Which statistic is more concerning to you?

1. 32% of adolescents have an anxiety disorder (WHO.int)

2. Almost 9/10 of young people felt anxious in the past two weeks (mentalhealth.uk)

For me?

It’s both.

Especially because I used to be a part of these statistics.


But not anymore.

The way I did this was definitely, different.

So i’m going to share how I cured my own anxiety as a teen, (something numerous counsellors couldn’t do).

Maybe you never feel anxious…

Maybe you feel anxious right now…

Whatever the case,

If you can give me 5 minutes of your time, I genuinely believe…

You’ll never feel anxious again.

Big promise right?

But I mean it.

To show you why i feel so strongly about this,

Let’s take it back….

22nd Feb 2014- 8:47am

There I am, 10 years ago.

Sitting in a cubicle of a toilet of my school’s gymnasium.


I’m know I’m late for registration.

But I still sit there.

My heart is hammering it’s way out towards my white shirt, now wet with sweat.

I felt physically sick and unable to move.

So I just stay there and wait until the feelings subside.

To this day, I still can’t explain what happened.

You’d think something serious had happened to me,

That I was in genuine danger.

But this is a story like many others in my early teens.

This is just anxiety.

Anxiety is:

All I had to do was attend registration as usual,

And that was how my body reacted..?

I knew something was up.

I had spent much of my life as a confident person and now here I was, afraid of going into a classroom with people I had met 100 times?

It didn’t make sense…

So I looked online for answers.

I saw counsellors who referred me to doctors.

But nothing they suggested helped.

At times it just felt like they were reading off a Web.md article.

So I took matters into my own hands.

I wanted to know, what caused anxiety, really?

So I started learning about the brain…

Turns out…

This little fucker was causing my problems!

The amygdala links our senses to our emotions. It also helps regulate rational thought.

It’s responsible for our fight-or-flight responses.

So why was I getting a fight-or-flight response for something as normal as signing in for the day at school?

Because I (we) have an under-utilised amygdala.

What do I mean by that?

Basically, we don’t experience enough ‘actual’ danger anymore, and our brains haven’t caught up yet.

Because the amygdala is underused, it starts overcompensating, resulting in a fear response for a non-threatening stimuli.

(like registration)

Think about it…

When was the last time you were in genuine danger?

We walk through life above the food chain.

There aren’t any bloodthirsty predators jumping at our throats anymore.

But we still have the same brain we did all those years ago.

And this phenomenon was causing my problem.

When I was feeling anxious.

My fear response was being triggered by non-threatening things:

This is the root cause of 99% modern anxiety.

• Caring what people think

• Public speaking

• Social situations

Let’s be honest, should any of these things trigger our fear response to keep us alive?

Of course not!

But they do.

I’m not trying to invalidate people with anxiety,

But in my opinion…

Most anxiety is one great big irrational lie.

(Obviously trauma based anxiety not included in this).

Understanding this is the first step to leaving anxiety behind.

Still,

Understanding alone isn’t enough.

So here are 4 things I did (and still do) to get rid of anxiety / negative thinking:

1. Avoid self-fulfilling prophecies

“Be careful of the story you tell yourself.”

A big problem with mental health conditions is that telling yourself you have them, actually makes them worse.

We conform to our labels.

If you believe you have anxiety and that’s just how life is going to be.

Things won’t change.

I made this mistake myself:

I self-diagnosed before seeing a professional and then when they confirmed my “prophecy” things only got worse.

Sounds crazy…

But only when I stopped believing I had anxiety did I started to get better.

2. Look at your physical health first

Whenever I’m not feeling my best mentally, I can always trace it back to not looking after my body.

Whether it’s diet, not moving enough, or drugs/alcohol.

They all play a part in how you’re feeling.

For days or even weeks after

I’ve always believed that an over-active mind is caused by an under-active body.

So if you’re struggling mentally, take a look at your physical health first.

3. Challenge irrational thoughts.

As we covered, most anxiety is entirely irrational.

Still,

It can be very hard to remind yourself of this.

So, when you’re thinking negatively, try to catch yourself and question your thinking:

• Is this fact or fear?

• Is this a likely scenario?

• Are these thoughts helping or hindering me?

Repeat after me:

YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT FACTS.

They are just electrical activity in your brain.

So don’t let them define you.

4. Practice breathe-work

By breathe-work I don’t mean sitting cross-legged and chanting.

ooooooommmmmm.

I mean any kind of intentional breathing.

Being aware of your breathe can and does reduce feelings of anxiety.

It’s not woo-woo.

There’s a reason the world’s top athletes and CEOs do this stuff on a regular basis.

Because it works.

So try it out.

Cheers for reading :)

I truly believe combining all of this these along with a healthy food and information diet can help anyone, anxiety or not.

Peace x

H

MMM V1.17