Anxiety is known as a negative emotion and people are often labelled as having anxiety when the feeling of worry or fear is ongoing or reoccurring. 

We never say "Paul has anxiety over crossing busy roads," as this seems  'normal' to feel nervous crossing a busy road as you have a good chance of being hurt or killed.

We also don't say "Sally has anxiety over spiders." This is more commonly said as "Sally has a fear of spiders."

It is important to understand the different terms we use as these labels can make a big difference to your mindset, or the mindset of someone trying to move on from anxious feelings. 

I often hear in my treatment room, "It's not normal, I'm a weirdo, there's no reason for me to feel anxious." It is not understanding what causes their anxiety which creates the feeling of not being normal which adds to the anxiety the person is feeling. 

Once you understand that you have a deep-rooted fear of let's say, feeling hurt, and how that shows up for you, the feeling of 'not normal' reduces and so does some of the anxiety.

Once you are labelled by yourself or others as HAVING ANXIETY or I AM AN ANXIOUS PERSON, you then live your life to those expectations. Now you have two problems, the anxiety and the risk of losing your identity if you move on from it.

The truth is all these words, phobia, fear, anxiety, panic, worry, and stress are the same. Your brain has a part called the Amygdala. This identifies danger and warns the body. So whether you are in danger from crossing a busy road, a spider or a deep-rooted emotional fear the Amygdala will sense this danger and alert you with some unpleasant body responses!

You need this warning mechanism as it literally keeps you alive, but you do not need it to be activated so easily. If you have an underlying emotional fear that affects your everyday life, which we call anxiety, you have choices; put up with feeling uncomfortable and learn to live with functioning anxiety or seek support in undoing that deep-rooted fear to stop it from triggering the Amygdala.

It can be scary to address, as who will you be without it? But it is so worth it.

Action Plan

If you are not sure what your life would look like or who you would be, create an alter ego and test it out. Do you remember any time you felt calm, strong or confident? Who was the version of you? If not, just make one up. Mine was Tina, she was brave and could do things Tammy could not. I got my kids involved too! They would often say "Mum, get Tina to do it" if they could see I was struggling. 

People with anxiety have amazing imaginations, we imagine all sorts of stuff going wrong, so put that imagination to good use, and create your alter ego until you can really imagine who you would be without it!