When clients first start working with me, they generally experience a lot of stress and anxiety. They are accelerated, their mind never stops, and it is normal for them to be tired, pressured for time, and never quite get to do everything on their lists.
Would you say that is a normal state? I used to. I sometimes couldn’t sleep because I had so much tension and stress in my body. And then we think things like “If I can only get this done or solve that, then I can relax”. I just realized that I have not felt real stress for quite a while, and that my clients release and end stress in the process – almost always.
It’s not that difficult. It does not have to take long. Let me share a few key steps and realizations with you.
1. Take Control. First we have to realize that experiencing stress and anxiety does not originate in the outside circumstances, or in the demands and challenges we are facing. Instead, it says something about the way we process those challenges, and what they make us feel and think. We have to take responsibility for our experience. We are not the victim of overpowering demands and responsibilities! We can determine and change how we experience life. Now, don’t fall into the opposite difficulty, don’t blame yourself. It is not your fault, that you are too sensitive or take things too personal. This is not about fault, not about guilt, not about blaming. It is only about recognizing, that it’s possible to not get stressed out, and that you can learn how!
2. Recognize the stressful thought patterns. Let me just share a few of the typical beliefs that create stress and anxiety, and check if you recognize yourself and your way of thinking:
- It’s too much. I won’t make it.
- I have to hurry. I have to be faster and more effective.
- I’m not good enough. It’s not good enough.
- Others are better, more effective, and get better results.
- I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to solve this problem.
- It has to be better. I have to make more effort.
- It won’t be good enough. Others will not be contented with what I am doing.
- It has to be perfect.
- It’s hard. It’s difficult.
- I’ll be rejected.
- I’ll fail.
These are just a few examples of limiting and negative thoughts. I am sure you will come up with some of your own when you read through them. Isn’t that tough? That we expose ourselves to that kind of negative talk and thinking? No wonder we are stressed out!
When we see these negative thoughts and recognize what they do to us, we can change them. There are a few tools in Energy Psychology that a especially efficient and good for completely releasing these thoughts from your mind – in a way that they won’t come back. But a first step is to correct them. You have to find a positive affirmation, such as “What I do is good enough.” – and you replace a negative thought with this positive one, every time it comes up. Thereby you correct your mind and thinking little by little. You can even make a list of positive affirmations, and put them up all around you, on your mirror, your screen savers, or in your decorations on the walls. Place them so you will remind yourself to think them, as often as possible.
3. Be willing to feel. Anxiety and stress are first and foremost sensations in your body. Restricted breathing, pressure or heaviness in your chest or belly… I could go on and on. Stress gets worse for us because we operate under the assumption that it must not be there, and that we should not have those sensations – we resist them. What if we stop resisting? What if you just use the minutes when you go to the bathroom or take a break, to breathe consciously and give the stressful sensations room in your awareness? Observe them, how they are in your body, without trying to change anything. This is actually how you can release these sensations completely, simply by being willing to feel them, by surrendering to them, by letting go of the mental story about them and just focusing on feeling them, fully and wholly, in the here and now.
Try, I would love to hear your experiences about this exercise!
At the end, stress is the experience of an energy in our body. That energy can be witnessed in the form of thoughts, or sensations, or emotions. If we are willing to feel them and to be aware that we are not subject to them, but that they are just an energy that we are experiencing, than the experience can transform. We can use tools for that to speed up the process. But we can also transform it by just being with it, directing our attention and our thoughts, and choosing differently. As we make ourselves aware of different truths, and different parts of ourselves, we can shift the way we process and the way we experience the outside reality.
What I want to convey is: You can say goodbye to your stress, and discover who you are beyond this experience! I know you can do it. And I know you deserve it! If you would like my help figuring out how to do that, please feel free to schedule in a free call here. Have a wonderful day!
