Anxiety? Panic Attacks? Eliminate These Two Words from Your Vocabulary Now!

 

Anxiety? Panic Attacks? Eliminate These Two Words from Your Vocabulary Now!

 

Anxiety? Panic Attacks? Eliminate These Two Words from Your Vocabulary Now!

As Anthony Robbins once said, "Just start asking yourself different questions if you want to experience different results in your life." In my encounters with generalized anxiety disorder, two terms that shaped my day back then were disorder and virtually daily panic attacks. Those were the two words that made up a query I posed to myself at least a hundred times every day. "What if?" To illustrate how I frequently used these two extremely potent words that brought me to my knees, I must revisit a few situations that I can still clearly recall:

The Shopping Mall: Will people think I'm crazy if I have another panic attack like I did the last one? I will never be able to visit the mall or any other crowded place again, oh, the embarrassment!
What if, during a professional tennis match, my hands begin to shake uncontrollably once more and I start to feel lightheaded? Will my opponent believe that I'm going insane? Will he tell the rest of the sports world that Dennis ought to be put in jail?

What if I get cut off while driving and my anxiety levels rise once more? Will I need to stop and make another emergency call? Will I be in an accident? What if I have a heart attack this time and have to pay that $300 emergency bill again?

  Anxiety? Panic Attacks? Eliminate These Two Words from Your Vocabulary Now!

You can see how everything was dictated by the words "what if." Rarely did something like a panic attack or a continual monitoring of my physical sensations truly occur when I thought about the hypothetical. Believe me, there were many more instances of what if that I used than these three. The phrase "what if" pushed me into a corner and held me there for thirty-one days in my basement. I would occasionally take a quick stroll outside, but otherwise I stayed put and just existed.

For a while, I was more dead than alive. What then did I do? I began to replace my what-ifs with a series of equally strong and intense words, which gradually altered my association of what I once feared. I got moving in the right direction just by using these three words in my self-talk when a situation I was afraid of arose. I began substituting the three words "ride the wave" for "what if."

I relocated my family to Bali during my anxious periods in the hopes that a shift in perspective and mindset would help me get over my issues. I used to surf a lot in Bali, and I realized that it was one of the few times I was carefree, and that nothing could bother me. I wasn't thinking about things like what if I fell off the board, what if there was a shark, etc. I was riding the wave. I was free; I simply continued to ride the wave without adding any fear to the experience.

I began using the phrase "ride the wave" to describe my panic and anxiety, and it helped! Instead of posing a fearful question, I began using these remarks to myself, such as: "If I feel lightheaded at the mall, I'll just ride the wave and not add any tension to this experience," or "I feel jittery right now on this plane." What happens if this aircraft crashes? As I glide through these emotions, I'll simply ride the wave and feel this sensation without adding anything to it.

I eventually lost interest in the what-if scenarios and didn't exacerbate any preexisting anxieties. Was the reconditioning process time-consuming? Of course, if you want to make a long-lasting change, doesn't everything take time? Change your entire perspective by turning your what-ifs into comments to yourself that use the phrase "ride the wave."