Do you tend to overthink, people-please, strive for perfection, and procrastinate? These coping strategies often keep us stuck in a cycle of false safety, preventing us from addressing the root causes of our anxiety and making our anxiety worse. I’ll share my favourite self-care tool that helps break this cycle and bring balance to all areas of life, along with 4 more self-care tools you can immediately start introducing to your life. This episode offers a sneak peek into my PEACE with Anxiety method, which I’ll present in more detail in my upcoming live workshop. This episode is for you if you’re ready to transform from feeling overwhelmed to becoming empowered, calm, and confident!

1. FREE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High-functioning Anxiety Survival Guide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
2. Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠High-functioning Anxiety Blueprint
3. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask me your anxiety-related questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for a future episode.
4. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Reset & Reclaim Hypnotherapy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Program. A 4-week journey to help you gently break down the Eldest Daughter conditioning that’s been running your life, and reclaim your voice, your needs, and your sense of self.
5. Subscribe and Leave a Review

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DISCLAIMER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: All content here is for informational purposes only. This content does not replace the professional judgment of your own mental health provider. Please consult a licensed mental health professional for all individual questions and issues.

You're listening to the Peace With Anxiety Podcast.

I am your host Irene Evangelo, Anxiety counselor and clinical hypnotherapist.

I'll be coming to you every week to share actionable tips, simple strategies and useful resources to help you break free from high function anxiety.

We'll be covering how to recognize and understand your anxiety, strategies to change your thoughts and feelings, and ways to implement long lasting change.

If you are trying to overcome people pleasing behaviors, navigate anxiety, living in self doubt or something else keeping you stuck, then you are in the right place.

I know that you are ready to get to the next level of your life feeling free, calm, confident and in control.

So let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome Back to episode 17 of the Peace with Anxiety Podcast where you learn about simple tips and strategies that you can immediately start to implement in your life to ease anxiety naturally.

So thank you for being here and by you being here with me every week it tells me that you are ready to start being more self aware of your experiences with anxiety and also that you may benefit from the tools and the information I share with you in this podcast.

So today before we begin, I want to share with you an exclusive opportunity to join me LIVE in two weeks for my very first LIVE workshop info session where I'm going to be sharing with you the Peace with Anxiety method.

So if you want to understand what is getting in the way of healing from anxiety or what to do about your anxious thoughts, feelings and actions using evidence based techniques, or if you want to learn about my 5 minute exercise that is going to help you to instantly reduce anxiety naturally.

And finally, if you want to learn about the ultimate method to effectively ease anxiety, I promise it's going to be very different from any other masterclass or workshop you might have attended.

This workshop will take you from an overwhelmed, a perfectionist, high achiever to an empowered, calm, confident and in control woman.

So if you want to feel in control of your thoughts and feelings, if you want to learn why you feel the way you do, if you want to change your anxious thoughts naturally, if you want to learn how to say no without feeling guilty, if you want to calm your racing mind that don't let you go to sleep, and if you want to feel calm and confident, then I would invite you to join the Peace with Anxiety workshop and I will include the link in the show notes for you to join the waitlist.

Alright, so today I want to talk to you about what makes anxiety worse and then I will share with you one of my favorite of the Five self care tools that are also included in my method.

So today you get kind of a sneak peek inside my workshop.

I should also say that the reason why I have this method to overcome the struggles of anxiety naturally is because I don't believe that there is only one single thing out there to help you do that.

In order to reduce anxiety, we have to look at it in a holistic way because all human beings, we are complicated and we have complex needs.

And I believe that the self care tools that I will be sharing with you today are going to be very effective to gain some balance in all areas of your life.

And also everything that I share with you today are also what I use to help ease my anxious thoughts and feelings that come up in my life as well.

And feel free to share those tools with anyone you know who might be struggling with anxiety.

Alright, so let's get started.

So most commonly when someone is struggling with anxiety, they tend to set unrealistic expectations of themselves.

They very frequently make assumptions about what others think or feel about them.

They also use should or must statements such as I should have known or they must think blank of me, or they make those never and always statements like he never does this or he always does this.

Now, the reason why I'm talking about this is so you can understand that our thoughts have a direct impact on our emotions and actions.

Let me say this again, our thoughts have a direct impact on our feelings and actions.

So if you resonate with any of the above statements, I want you to think if that is true for you, and if it is, that is absolutely okay.

Because that is what this podcast is about, to educate and inform you on all things anxiety related.

And you are also not alone in this one.

I have personally struggled with high function anxiety and those must or should statements were a frequent part of my sentences.

And the reason why it's important to understand that connection between thoughts, feelings and actions is because that would mean that you are not just an anxious person.

You have anxious thoughts that lead to anxious feelings that cause you to act in an anxious way.

So if you tend to overthink people, please procrastinate or strive for perfection.

These are all just anxious actions.

They are unhelpful coping strategies that you learned along the way to cope with the anxious feelings that you were experiencing.

I really hope that makes sense and that you might see anxiety in a different light.

Now I want to talk about what makes anxiety worse.

When I work with my clients, one of the first things we do is to understand and uncover the root causes of their issue.

And sometimes they know or they may have a pretty good idea and other times they thought they did.

But after a couple of sessions, other things came up that surprised them.

And quite understandably, many of you see anxiety as the enemy as a lifelong sentence.

But I want to encourage you to remove any labels or judgments and just keep an open mind and start to get curious about anxiety.

So I kind of mentioned them before, but those coping strategies that I mention make your anxiety worse.

So overthinking, people, pleasing perfectionism and procrastination.

They do this by keeping you stuck in a cycle of false safety.

Think about it.

These behaviors that you may engage in, they give you temporary relief from anxiety and a sense of safety.

But by doing this, they prevent you from facing the anxiety and from working on those thoughts and feelings until eventually they just become some automatic actions that you don't even realize that they're harming you in the long run.

And of course you would not want to feel anxious or stressed.

So any kind of behavior that manages to numb the anxiety sounds like a no brainer.

But they are not really protecting you and they actually make your anxiety worse because you do not learn to face it.

Instead you learn to fight or flee.

And those thoughts, feelings and actions just keep repeating themselves in different situations with different people without you even being aware of them.

Alright, I really hope that makes sense because now I want to share with you my favorite self care tool.

I hope you're ready.

It is very simple, yet powerful.

Very simply, the tool is affirmations.

But because I've heard that many people struggle to see the impact of affirmations, let's just use the term self talk.

So the reason why self talk is powerful is because the way you talk to yourself or about yourself is directly impacting your feelings and behaviors.

And every time I introduce this tool to my clients, well, there has been some resistance.

Then there's also laughter and sometimes there were some tears as well.

So I am telling you this so you know that if you do attempt this exercise, be ready for whatever comes up.

And whatever comes up, it's absolutely normal.

All right?

So the last thing I'm going to say before I share the tool is that maybe even after the first time, or maybe even the 20th time that you do this exercise, you will start to feel a sense of relief and warmth and even maybe nostalgia.

And that is okay.

Take your time with it.

Don't push yourself if you're not ready.

And when you are ready, you can always come back to this episode and do it with me.

Okay, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to find a photo of yourself when you were a young child.

And then place that photo somewhere you can see it easily.

And the best place would be in your bathroom mirror because it's the first time you see in the morning and it's the last time you see at night.

So once you notice that, you start speaking negatively to yourself or about yourself.

I want you to run find the photo and I want you to look at it and understand that everything that you say to yourself, you're saying to that little girl.

Every should or must, or always or never.

Every statement you make about you, you're making it about her.

And then I want you to tell that little girl in the photo something kind about her.

And you can start with only one thing and then slowly move on to three things, then to seven, and then keep going until there's nothing else you can say.

And now, because you said all of those beautiful things to her, you have now said them to yourself.

And that is a good positive affirmation practice.

And what this practice does, besides the obvious, which is changing the way you talk to yourself, it also helps to ease the anxiety because it's all about the perspective and how you see yourself, how you see others and the world around you.

And the more you do it, the more comfortable you will become in saying kind things to yourself.

And there is no right or wrong way to do it.

It's just about doing it.

Alright, so let's talk now about the remaining four ways or four self care tools that are going to help you ease your anxiety naturally.

And this time I will focus on the body because the body needs the same attention as your mind.

Remember, you cannot change your actions without changing your thoughts and your emotions.

And since we describe emotions with bodily sensations, we then have to have ways to look after our bodies.

That's why if you want to overcome anxiety, you need a holistic approach.

There's really no other way.

So the second self care tool is sleep.

And as you know, it is recommended for adults to be getting seven to nine hours of sleep every day.

But on that I would say listen to what your body needs.

Listen to what your body tells you.

Because some people, depending on their jobs, they may need more sleep than others, which they may not get during the night.

So resting during the day may also be good for them.

And the reason why sleep is so important is because when we are asleep, the parts that get activated by anxiety are deactivated or less reactive.

So sleep and rest.

The third tool is movement.

When you move your body, you achieve the same thing as before.

The parts that get activated by anxiety are deactivated.

So 30 minutes a day is enough and essential to improve your well being.

On that note, the fourth self care tool is spending time outdoors, spending time in nature, going for a walk in a park or on a hike, or walking on the beach.

Now it's really important to do those things during the day because, well, that is the only way you can get that vitamin D, which help us stabilize our mood and just makes us feel good.

So I'm not saying you can't go for a walk at night, but try as much as you can to go in the morning as well as often as it can be.

So if you walk outside while getting direct sunlight, you have incorporated the third and the fourth tool at once.

And now if you want to take it to the next level, then you can use a part of the fifth tool, which is water intake.

Well, the final tool is about nutrition, I would say, but by that I would mean to be mindful of what you're feeding your body because you are also feeding your mind.

So food and water are very important.

Try to drink about eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated because it's gonna help you feel regulated and calm.

All right, everyone, I know there was a lot to cover and feel free to come back to this episode and maybe pause it and write down how you can introduce these tools in your life starting today.

And just to recap, we mentioned affirmations or self talk, sleep and rest, movement or exercise, spending time outdoors, and nutrition, water intake.

Before I let you go now, I want to say that as I mentioned, all of these tools are simple things that you can do by yourself to start feeling calm and present.

And as you realize they are not new things, every single one of them has been scientifically proven to help reduce anxiety naturally.

So there is nothing stopping you from trying them out for yourself and seeing the results with your own eyes, even if you don't want to, even when you have those anxious thoughts because you will not feel good, you will not feel calm just by thinking about going out for a walk.

You will only feel the difference, the and the benefits while you're doing them and after you've done them.

So even if your mind tells you that they're not gonna work, they're very simple or find excuses not to do them.

Just remember that neuroscience has shown that you can rewire your brain by creating new neural pathways and that can help you reduce anxiety.

So this basically means that you have control of your mind and therefore your feelings and therefore your actions.

And yes, it may not be easy and it may take some time and many people, they might just need support during this journey, but let me tell you, it's worth it.

I've seen it on myself and on my clients.

But if you feel stuck, unsure what to do first, if you find it challenging and you're ready to feel calm and in control of your mind, then I want to invite you again to join my Peace With Anxiety workshop, which you will find the link in the show notes.

In that workshop, I will share with you my Peace With Anxiety method that I used for myself and for my clients, which will help you uncover what is happening with your mind and body when you're anxious.

I will also share with you a five minute anxiety reducing exercise.

And because this is the first time I'm doing a live workshop about my method, I will offer everyone who joins me live exclusive discounts and bonus offers when they join me.

So if you want to know about the most common misconceptions about coping with anxiety that gets in the way of your healing, what to do about your anxious thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and finally to learn about the steps to connect with your mind and body and feel calm, confident and present, then sign up for the upcoming Peace With Anxiety workshop.

All right.

I hope this was helpful for you.

Thank you for being here and I cannot wait to hear from you as you continue your journey towards reducing your anxiety naturally.

Until next time, take care and be kind to yourselves.

Thank you for listening to the Peace With Anxiety podcast.

If you found any value in today, I would really appreciate if you would leave me a review and share this episode on your Instagram story tagging me at Irene the Anxietytherapist.

Also, make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode.

All the links are found below in the show notes.

Thank you for listening and look forward to seeing you the next episode.