This article is printed from http://www.SelfGrowth.com
Are You Afraid Of Anxiety?
By Gary Grossman Ph.D.
Apr 7, 2008
“I Was!”
Life has many moments consisting of many things. That sounds pretty simple. It is. The previous sentences are just a non-anxious way of getting some words on paper as I begin this article on proactive ways of managing anxiety.
There are many causes of anxiety: some are obvious, others not. There are many effective ways of treating anxiety: psychotherapy and psychotropic medications are the two most common. As long as these anxieties are not debilitating and the person having them is not in need of professional mental health treatment, they can be readily managed.
Personal Life Coaching provides us with an antidote to anxiety that is the perfect addition to any form of treatment designed to rid us of our anxieties.
Disguised in my dumb opening paragraph is the most effective solution to any anxiety-provoking situation ever:
Just do something anything that provides movement towards your goal.
Breathe and do. Do and breathe.
The anxiety will dissipate as long as, you keep doing and breathing, while working towards accomplishing whatever you need to do, to get wherever you need to go.
Acknowledge the feeling and focus on a plan to go on with your life.
I began the article by breathing and doing. I am not a professional writer and as a result, get anxious about writing for publication. Rather than obsessing about what I was going to write about, I followed my own advice. I started out by breathing and doing, writing whatever came to my mind so that I had my beginning. The first three sentences are essentially words strung together that serve no real purpose other than as my beginning. I could have begun somewhere else. None of the words or the points I made was really relevant to this article except that they began it. They were used to make my point: that the way to break anxiety about doing anything is to breathe and do. The rest will follow with less anxiety associated with it.
You see anxiety is not fear. It is the illusion of fear. It is the body’s defense against perceived fear. If there truly is something to be frightened of, this article and the recommendations included do not apply.
Most of us equate anxiety with fear. We fear the feelings of anxiety and equate the sources of our anxiety as legitimate issues to respond to as if, there really is something to be frightened about. Avoidance of fear/avoidance of anxiety is interpreted as synonymous by our feeling system.
Personal Life Coaching makes the task of handling anxiety simple. Coaching teaches us that it is not our job to analyze whether or not these feelings are rational or to discover where they come from, just to find effective ways of addressing them and moving forward with a clear life plan.
Stop! Look! and Listen! Now Plan your Do!
Stop! “Is it Live or Memorex?” Check it out, determine whether or not there is any imminent danger or anything to be afraid of?
Look! Look around you, orient yourself and take some slow deep breaths.
Listen! To your inner truth that now knows that this is anxiety, that it is truly safe and that it is just your gut telling your head to believe “IT” is to be feared.
NOW, PLAN YOUR DO. What can you do to move forward with your life as your breathing and doing dissipates your anxiety?
NOW DO “IT”!! By doing the above you can proceed with your plan anxiety free. Your coach will help you structure your plan and support you through it as you gain a new sense of control and freedom for living.
The most insidious part about addressing anxiety is that we tend to want to respond to it as fear anyway.
Coaching provides us with an antidote to the above antidote: a supported proactive plan, that demonstrates anxiety can be dealt with, along with the steps necessary to achieve purposeful forward momentum to do whatever else we’d rather be doing than empowering our anxiety to keep us stagnant.
As a Personal Development and Business Coach:
“I Empower People to Empower Themselves
in all of the Significant Activities and Relationships in our Lives”.
COACHING PROVIDES YOU WITH A WONDERFUL COMPLIMENT TO YOUR QUEST.
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Author's Bio
For over 20 years, I worked as a clinical psychologist in both public and private practice. During that time, I counseled well over 1,500 individuals (adults, adolescents and children) in individual, group, marital, and family therapies. As a therapist and as a consultant, I collaborated with any significant social system that was necessary to assure my patients ultimate success. I made it my mission in life to jump into the middle of my patients’ greatest traumas and pain, unafraid to share those moments with them, as and until, they achieved relief.
Over the years, I have assumed many roles. I have been a program director for the mentally ill homeless. I counseled substance abusers and addicts. I founded or co-founded several health care related businesses including: The Center for Psychological Services, a multidiscipline outpatient mental health clinic; Rediscovery, an outpatient cocaine treatment program; Time For Me, Inc., a mind/body stress reduction clinic; and Residential Treatment Centers of America, an intense residential treatment facility for adolescents. I have taught, trained and supervised psychological interns and assistants and introductory psychology for the University of Phoenix.
I found my true passion as I transitioned from being a clinical psychologist into Professional Development Business Coaching.
As a Coach, I have maintained my keen sense of caring about others. I use many of my professional skills, but with a new focus. I now work with people who, like me, are seeking personal and professional change, pleasure, meaning, and joy, people who want to live in complimentary environments to sustain all that we are and want to be. Coaching affords me the ability to work with the “coachable,”: you know: “normal people” and the luxury of referring, as necessary, the “diagnosably impaired” to qualified licensed mental health professionals for psychotherapy.
I earned my B.A. from Loyola College of Montreal, Canada, 8/68, my M.A., from The New School for Social Research – N.Y.C. 7/71, and my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Fresno 7/76. I have trained with CoachVille and The Institute for Life Coach Training and am a member of both The International Coaching Federation and The International Association of Coaches.
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