My name is Johan and I’m an expert in the field of anxiety and panic. Not because I studied for twenty years and work as a psychologist but because I experienced and solved many types of anxiety myself. Think about:
Therefore, I can well imagine how you feel and what thoughts you have in anxious situations. Despite the laundry list above, I no longer suffer from this. I learned how anxiety works, where the symptoms come from and how to end it. You can learn this too! And you don’t always need a psychologist or medication to do so.
Ready to get rid of your anxiety and panic once and for all?
Anxiety and panic are like a computer program that starts up in your mind the moment you experience an anxious situation. This program consists of very specific thought patterns:
It doesn’t matter if you have social anxiety, hypochondria, panic attacks or anxiety attacks. Every type of anxiety, panic and even depression follows the above pattern. The only difference is the thoughts people have.
The funny thing about anxiety is that you actually don’t have to do anything to solve or end it. Anxiety, panic and even depressions exist because people resist thoughts, feelings, sensations and emotions. You are doing something with your anxiety and that’s the reason it returns again and again. You’re trying to:
STOP trying to get rid of your anxiety and panic attacks!
People with anxiety, panic and eventually depression end up in an endless stream of negative thoughts and accompanying feelings they don’t want. And what happens if you don’t want something? You start resisting. But you can’t resist thoughts and feelings or wish them away and expect that they will go away, that only makes the complaints worse. Because that’s not how your brain works. More on this later on.
Doing nothing is actually very hard for most people suffering from anxiety. Because a disaster (your disaster scenario) is about to happen and must be prevented at any cost!
Visually, anxiety, panic, and depressions look like this:
We humans are the only species in the world that can think cognitively. Cognitive thinking means we are able to think about what we are thinking or feeling. It’s good to realize that anxiety, panic and even depression cannot exist if you do not think about them. This is because every thought, feeling or sensation is always neutral. YOU make these thoughts, feelings or sensations positive or negative by thinking about them and labeling them.
Below are a few personal examples I suffered from for many years and some even decades. You will notice that they all follow the same pattern. Let’s have a look:
At some point, I felt a sensation in my chest near my heart. Like someone was stabbing me in the chest. This immediately raised my attention and I start creating “What if” thoughts:
Immediately I got stuck in the anxiety program. I was checking (resisting) those weird sensations in my chest all day. Checking if they were still there. Because I gave it so much attention, the stabbing sensation got worse. I also started sweating. Because I read somewhere (on the internet…) that you get pain in your arms when having a heart attack, I started focusing on my arms too. In the end, I had all symptoms of a heart attack:
I was 100% convinced I would get a heart attack and drop dead! But nothing happened…
Because the stabbing feeling didn’t go away, I asked my doctor what to do.
My doctor gave me a heart rate monitor to measure my heartbeat for the next 24 hours. The results were examined by a cardiovascular specialist. There was nothing wrong with my heart. The sensations were really there and I really felt them. But only because I feared them, didn’t want them, and started resisting them.
In this case, the anxiety program stopped running after I got the results from the cardiovascular specialist.
“I’m checked by someone who knows everything about cardiovascular problems so my heart is ok”
What really happened was:
The anxiety program stopped. I no longer had “What if..” thoughts and the sensations were gone because I didn’t focus on them anymore. I simply stopped thinking about it.
But other people might not trust the results from the specialist:
At that point, anxiety can take a nasty turn. Because when are you 100% certain that nothing is wrong? Does 100% certainty even exist?
In literally every social situation my face turned red:
Anything that had something to do with social interaction caused my face to turn red. But why did that keep happening? Because every time the anxiety program was running the same loop:
I was resisting my red face! I didn’t want it, it had to go, I despised it, it embarrassed me.
I also suffered from panic attacks. I never had panic attacks in my life until a life-changing event happened. With every panic attack, the anxiety program started:
Yet again I was resisting the awful feelings that arise when you get a panic attack. Creating all kinds of disaster scenarios and trying to prevent having a panic attack. Do you see the pattern of the anxiety program?
Resist, resist, and resist. Trying to prevent the disaster scenario from happening. Whatever your disaster scenario is, it can’t come true whatever it takes. You are resisting something from happening.
All my personal examples are different forms of anxiety. But they all have something in common. They all start with thinking in the same patterns. It doesn’t matter what YOUR anxiety is about, you are following the exact same pattern. The only difference is the subject.
Without thinking, anxiety, panic and even depression can’t exist!
You’re thinking about what you think and feel. Emotions, thoughts and feelings are not positive or negative. You make them positive or negative by thinking about it. You can stop the anxiety program from running by challenging the disaster scenario or stopping the resistance. But in order to do this, you need to know how your mind works. Let’s find out and I’ll show you a great exersice you can use for your own anxiety:
Now that you know that only your thoughts are 100 percent responsible for your anxiety and panic, we can start looking at all the things you can do with thoughts and especially what you can’t do with them. And that has everything to do with the fundamental workings of your mind. You’ve probably heard of the pink elephant exercise:
Now let’s try this! Stop reading and whatever you do, for the next two minutes it’s strictly forbidden to think about a pink elephant.
How did it go? Chances are that you did think about a pink elephant! You can’t instruct your mind that you don’t want to think about something and then expect that you won’t think about it. On the contrary, this causes you to think about it even more. This is the fundamental working of your mind.
What else can’t you do with thoughts, emotions, sensations and feelings without consequences:
Once you do one of the above, only more “negative” thoughts and feelings will be produced. What can you do with thoughts, emotions, sensations and feelings without consequences:
This is because your brain can only do two things with thoughts:
If you continuously instruct your brain to:
You are continuously instructing your brain to add up and multiply thoughts! And what do you get when you start adding or multiplying something? Always more than what you start with! So the logical result is even more thoughts and weird anxiety feelings you don’t want. And then the loop continues.
If you start to summon thoughts and feelings consciously and deliberately, greeting them or letting them be there, it is very difficult to add up or multiply thoughts. This is because it is virtually impossible to consciously and deliberately think about anything all day. Just try to consciously think about a pink elephant every second of the day. Most people already think about something else within a few minutes.
However, if you don’t want to think about something all day, you are actually instructing your mind to think about it. Because simply not wanting to think about something is still thinking. And thus you are adding up and multiplying thoughts about the things you don’t want.
Have you ever greeted your anxiety or panic? People with anxiety and panic are very preoccupied with wishing their symptoms away. Start with a greet! What!? Greeting those anxious, nasty unpleasant feelings and thoughts? I don’t want that at all! Yet you will find that when you greet your anxiety, panic and even depression in a friendly and sincere way they become less intense. If you do this long enough your symptoms will even disappear completely. So instead of thinking:
“Ohh no, there are those weird thoughts and feelings again…”
Say to yourself:
“Good morning anxious thoughts and feelings, welcome! How are you?”
After all, you can’t build up resistance when you sincerely and deliberately greet thoughts or feelings. Because how can you resist something that you are deliberately trying to evoke? STOP trying to get rid of your symptoms and start greeting them.
Now you know how anxiety and panic work, and now you know why you keep getting stuck in it:
You are resisting, it has to go away!
It’s not about your sensations, thoughts or feelings but your desire to get rid of them. The trick is to learn how to negate disaster scenarios or cease your resistance. Without going against the fundamental workings of your mind. Any therapy or any method which aims to reduce your anxiety symptoms is hopeless. You cannot reduce thoughts. Only add up and multiply.
The only real method that will 100% eliminate your anxiety and panic is to STOP trying to get rid of them. Your goal is not trying to get rid of your anxiety and panic but start looking for ways to greet them.
Then perhaps my e-book is for you. You can think of the chapters above as the intro. In my e-book I go much deeper with various exercises, explanations and tips. All focused on the fundamental workings of your mind.
You will not learn anything on how to get rid of your anxiety but everything about greeting them, summoning them and letting them be.
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It’s important to me that you only buy my e-book if I think it’s going to help you. Of course, I don’t know your personal situation but I can give some guidelines to determine if you are going to benefit from this e-book:
This e-book is right for you in the following cases:
When is this e-book less/not suitable for you:
I’m going to strongly discourage you from buying my e-book if you haven’t learned anything new at all about anxiety on this page. My e-book continues where the information on this page stops. If you haven’t gained any new insights you’re probably not going to get that from my e-book either.
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