Thoughts are just thoughts

A good tip I'd give to anyone with anxiety would be to seperate yourself from your thoughts.

Thoughts are just mental events that happen in the brain.

For a long time I was bitter and wanted an answer as to why some people have panic attacks and go on to live a normal life and some people develop an anxiety disorder.

The answer for me is that they do not 'worry about worry'

They do not spend hours nit picking their past for 'answers', looking at their health, wanting to know the ins outs, what ifs. They just allow it to be and get on with their life. 

As a result of this, I cut this out of my life because i realised that it was making me feel worse and not helping me. It was hard at first because I as you may do, felt postive things about worry such as it 'preparing me' for possible events or outcomes. This is flawed because I cant prepare for every outcome, it doesnt make it feel better, it actually makes me feel worse.

I then looked at what thoughts were since I tried to suppress them and didnt go out incase I thought something 'dangerous'

Thoughts are just mental events that happen in the brain. But for people with anxiety we add specific importance to certain thoughts, we give them 'the stage' in our mind and let them play out. I realised that what I was thinking never correlated with the true events of reality. For example Id worry Id panic when my partner came round, Id worry that if i got anxious id go crazy. I did not question my attention to these thoughts ot yhe importance I was giving to them. I thought because I had thought them, they must be 'true' or 'possible'. But did these things ever happen? No. The closest I came to panicking was worrying I would panic. 

When I get an 'anxious thought' now I allow it, don't engage and realise it for what it is - just a mental event. I don't try and push it away or run from it because that is engaging and allowing it to be 'frightening'. Do not allow it to become anything other than what it is.

A person on here gave me a brilliant explanation of this too using Tibetan Buddhism, 'leaning to the point' Anxiety is an illusion.

When you are anxious, it is difficut to see the world without anxious glasses on. But when you realise you can choose which thoughts you give attention to, you see that you are in control and you do not have to live an anxious life xx 

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