Your Thoughts Aren’t the Main Anxiety Problem

Do you ever find that cognitive techniques to calm your anxiety don’t work?

Feeling fearful or anxious represents an all-consuming state — emotional ordeals in which calm and control often appear beyond reach.

Attempting to quieten your mind is a real challenge. While you may already have some methods for calming yourself down — likely, they don’t always work.

More recently, mindfulness has gained popularity as a means for increasing presence and calm — and indeed, practices that focus on developing awareness and being in the moment can help.

Yet some people find such practices can heighten their anxiety — remaining still and focussed when your heart is about to burst out of your chest can further ramp up the discomfort dial and make you feel intensely uneasy.

In the heat of fear or excitement, we are designed to respond with some form of decisive action — not staying still and waiting it out. Back in the wild, that might have spelt death.

So why can it be so hard to tame our thoughts? There’s a simple reason: Emotions precede thinking — not the other way around (as commonly understood).

In other words, thoughts derive from emotions — these insanely powerful human drivers. Thoughts are downstream from emotions, so you won’t effectively change your thinking unless the underlying emotional drivers have been acknowledged and addressed.

Some people use soothing mantras. Reminders like, ‘I am not my anxiety’, ‘This experience can help me grow’, or, ‘This won’t last forever’. Yet, these logical and well-meaning statements often offer minimal reassurance.

They skim across the surface with disappointing impact or don’t sink in. Whilst you get it with your head, the heart isn’t feeling it.

This lack of impact can make you feel even worse. With fearful or anxious thoughts remaining stubbornly unresponsive to affirmative statements or meditation, you might think you’re losing control and even going crazy.

Fortunately, you probably aren’t. Again, it’s just that cognitive tools tend to work better when your emotions are tamed, i.e. when emotional arousal is low, your capacity to clarify perspective, reframe things usefully and dial down anxious thinking will increase.

Like a sticking plaster — cognitive strategies can support healing, but they won’t repair the primary cause of injury (in this case, emotional upset).

It’s here that an understanding of emotional health is so important — this provides the starting point for treating any anxiety-related — indeed, any mental health- distress.

It’s an understanding I share with my coaching and counselling clients, and — as we approach World Mental Health Day (10th October)— I’d like to share it with you too.

Watch this video for a powerful framework we all need to know …

Thank you for your time.