this, check out the link in the description. I have all kinds of programs to help you with these things and we'll talk to you very soon. Sa.
