Reclaiming Your Life From
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I couldn’t sleep the other night. Charlie – my three year old son – has taken to climbing into our bed in the middle of the night! So, having been woken up, I found I couldn’t get back off to sleep… due to a stout little pair of pyjama-ed legs kicking me in my ribs!
I found my mind wandering over the pain of withdrawing from life and how to go about reclaiming it from anxiety. Looking at Charlie, I realized how close I came to missing out on so much of my life because of my own anxiety symptoms and fear… and because I’d spent years deliberately choosing to withdraw from it. It was a scary thought.
Fear can be paralysing. It robs you of the confidence to put your head above the parapet and face life head on. When you suffer from anxiety, this fear is intensified. You end up choosing to ‘opt out’ of life… hiding away… hoping to avoid pain by following the path of least resistance. But what kind of life can you hope to live if you spend it in fear?
A line from one of my favourite movies comes to mind: “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” (Strictly Ballroom) It’s so true! But I’d like to go one further. A life lived in anxiety is a life un-lived.
Only somebody who has lived with anxiety – as either a sufferer or a carer – knows how devastating it can be. The affect can be seen and felt across every aspect of your life for years and years. So how does anxiety make you withdraw from life? If you’re affected in the way I was, you’ll probably recognize some of these…
- An inability to make any long-term commitments just in case… because anxiety sufferers are plagued by confidence-sapping, debilitating what if thoughts.
- A sense of isolation and ‘alone-ness’ which you can’t shake off… because you’re convinced that nobody else can possibly know how you feel.
- An over-riding fear of change… in spite of the fact that your current situation leaves you feeling desperately unhappy, unfulfilled and frightened.
- An inability to make decisions… because they involve an element of risk and you have absolutely no faith in your decision-making ability.
- An unwillingness to take any chances… because of the way your mind continually obsesses over worst case scenarios .
And these are just a handful of examples of how your anxiety is restricting your life and stopping you from reaching your potential.
Basically, people with anxiety live their lives defensively, at a level where they are merely ‘coping’ instead of ‘embracing’. They are life’s ‘passengers’, passive in their emotional and physical relationship with the world around them - rather than ‘activists’ who engage with their surroundings and interact with people.
Now I want to share something with you that will probably – hopefully! – shock you.
Have you ever sat down with pen and paper and worked out how much time you spend feeling anxious every day of your life? An hour? Two? Four? Ten?!
Work it out yourself. If you spend even a single hour a day in anxious mode, that equates to 30 hours a month – that’s two ‘waking’ days every month where you could be playing with the kids, training for a marathon run, taking up a hobby, visiting old friends… LIVING your life. Instead, you’re wasting that valuable time on your anxiety - as we said in the last newsletter, sensations are ruling your life! It’s just crazy!
Perhaps your anxiety has such a hold over you that you’re anxious for 8 hours out of every day… that's 240 hours a month… 2880 hours a year! That’s four months! A third of your year squandered!
At it’s worst, I know my anxiety had reached the point where it took over 90% of my waking thoughts. It left me totally exhausted. Looking back, I now know that by allowing this anxiety to have such a huge stake in my life took real commitment on my behalf! All that time, all that energy! I thought, wow, if I could invest that time and energy in something worthwhile, what could I achieve? Where would it take me? I realised that I was squandering my life on something that wouldn’t return any value from the investment it demanded.
So, I took control and by doing so, I was rewarded with all this extra time… and all this additional energy with which to fill the hours in a positive way! What a bonus! And it benefited me on so many levels. Yes, I had more time and energy. But the greatest benefit was the sense of liberation!
Suddenly…
- I felt I could make commitments… without that nagging voice in my head which required I set certain conditions. I no longer wrote in an ‘opt-out clause’ just in case.
- I was able to plan ahead for my future for the first time in years… without wondering whether I was going to go through with something when the time came. At last, I was free of the fear of letting people down.
- I was making decisions based on rational thinking… not fear.
- I became more goal orientated and starting achieving.
- I was making long-term life changes… like getting married and having a family.
- I felt able to take on the responsibility of caring for others.
- I was instigating change instead of hiding away from it.
- I lost that feeling of isolation. I was no longer living like a zombie, where life ‘happened’ around me. I was taking charge again, actively involved in every aspect of my life.
I cannot tell you the sense of relief and liberation this sparked in me. And the most wonderful thing is, just as anxiety is a downward spiral that sees you withdraw from life, so this liberation as you reclaim your life is an uplifting cycle which grows and grows. Once you begin, you can’t contain it!
I know that if I hadn't taken control and eliminated my anxiety for good, I’d still be on that downward spiral… getting ever more sucked into the anxiety abyss where your every waking moment is dominated by fear.
So, don’t be afraid of the fear, the unknown. Instead, look forward to all the wonderful possibilities that YOUR life has yet to put your way! Looking at my family, I’m so glad I faced up to my own fear. The answer is never in retreating from life… it’s everything to do with defeating anxiety.
The Method showed me just how fast this can be achieved, basically, overnight everything changed and that is the experience of the vast majority of my clients. Just a little of the correct knowledge and anxiety has no place to hide!
Start On The Path To Freedom From Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks This Minute. Click here to get more information
