Doorway To Freedom

Following from my last post on anxiety I am going to look at different forms of anxiety and how it can hinder us from enjoying life and achieving our goals.

Performance is often hindered by anxiety and low self-esteem, which are in fact key elements to obtaining good results and reaching our goals.

Generally a person’s self-esteem starts to suffer early in life, sometimes as early as during pre-school years and even more so during primary school.

Children process information and learn at different speeds and also at different levels. So it is inevitable that with so many new experiences to be integrated into their daily routine some may change the way a child perceives him/herself.

Sometimes the parental expectations will add to feelings of not doing well enough which a child internalises as not “being” good enough.

In other instances a background of comparison between siblings from the parents ignites the most ruthless competition and someone is bound to suffer!

Or again, when a child is raised in an environment prone to criticism and poor in recognition, low self –esteem is instilled very early on.

The worst cases of low self-esteem are obviously due to childhood trauma especially if it was perpetrated over a period of time.

Whatever the origins may be, living with anxiety makes everything difficult, however human beings are ingenious creatures and will go to great lengths to find ways to get around the issue in order to cope with it and this is often done by ingeniously avoiding the situation that brings on the anxiety. Usually though, there will come a time where a particular situation bringing on the anxiety cannot be avoided and then real panic kicks in!

What happens next is close to a disaster as our brain is in fight or flight mode and cannot even register properly what is going on let alone deal with it in a smooth, confident manner!

Having to make a speech our mouth all of a sudden becomes dry and words come out slurred and all we can think of is the public looking “at” us trying to figure out what is said so they can actually get some value from the speech!

Sitting an exam we find our mind void. Of all that we studied throughout the year are only a few notions left and no matter how hard we try to remember, other stuff it is simply not there!

Sitting in the driving school’s car our hands shaking and our forehead covered in sweat, feeling hot and claustrophobic while trying to co-ordinate everything and we simply can’t make it happen so every minute that goes by seems an eternity and there is just no way we can face that final exam after all the money invested in to it!

And when we are sitting in front of a few managers for an interview we feel so small and our experience seems so insignificant that we’d rather the floor collapsed and sucked us in than tell them about how good we are for the job!

Or what about when we really like that person and keep promising ourselves to let them know “next time” but for some reason dates keep going by and those words haven’t come out just yet!

Or again, I think many of us know what it is like to lay in bed and simply be unable to switch off, tossing and turning, “trying” to fall asleep but the harder we try the longer we lay awake! This can be the result of simple stress caused by a very busy life or the result of exhausting our mind throughout the day looking for and finding all sorts of ingenious ways to try and avoid the situations that bring on anxiety ending up anxious to finally get a good sleep and that is not going to happen once again!

Whenever we find ourselves having to confront a situation that resembles a test when it is natural to be in an excited/tensed state the feelings can easily spiral out of control as one feels unable to deal with them.

In most cases we don’t even know where they come from and we tend to think that at least if we knew the cause of them and how anxiety works it would be easier to get over it, but rest assured that knowing what, why and how is often not of assistance in resolving a deep issue like anxiety.

Knowing helps understand which gives us a sense of power which is important to make us feel better, however feelings are more important than knowledge and the resolution of any issue comes about from working with feelings and with it comes empowerment and a peace of mind that is the foundation of setting about achieving your goals.

I hope this post has helped you or can help someone you know gain insight on certain aspects of yourself or themselves.

Please feel free to like and share and I’m always happy to chat about how life can improve.

Remember:

“Nothing is Impossible, the word itself says I’M POSSIBLE!”

All the best

Penelope

0858377141