Anxiety is an emotional, psychological and physical experience, yet it exists entirely in our imagination.

Anxiety can be deeply unpleasant and it sometimes cruelly affects our lives, and yet it’s essential to our survival, and ironically, it can enhance our performance in times of trouble. But anxiety is a problem when it’s persistent — even when there’s no need for it.

Having said all that, it can be overcome if you understand it’s cause, and learn to control it.

You are not alone because many people feel anxious without showing it. Anxiety can be a very personal and private thing. It’s causes, and the way you feel it, are many and varied, but it’s useful to understand there are things in life that cause it, and that there are common forms of it.

You should understand that you are the only one who has ever felt this way and that you are not alone, and you can control it and beat it!
Life is full of significant changes. The bad news is that this is normal! But if it becomes overwhelming or starts to adversely affect your daily life, it needs to be addressed. For instance, the hormonal imbalances that accompany adolescence along with the academic pressures, social adjustments and increased responsibilities life suddenly throws at you are perhaps surprisingly common. For the first time, you find yourself in a new environment and having to fend for yourself!

There will inevitably be the stress and anxiety of job interviews and workplace politics, not to mention new relationships… or conflicts. And then there’s family, parenthood, and a seemingly never ending parade of personal or financial disasters! Yes… life can sometimes be a bitch… but then everyone in the world has their own little pile of problems and challenges to overcome.

Eventually, at least for half the population, there will be the menopause to overcome. Before you know it, new challenges start to arise. Moving house, changing careers, bereavement, financial difficulties, unexpected personal disasters (the list is endless) will also gang up on you and conspire to cause anxiety. And as you grow old and begin to worry about your pension, your health, and your finances, the pressure continue to pile on.

It’s important to understand that anxiety is part of of the human survival strategy.

Feeling anxious or pressured makes us think of a ‘Plan B’ — an escape route if you like for when things go wrong. Plan B forces us to work out alternative strategies to solve problems, just as our distant ancestors did in times of drought or food shortages or conflict.

There are different kinds of anxiety and we can break them down into neat little boxes. If you experience anxiety, you will find that you fit into one of these types:

• The most common is the Catastrophiser — someone who always assumes the worst will happen.
• Catastrophisers convince themselves the worst will happen, regardless of the fact that it most probably won’t.
• The all-or-nothing thinker — the person that thinks in extremes: they think they’re either completely safe and well, or dying of a heart attack. Things are either absolutely fine, or absolutely dreadful. If you think like this, try to understand that whatever the problem, it will pass.
• Over-generalisers take bad experiences and project them into the future, seeing them as a template for the future, a bit like the movie Groundhog Day! They reach a conclusion based on one occurrence, and go on applying that conclusion to every other event in their lives, thinking that If it happens once, it will keep happening. It won’t.
• Crystal ball gazers believe they can see a future filled with pain and suffering, a future where everything goes wrong.
• Mind readers make assumptions about what other people are thinking or doing in relation to you. These thoughts are invariably negative… and mistaken. They believe the postman is actually spying on their house so he can come back with hi friends and burgle it.
• The mental filterer sifts out all the positives in a situation and dwell only on the negatives. They are adept at removing any and all reassuring facts from the information they have infant of them, and focus on the one tiny thing that worries them. This tendency to ignore positives in favour of negatives can cause considerable distress.
• Labellers define themselves in a particularly extreme and negative way. This way of thinking is particularly destructive because they will take one single attribute and turn it into an absolute. One bad experience will mean a lifetime avoidance of that particular activity. For instance, getting caught in a rainstorm means they will never leave home without an umbrella. Even in the middle of summer.
• Personalisers believe they are personally responsible for anything bad that happens, even if it has nothing to do with them. They may even feel guilty if they don’t do anything to prevent an imaginary catastrophe!
• Exaggerators believe that they are doomed, that everything always goes wrong and will always continue to do so. Anything even slightly concerning will be exaggerated, as will the meaning of it. If they see a story on the Six-o-clock news that the Covid jab contains aa secret tracking device invented by Bill Gates, they will believe they have it in their blood stream, regardless of the fact that it’s bollocks.

Whatever form anxiety takes, the first step on the road to recovery is to identify the thoughts associated with it. This will help you see that your anxiety isn’t as out of control as it feels.

It’s important to be able to recognise the kinds of thoughts that trigger your anxiety, because it’s important to understand that these are the thoughts we need to address and then eliminate.

This should be straightforward because the same thoughts will recur regularly, but if you’re not sure, ask yourself these questions. You won’t necessarily need to answer all of these questions. Even if you do, you may find the answers are quite repetitive. This is because anxious thoughts usually fall into patterns.

• When I feel anxious, what’s going through my mind?
• What was I doing or noticing before I started to think these thoughts?
• What triggered this bout of anxiety,?
• What did that situation make me think about myself?
• What is my worst fear, and why?
• What do I always worry about?
• What do I keep predicting will happen?
• What types of conclusions am I jumping to?
• What am I thinking about when I feel strong anxiety sensations?

People haunted by frightening thoughts over a significant period of time without them actually materialising and continue to cling to them, no matter how unlikely or ridiculous they are are often thought of as paranoid. But this is what an anxious mind does and those individuals need help to isolate these repetitive thoughts and banish them for ever.

One way is write down the thoughts on a sheet of paper and add a tick every time they recur. Then compare the thought with reality. Doing this will help you see there is no connection between the thought and reality!

Repetitive negative thinking can be ‘cancelled out’ by occupying yourself with a hobby — something that’s not just interesting, but absorbing — something that commands your full attention — and you’ll notice that those anxious thoughts disappear.

Another good strategy is the understand that whatever you think other people may be thinking, they’re not, and you shouldn’t waste another second of your life worrying about it.

Most important, you should give your mind a good long rest from engaging in imaginary future catastrophes. Counting backwards slowly from 10 can help regulate your thoughts. Time your breath with each number… slow down your breathing… and this will help you feel more relaxed.

Hypnosis can provide a short cut to normality — the treatment is quick and effective. The therapist will ask you about you thought patterns, exploring how these came about in the first place, and one by one will help you eliminate them, filling the gap with more positive and inspiring thoughts and ideas.