Even more on anxiety

When we’re suffering with extreme anxiety, we nearly always have a fear of going inside our bodies. It is after all where we feel our pain. When we don’t feel our pain because we are frightened of it, our unfelt pain becomes anxiety. The longer this goes on, the worse our anxiety becomes.

So anxiety is also a sign for us to stop avoiding our pain. Avoiding and dissociating work brilliantly in the short term, they are fantastic survival mechanisms, but life requires that we face our pain and our true selves at some stage. Whether we like it or not. Indigestion, whether physical or mental, is unsustainable in the long run. We need to digest what happens in our lives. Anxiety strongly encourages, i.e. forces, us to heal or pain, the more pain we feel the more we want to heal that pain (or make it go away, which again, does not work, it’s just another avoidance tactic). Pain is a fact of life, what we need are more skills to deal with pain so it doesn’t fester and become illness, physical or mental.

Try tapping on some of the following phrases:

Even though my body is humming with this anxiety and it feels … I honour these feelings, they are trying to tell me something

Even though it’s excruciating to listen to anxiety’s messages, I just wish it would go away, I completely accept how I feel

Even though this pain feels like a mountain I can never climb, I’m willing to take a small step, I don’t have to do it all in one go

Even though this pain feels painful, I love and accept myself anyway

Use whatever reminder phrase feels right on the points, or just tap without saying anything, if you’re feeling anxious, you’re already tuned in and EFT works best when you are tuned in. Being tuned in means feeling anxious or being triggered by something. Stop what you’re doing and tap and you’ll feel some, if not all, of your intensity reducing. Resolving anxiety does take some persistence, so don’t give up hope!