How to Reprogram Your Mind to Become Anxiety Free
Is your mind filled with anxiety? Maybe you’re suffering from sleepless nights and feeling nervous and upset all day. Perhaps you’re worrying all the time, imagining the worst-case scenario.
Maybe having an anxiety free mind sounds impossible. Maybe you think anxiety is helpful and necessary. That it helps you solve your problems.
But if you’re honest, what you really want is to relax and calm down. You want to be free of anxiety.
It is truly possible to become anxiety free – no matter what your situation is.
A few years ago, I was an anxious mess. A family situation had me in knots. I hardly ate, couldn’t sleep, and was consumed with worry all day. In the midst of my misery, I decided to do something about my anxiety. The journey to become anxiety free was worth it!
Here’s what I discovered needs to be done:
1. Don’t Believe Everything Your Mind Tells You!
It’s true! Thoughts are just thoughts! You don’t need to trust every one of them. Not all thoughts are equal.
2. Become Aware of Your Thoughts
This means pausing long enough to become mindful of the thoughts rolling around in your mind. Take a break from your whirlwind of thoughts. Stop long enough to sort out your thoughts and feelings. Identify the ones causing your anxiety.
3. Ask Yourself: Where Do These Thoughts Come From?
This is a reflective process that takes a bit of time but helps you understand the root of your thoughts. Thoughts come from a lifetime of experiences that have formed impressions or unconscious ideas about how life works and your place in the world. For example, individuals with anxiety might have unconscious thoughts like…
- I will always be a worrier.
- Life is unsafe and scary.
- Anxiety helps me cope with problems.
- I’ll never be able to calm down.
- Something must be wrong with me.
4. Identify Core Beliefs
Unconscious thoughts affect everything you do. They influence your thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions. Why? Because they form the foundational system of beliefs by which you live.
They are called core beliefs. For instance, someone living with the core belief that anxiety is the way to cope with problems, experiences a mind automatically filled with anxious thoughts and feelings when something happens.
An event could even be neutral but those of us with anxiety will interpret it as being negative and dangerous. While someone else operating from a different set of beliefs might interpret the same event as a positive opportunity.
5. Accept and Change Limiting Beliefs
Core beliefs become limiting beliefs when you trust and act on them. Hanging on to the core belief, for instance, that life is unsafe and scary, holds you back in life. Fear and anxiety control your thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions.
The key to reducing limiting beliefs that cause anxiety is to allow and accept them. Be aware of your limiting beliefs and decide to do something about the ones that cause anxious thoughts.
Remember: You don’t have to believe everything your mind tells you!
You always have a choice to change negative thoughts and limiting beliefs into positive thoughts and empowering beliefs.
Here’s How…
Replace old beliefs with new beliefs. For instance, someone with the old belief, “I will never be able to calm down,” could change it to the new belief, “I can calm down. I can do what it takes to calm down.”
Repeat the new belief to yourself every day! Even several times a day. Make it a habit. This will start to reprogram your mind and create new neural pathways in your brain.
You can reprogram your mind and become anxiety free!
I hope you can follow these 5 steps to become aware of your limiting beliefs, change them to new empowering beliefs and to repeat them often. Take this path to become anxiety free.
However, if you are truly struggling with anxiety that keeps you nervous and troubled, watch my FREE 10 minute video on How to Stop Anxiety to learn the exact 3 steps you can take to Become Anxiety Free.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
How do you know you are anxious about something? What causes you to worry? Do you have specific triggers? Are they tangible or are they just thoughts?
Tags Reducing Stress
I have lived with low self-esteem & anxiety for 40 years.
However it is not the broad thoughts mentioned in the beginning of this article that weigh me down–something must be wrong with me–I’ll never be able to calm down–it’s the feeling of despair & not liking myself that are the basis for my poor mental health.
I’ve tried everything.
Sorry you feel that way Jen, have you done things in your life to cause this feeling or do you just feel unworthy
Either way I feel positive self talk over a long period of time could really help. Best wishes
Go to YouTube and listen to the affirmation meditations. Free and helpful. I promise.
“The feeling of despair and not liking myself”…… This is exactly the way I feel, Jen.
I slide down to this state even if I manage to come out of it temporarily!
Jen and Vasanti – it sounds to me like you need to get some help with that, either from a counsellor or a good self-help book. Please don’t be offended by what I just said – I have had help in these ways and am glad I did. It was short-term and free, but I haven’t forgotten the main things I was told that I needed to hear.
There are books with positive affirmations. Or look on the internet (Pinterest) to find a list of positive affirmations – there’s one for mornings and one for night time. They can be helpful to say out loud so you start to believe them. If you are a person of faith, believe what God says about you – He says you have value and He loves you!
Hi Jen: I’m grateful for all the suggestions and input you’ve received from others here. I think I can help you. I am an anxiety coach. If you want to explore working with me please go to janekcoaching.com and book a free call. I’d love to get acquainted with you. Jane Kennard
Excellent suggestions
Thanks, Karen. The ideas and suggestions in my article do indeed help individuals manage anxiety. Thanks for the affirmation I think probably come from your own experience. Jane Kennard
I was the victim of years of trauma, diagnosed with cPTSD. I had severe anxiety, panic attacks, and depression a few years ago and overcame them all. Once I understood the physiology behind the anxiety feelings I realized I could control it. The feelings in your body are caused by hormones released from your brain. The brain “thinks” something is concerning and releases the hormones that cause uncomfortable feelings. Fluttering in the heart, knots in your gut, a sense of dizziness… We feel the discomfort and right there is your point of choice – do I talk back to my brain as an adult would when soothing a child, or do I freak out over the feeling and let my mind run wild through a litany of fears? Letting the brain run the show at that point reinforces its fear and it releases more hormones. This creates the downward spiral into panic.
When you recognize that anxiety is your brain throwing a temper tantrum and the anxious feelings are the result of that temper tantrum, you can relax, and remind your brain that you are in control, you appreciate the warning and will take it into consideration, but that you are in fact, safe as well as completely capable of dealing with whatever comes up.
It took about 9 months to reprogram my response to anxiety, but now a few years later when I faced my husband’s suicide due to dementia, I didn’t have a moment of anxiety or panic.
You do not have to live with anxiety!
It took me a bit longer after 4 close family losses and a divorce on top of that, but I’ve come through and out the other side of letting my thoughts, feelings, and anxiety run the show. We do have authority over our thinking.
Shelly: Exactly! What an overcomer you are!! You know that a person doesn’t have to believe everything their mind tells them. Peace and joy be yours!
Susan, this is wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing your story. I agree whole heartedly that you don’t have to be overwhelmed with anxiety. I love this journey of commitment and victory. Thanks, again!!
I agree that we develop our beliefs in childhood. Mine was scary. Now I find fear holding me back for no real or reality based reason and I think too much when I am afraid. Those thought spiral into more fear.
What I need to practice is understanding the reality of what I control and alter my limiting and outdated beliefs.
I can be a friend to me.
Yes, Linda! Being a friend to yourself is powerful! You don’t have to believe or listen to those old thoughts that spiral down into fear and despair. Thank you so much for this witness to the possibility of living above anxietiy.
My triggers usually have their origin in childhood traumas. I find that when I sort out my thoughts, as is suggested in this article, I can figure out which are really worth the bother to my health. I usually sort out thoughts when I am on the treadmill. I have to prioritize my health first and above all else except God himself, so thinking in that frame of mind, I know that worrying is taking a harmful toil on my health. I am then more willing to do what it takes to resolve that worry.
Jacquelyn: Beautiful! I appreciate your sharing these insights from your own experience. I am in total agreement with the idea of sorting out your thoughts and then making a decision about what you want to do with them. Blessings galore!