Co-authored by Neill Gibson.

Are feelings of panic and anxiety consuming your world? One of the primary symptoms of anxiety is feeling uncomfortable and thinking you are trapped or stuck. Being stuck starts by dwelling on things you're worried about instead of taking action. By not taking action, you're giving yourself no option to do anything else but worry. And excessive worry almost always leads to feelings of anxiety and in extreme cases to panic attacks. Here you will find three simple questions you can use to bring relief before panic attacks occur.

Worrying can become a habit that feeds your anxiety and can lead to panic. A habit is something that is repeated involuntarily over and over again. Habits are formed from the practice of doing something so often that you start doing it without realizing that you even started. Does your anxiety lead you to a feeling of hopeless that nothing will ever change? If so, worrying has probably become a habit that needs to be broken.

"A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work." ~John Lubbock

Whether you worry occasionally or habitually, if you never develop a plan that supports actions that ease the anxiety, you can stay stuck in this cycle for a very long time.

The Sooner the Better

A habit is a learned response with a particular pattern. The only way to overcome a worrying habit is to create an interrupt--a way to stop the habitual response before it gets started. This helps you to learn a new response and create a new pattern to break the old habit.

Strategies for Breaking the Habit

The easiest way we have found to practice breaking the worry habit and create a new pattern is to can use your subtle feeling of discomfort as an interrupt to your habitual responses. The next time you notice you feel uncomfortable in any way stop and ask yourself these questions.

1. "Is there something I believe about the situation that I don't even know is true?"

Very often we're worried about things we think are true in a situation even if we have not verified that we are correct. Take the following statements:

"I never should have said that." "What if she never talks to me again?"

These statements create worry that you said the wrong thing and that she might never talk to you again.

Let's say we asked question number one about those statements. The answer might be, "I can't possibly know that she'll never speak to me again. In fact, I don't even know that she's upset about what I said." If you come up with answers like these, there will be an immediate sense of relief just by realizing you're worrying about something that might not even be true. The next step could be to take action and ask the person if they're upset in any way. Very often, what we're worried about isn't even an issue.

If you asked this question and don't find relief, go to the next question.

2. "What do I deeply value in this situation that has me worried in the first place?"

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next