What I do when I’m freaking out? Anxiety I Panic Attacks I Anxiety Attacks

Hey everybody, my name is Danielle. I'm here to talk to you about what anxiety is and then a five step process that is going to change your relationship with your anxiety drastically. So all anxiety is, is fear. And I don't want to minimize it because I know how really difficult anxiety can be. I suffered from depression off and on for over 20 years and I had major anxiety for about three years. And I want to give you hope because I don't have anxiety anymore. I can't guarantee that I might have some down the road, but I really don't anticipate it being anything close to what it was before. Anxiety can be somewhat normal to certain levels, but all anxiety is, is a reaction to a thought. Sometimes the thoughts are triggered by events. But anxiety is fear. It's a thought that you have that causes fear. And what happens is, is that fear then causes physical reactions or other thoughts that cause more fear, and then it just spirals out of control. So what we want to eventually do is dig to the root of that, but until you can kind of get the anxiety under control, you can't really start to get to the root of it. So I want to teach you in that moment when you start to have anxiety, what you can do. Because many of us.

Rightfully so, we start, we want someone else to help us. We want someone else to fix us. We want someone else to fix it for us. We are the only ones that can fix our anxiety.

I put so much of that responsibility on people in the past and I finally realized that I didn't get better until I realized that I have to fix this. And so you can do this. If I can do it, you can do it, I promise. And you will come out on the other side feeling so much better. So let's talk a little bit about when you have anxiety in that moment. What the heck do you do.

When you feel yourself starting to have anxiety? The key is to just slow down.

A thought has triggered anxiety which might trigger physical symptoms. What you want to do is not let it escalate.

So when you first notice that you have anxiety, you start to feel it. Come on.

Slow down a little bit. When you start to feel your heart race, don't let that scare you. Start to really embrace it. One of the things I did was.

It'S a, it's such a tool. And I know that it's a, it's, it's a blessing. And I know this is really hard to hear when you're in the thick of it, but this is teaching you something and so if you can kind of embrace your anxiety and be like, okay, you're here. I can deal with this. Just slow down for a minute.

Don't let it scare you.

Don't get hard. Don't get down on yourself for having anxiety. All those things are just going to make it worse. So you can, if you can just stop and relax and be really compassionate with yourself. Because what happens is we start to have anxiety, we start to freak out, we start to, oh, my gosh, my heart's beating. And then all those thoughts start to escalate. We don't want those thoughts to escalate. So just stop and relax. This is anxiety, and I can deal with this. Whatever you're telling yourself is going to grow. So if you can keep from telling yourself scary things and negative things, then it's not going to grow anymore. You can't go from A to Z sometimes. You can't always go from, oh, I love this anxiety. This is great. It's gonna teach me something. It's hard to go from A to Z. You can get there eventually, but you just first have to keep your thoughts from maybe escalating. So just start with one thing. I did. Gosh, this helped so much. And I was told for two years to do this, and I ignored it until I finally started doing it. And I really felt relief from depression, too, within days. And then I started to go through a divorce. So it really helped me through that, which is putting my hands on my heart and just giving myself compassion. Because I wasn't doing that before and I was hoping someone else would do it. And while people tried to do it in their own way, it's not the same. And no one can ever predict when it's going to happen and what exactly to say. So you've really got to learn to do this yourself. As much as you want someone else to fix this for you, they can't. A therapist, your mom, your husband, your wife, your brother, your sister. No one else can fix this but you. So slow down is step one. Step two is really to give yourself compassion, whatever that looks like for you. For me, I would just lay down and put my hands on my heart and just breathe. I would sometimes.

Envision compassion going into me. I would just tell myself that I love you, it's gonna be okay. Whatever that looks like for you. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. Just give yourself compassion. Don't be hard on yourself. Tell yourself what you would tell your child if they were scared.

That is the first Step. Because we often just beat ourselves up for having anxiety and then we start going into, oh my God, it's never gonna end and it's always gonna be this way and it doesn't have to be. So step one, just stop and relax. Step two, give yourself a ton of compassion. And then step three, once you're in a calmer place, you can start to pinpoint that thought. Okay, what in the heck triggered this anxiety? So let's say it's, oh my gosh, I'm going to, you know, lose my job tomorrow. What am I going to do? I'm not going to be able to pay my bills, my husband or wife is going to leave me again. You can see how that spirals. So if you can pinpoint the thought and if the first thought was, you know, you got an email and then your thought was, oh my God, I'm going to get fired tomorrow. That is the gold.

You're not going to be able to go from a really negative thought to a really positive thought right away. But that's okay. You don't have to go from A to Z. At this point. Your first goal is just to look at that thought and say, okay, maybe that's not so true. Maybe I'm overreacting here. Maybe that won't happen.

The goal is to eventually learn how to work with your thoughts and turn them into positive thoughts. And you can get there.

Once you look at that thought, you can reframe it again. You don't have to go from I'm gonna get fired tomorrow to, oh, they're gonna promote me. You know, you have to. It has to feel somewhat believable and somewhat real. So you can tell yourself, okay, I got this email. Even if it's an email that says from your boss, I need to talk to you tomorrow, it's natural you might feel anxious about that. Tell yourself, I am. It's gonna be okay. I don't know what's gonna happen. Who knows what they're gonna say, but I'm gonna be okay. Until then again, go back to that self compassion. I'm going to be okay. I will.

The thoughts are just, they just get out of control. And so once you can pinpoint that thought, reframe the thought.

And then the last step is just notice how well you did. You know, if you normally start to have an anxiety attack and you're able to slow down and just give yourself compassion, but let's say your anxiety starts up again and you're not able to get it back under control, don't beat yourself up and don't get hard on yourself for not being able to do it right that time. Notice that you actually slowed down. You were actually able to give yourself compassion in that moment. Notice that it felt good for three seconds and say, oh, okay, look, that worked. That worked for me. I was going through depression and I tried a little experiment where I would think about something that made me happy and I was like, you know what? That actually worked in that second. Did it cure me for the rest of the day? No. But when I noticed the positive, I noticed that it worked in that second. I realized if it worked in that second, it can work in the next one and the next one and the next one. So when we focus on what's working and not focusing on what's not working.

What'S working will continue to bring that to us. We will continue to focus on that. The more we focus on what's not working in any area of our lives, the more that kind of thing is going to come to us and we're going to see those negative things, the more we focus on the positive. Wow. I was able to do that. I was able to not go into a full anxiety attack. I may still have some anxiety, but I'm going to try that later. Going to go watch a video that's going to help me. So try this five step process. Let me know how it works. If you have any questions, post it below. I promise this will help. And just keep working on this for now. I'll have a lot more information for you soon. Take care.