#537 Who’s Anxious? Not Me.

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. It is the feeling that you bring forward. It is your emotional connection that really sets the tone for what is going to be happening to you and for you. And you know that feeling when you touch it, it just spreads through you. I'm Summer McStravik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hi, it's Summer, and a quick request before we jump into the show. If you like this podcast, the number one reason Flow Dream has grown is because of your reviews. People rely on your opinion, and frankly, they often misunderstand Flow Dreaming. The only way to correct that is through you leaving a few words about the program. So pop over to itunes or your podcast app and write a review. It means so much to me when you do. Now onto the show. Hello, loves. Welcome to Flow Dreaming. Guess what? I am about to shift up the format of this. This show once again one more time. Every couple of years, I just get a funny feather in my hat and decide, oh, I think I'm gonna try this or do that. And after taking this last, I don't know how long has it been, six months, a year to record these nice little gems of podcasts for you, I am going to be once again opening up my phones and bringing a live element, bringing a live show back. So give me some to get this thing worked out, figure out how I'm going to do it. Probably it's going to involve building my own studio, which you would think I would have at this point, but no, I gave. I have had my own studios and I have. Apparently another one is in my future. So won't that be exciting? I'd love to talk with you and connect with you again. I know when I talk to my MI School students, so many of them say, I first spoke to you when I called in on your podcast, and I've been hearing that so frequently, I feel like, oh, I miss you. That's right. I remember. So that's in the works. Kind of cool, huh? The other thing is, I have a new app that's out. It is an app that reflects my shop, reflects the Flow Dreaming website. And what it means is that if you have ever actually purchased a Flow Dream, which is a beautifully produced emotional sonic bath, a bubble bath for yourself, your soul where you create. It's very strong in emotion. It helps you get into that perfect co creational manifestational state and make things happen for you. Anyway, I have hundreds of them at my website and now I have an app where you can browse all of them, listen to samples, and if, like I said, if you have ever purchased one, it's now going to show up on your iPhone and you can create your own little library, you can create your own playlists, mix and match. Just go to town and have fun. Anyway, you'll find that at the app Store at Flow. Not Flow Dreaming. You'll find it at the app Store, the Apple or itunes app Store. So go there. In fact, there are two apps for you now. Grab both of them. They're both totally free, nothing they don't cost. So go get them, Sue. Anxiety. Oh boy. Why am I tackling this? Sometimes I tackle very happy and up and woo, you know, fun, fun, fun stuff. Then other times I'm like, okay, now we're gonna pull this one up from the bottom. And that's what we're doing this week, right? Anxiety as an energy, anxiety as a flow, anxiety as an emotional state. Anxiety as something that you are actually creating or manifesting with. As you know, we manifest every minute of our lives, right? We're always co creating. I always kind of joke that I don't have to teach anybody how to manifest. You've been doing it. It's just a question of becoming aware of what you're creating and understanding that there are two parts to the act of creation. There is the physical aspect and the non physical aspect. The physical aspect is you bodily, physically moving through your day, putting goals down on your list, doing things, saying things, having encounters, creating expectations and desires, and generally pushing ahead. The non physical aspect is how you are emotionally and energetically encountering these same things. And I go off kind of the yin Yang principle, right? Where there is dark, where there is light, you know, forward and backward and male and female, we live in a dualistic universe. Therefore if there is physical, then there is definitely non physical too. And I give them both equal weight, right? I don't think one has more weight than the other. So if I'm plowing through life doing all kinds of physical stuff, there has got to be another part of me that's likewise plowing through life doing all kinds of non physical stuff. And it's that non physical part of you that we work on when we are talking about flow dreaming, it's that non physical part of you that is deciding on your future, customizing it, feeling toward it, creating your responses, your expectations, your emotional energetic field as you will is as active and productive and real as your physical activity that you're doing. So when we look at something like anxiety, we're looking at it from both perspectives. The perspective of the. This is a physical thing going on in my body. Oh my God. It's releasing all kinds of hormones that are rushing through me and all kinds of, you know, you know, you know, cortisol and oh, you know, I can't even name all of them, just tons of them flushing through me. Fight or flight? Oh, here we go. Fight, flight or freeze. Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. Of course the other side of it is the emotional. I'm feeling in a state of fear, of lack, helplessness, overwhelm, worry. When you say the word anxiety, you know the feeling of it. Everybody's had anxiety. Maybe you have a little anxiety before you walk into some important appointment. Or maybe you have ongoing anxiety. Maybe you have panic attacks. I want you to look at them as all variations of the same thing, just to minor or major degrees. And in some cases anxiety is there as a preparatory kind of emotion, which is get ready for this. Are you sure? Are you paying attention? Are you aware? You better do well in that interview, right, that kind of anxiety. Then there is the anxiety that I just mentioned. Oh my God, you're overwhelmed. This is going to hurt you. You can't get away from this. It's all breaking apart, it's coming down, you're caught, you're trapped. And you can see how that is an exaggeration, that kind of a magnification of that earlier, more productive form of be on alert. So anxiety can develop in you over time. I know a lot about anxiety because it runs in my family. And if you've been listening to this podcast long enough, you know there's a lot of stuff that runs in my family. Anxiety and panic attacks, definitely high up there on the list. Anxiety would manifest itself in my life as a feeling of lack of control, generalized anxiety, something bad's gonna happen, a sense of doom, and I don't know what it is. Thank God. For me, those years are long past. I have done so much emotional work using flow dreaming, complete emotional reconditioning. I often call it emotional conditioning. The same way that you would work out your body, are working out your emotional self. That is what flow dreaming does for you. So if you have Something that isn't working in your emotional self, I. E. Anxiety. What do you want to do with it? Well, you want to work it out, you want to condition it, you want to support it, you want to supplement it, you want to flow, dream for it. That is a method for change. Now this is where I have to insert the I am compliant with all of the laws of the United States. I am not a therapist or a doctor and I cannot claim to cure anything. However, I have used this technique successfully for myself and that's why I share it with you. So when you are starting to work with your anxiety, I encourage you to, of course, I always encourage you. See a professional, make sure there isn't some other stuff going on. Because remember, like I said, your body's part of it too. There is always a physical aspect and there is always a non physical aspect. And well, me, I always try to try to, I don't want to say attack, but I try, try to go after things from both because both are always in existence. So here you have this energy, this emotion of anxiety, which is essentially a spinning out of control of what originated as a healthy alertness. So why is the anxiety here? What can you do with it? Can you flow your way out of it? This became something that I looked at very early on. In fact, one of the very first set of flow dreams I ever created back in 2005 was a playlist to work with anxiety, depression and stress. Because even then I recognize this is powerful. And you don't have to be powerless inside your own emotional self. And anxiety will try to make you think that you have to be powerless. Because if you've ever experienced an anxiety attack, you feel powerless. You are powerless inside yourself, to yourself. And that's probably the worst place I can think of to be because no one else has got control over you. And if you don't have control over you, what does? So you look at that emotion and you say, wait a minute, I made you, I created you, therefore I must own you. Therefore I must have a little bit of choice in this matter. So what can we do with you? Because I want to remain in a powerful and positive state. So I put together, like I was saying, some flow dreams for this. I have redone them over the years, made them even more, I hope, potent and powerful. From that first early set, you can actually find them at flowdreaming.com or on the Flow Dreaming for Meditation and Manifesting app. You can look that up in the app store, so check that out if you want to Go further with today's topic. There should be a point in your life, if you have suffered from anxiety, where you eventually say no more. I refuse to look at this as something I am powerless over that I am a victim to, that sweeps over me that I just have to get through, right? There should be a point in your life, whether it's today or next week or five years from now, there should be a point inside yourself where you do that. You are the only one who has the power over that. No one else can do it for you. And you do. You can move through it. You can reinstate anxiety back to its smaller, more appropriate state, which is alert, alert, pay attention, be careful, do well, or whatever it's initially originally was trying to tell you. So here you have this emotion, fear, right? Fear, distrust, worry. What is anxiety? It's a combination of all of those. I don't think my life will go well because of blah, blah, blah. I think something terrible is going to happen over here in this part of my life, blah, blah, blah. Everything is just. It's a weight on me. I can't even pinpoint it on anything specific. I'm just afraid of everything because it's out of my control. I've noticed with anxiety, like I already mentioned, a lot of it boils down to control. The feeling of being out of control, being a victim, being at the mercy of. Which is ironic because when you are in fact suffering from anxiety, you're at the mercy of anxiety. Yet your anxiety cropped up because you felt at the mercy or out of control over something else. See the irony? So when you start to flow, dream and bring it into your life as a practice, especially when you're in me school, something that I work with the students a lot for months and months, we look at the feeling of control as a double edged sword. It's a beautiful state to be in. When you have control, you feel competence and confidence. I've got this under control, right? It's a beautiful, gliding, easy feeling. That's control when it's operating correctly, when it's a functional feeling in your life. Most of us though have developed another darker side of control, which is if I can just control this, it won't hurt me. If I can control the way my partner is feeling, then everything will be okay. So I better act like this and do that and blah, blah, blah. If I can control my workplace more then I feel safer there. Nothing is likely to happen to me that would be bad. And so when we look at our future, we recognize that so Much of it feels out of our control. You don't know what's going to happen to you in five days or even in five minutes. You don't know. You are completely out of control. Spooky, huh? So this one instinct in us says control, control, control, control. And the other part of us says I have no control. I have no control. Where do these two imagine these as like waves of energy and they're coming from two different directions and they are crashing in the center inside of you. Ideally, you want them to both exist peacefully, to coexist. Yes. I enact control over my life. I'm not crazy, running from one thing to the next. We've all seen people who seem like God. They're out of control in their life. You want to have that beautiful sense of ease, direction. On the other hand, you want to have exquisite trust that the other part of life, the non physical part of yourself has everything under control. That's the part you don't control. What happens in five minutes, what happens in five days. So you see, yes, you have to embody control and no control. It's very Zen, it's very Buddhist, but that's what life is asking of you every moment. Anxiety is what happens in that spot in the middle when they're fighting, they're not in balance with each other. I'm out of control or I'm over controlling. Can you see how either state is giving you anxiety over controlling is. Oh my God. If this doesn't work out, if this isn't right, oh my God, these terrible things are gonna happen. Da, da, da. I gotta keep control of everything or it's gonna fall apart. And I've gotta meet these deadlines and I've gotta make this work and I've gotta anxiety opposite. Oh my God. I can't control anything. Nothing. I can't. I'm just at the mercy. Nothing ever works. And. Stop with me. Come right in the center. Come right in the center. Be here in the stillness where both exist, where you need both and you want both and you are both. Where you are physically moving through the events of your life beautifully, making good choices. And you are non physically moving into the future, moving into flow with all of your ideas, your blueprints set out. This is what I am. This is who I am. Create off of this. I am a big blueprint. Create off of this. And I release you to do so. I trust. I trust. So how do I handle anxiety? What do I recommend? What do I do? For me, anxiety is largely about that trust aspect. Loosening up my grip, letting go of some control and trusting. For me, that's my number one antidote to anxiety. And if I can't trust, I've got to figure out how did my ability to trust get broken. And then I start wanting to repair that. And I say to Flo, help me repair my trust. Help me learn how to feel out of control and trusting in a most beautiful way. Right there, that is a statement of strong, pure, beautiful intention. That is something that if you own and say deep in yourself, this is where I'm going. This is what I'm doing now. Life has no choice but to respond to that. You have made a very firm and clear declaration to yourself, to your future, to life. I am going to learn how to be in you in such a way that I am not self harming myself each and every day. And by self harm, I mean either through mental emotional cruelty to yourself in the form of anxiety, to literal self harm, such as the ways that you try to medicate or drink away the anxiety or cut away the anxiety or have sex away the anxiety, all those other compensating mechanisms smoke away the anxiety, eat away the anxiety. I refuse that I have a declaration. That, my friends, is the starting point. For more, though, I really do encourage you, check out MI School. It's a deep, deep topic. It strikes to the heart of so many of us and whether we're living fully and experiencing the life that we have been gifted with to the fullest, fullest degree. It's one of those biggies that can really hold you back. And in my experience, it is so, so, so fixable. So stay with me. When we get back, I'm just gonna give you a moment of peace, right? It's like, remember the old moment of Zen? What's that from? Daily Show? And so your moment of Zen, it's your moment. Have that together right after this and stay with me. Hi. It's summer, but on break and I know that some of you are still wondering, what is flow dreaming and what is MI School? Because I refer to both of these quite a bit in my podcast. MI School is a transformational program. It's a gorgeous and deeply revealing empowering online school worldwide where I teach you how to remodel your life in any way you choose, using the technique of flow dreaming as well as a bunch of other deeply powerful life changing processes. So me school is either enrolling or it's accepting names onto the wait list. And that means that I'm accepting students who work with me for the year and you can learn how to do what I do in life. The way I think, the way I build things, make things, heal things. Everything I talk about, you will learn directly from me how to do. You're going to create some amazing things. My me schoolers, their lives change way beyond the norm. And you don't even have to be a superstar when you go in. Some of you are, and you're ready to go bigger, play in that bigger field. And some of you are just saying, hey, help. What? What's next? Where should I go? And both are fine. Both are great if you're ready to go big. But you know that you need to deepen your own spiritual practice and your personal growth, because that's where it all comes from, right? Then this is where you need to be. Your life only grows as big as you do. So here's what to do. Go over to flowdreaming.com and click on MI School. And during these enrollment periods, you can actually set up a free phone call with me or my staff and we'll talk about it. Is it a fit? Is it interesting? During wait list times, we just put you on a list of people who've expressed interest, so we can notify you as soon as the doors open. All right. I look forward to hearing from you and even more to getting to know you as one of my personal students in me school. Now let's get back to the episode. Welcome back to the program. So I'm not going to do a whole anti anxiety or, you know, instant relief from anxiety flow dream for one thing. I don't do those on these podcasts. I just give a little, like, hint in that direction. This is what you'd feel, you know, a few moments of it. I have already recorded some beautiful ones for that very purpose, so. And again, you know where to find them. I am going to give you that moment of peace. So close your eyes with me and just relax. You may not even go into flow. You can if you want, but I want you to feel, all of you to feel right now, this lightening up inside you, a release. Drop your shoulders and breathe deeply down. Exhale slowly. Roll your neck out. Loosen your jaw. Loosen your brow. Notice where the anxiety is manifesting itself inside your body. Your body is holding it, has been anchoring it in your hips or your stomach or your throat. Let your body release it. Feel it seeping out of you, seeping out like a light that begins to pour out from you into the air around you, into the energies around you. Stress, fear, worry all releasing. It's all letting go. Allow a beautiful sense of peace to settle into you. The sense of peace looks like a beautiful lotus flower, looks like a water lily on the flat, still surface of a pond. Soft, flexible, gentle, open, yielding. You're safe. You've always been safe. You'll always be safe. You are safety. You create safety. You embody safety. Your life conspiring to keep you safe. Your flow wants you to be safe. Anything to the contrary, any feelings do not belong to you. They're not yours. You did not request them or invite them. And so you release them and you let them go. You don't belong to me. I'm safe. I'm at peace. And I trust. Above all, I trust. I feel that trust now all through me. And you want to stay in that feeling even now as you find yourself returning, carrying this peaceful place with you all the way. As you come back and you open your eyes, there you have it. You feeling better? Hope so. Even if you had no anxiety and you were just listening to this today's episode for fun, you still are probably gonna feel lighter and easier and more at peace in your heart. That's what we're after. All right, love you all, and I'll see you next time for another episode of Flow Dreaming. In the meantime, do go check out those Flow dreams I recommended. High, high recommend. Okay, until next time. All right, that wraps up our episode today. But before you go, two things. One, you can get the Flow Dreaming app in the Google, Amazon or itunes app stores. It allows you to search and sort to mark your favorite episodes. It's completely free to download, and it gives you access to the latest several dozen of these episodes, as well as to the premium episode library, where there are more than 400 episodes that date back 10 years. The app's free, so go download it now at Flow Dreaming in the app store on your mobile device. And last, if you love my show, I'm going to give a shout out to my mom's podcast. It's called the Dear Venus show and she's an amazing intuitive and a medium and super, super funny. Search the words Dear Venus in your podcast directory or online and that way you can find her, too.