Anxiety can show up in many different ways.
Anxiety isn’t always feeling nervous and panic attacks.
Anxiety triggers fear in our bodies.
And fear activates our emergency programs of fight, flight or freeze.
I recently worked with a man (details changed) who growing up was the youngest child in an all boy family.
He came to me for anger issues.
His anxiety was activating his fight programme.
Growing up he said there had been lots of boisterous behaviour which as the youngest he had often got the brunt of.
So he had learnt early on, to get what he wanted, he had to fight for it.
And he learnt well!
The trouble was he was now in his late 40’s and he was still doing it.
It was like an automatic reflex.
He felt his anger rise, reacted by shouting or fighting and then was full of remorse afterwards.
It was affecting his business; people were avoiding hiring him or working with him.
Some friends enjoyed the entertainment.
Knowing if they went out with him it would always kick off.
But others started seeing him less and less as they knew it would always end in trouble and were fed up with it.
But the thing that tipped the balance.
The thing that made him pick up the phone.
Was the impact on his family.
He was a single dad with 3 teenage sons and a daughter, and they were all in his words very hot headed.
He was always breaking up fights between them.
It felt like history was repeating itself.
He said he knew they had learnt it from him, and he wanted it to stop for all of them.
So after an initial chat he booked in on my 4 week anxiety therapy program.
He was worried that therapy would make him weak and a pushover and he didn’t want that either.
So we established the reaction he wanted to have which was to feel calm instead of angry.
He wanted to have time to reflect on his response rather than just react.
So that’s what we did.
By working directly with his subconscious.
We were able to clear negative emotions and traumas from his past.
We found the triggers that he knew would ‘set him off’.
And replaced them with feeling calm and walking away for his time to reflect.
And worked on creating the person he wanted to be.
A strong, calm and in control head of the family. Someone his children would look up to.
Within 4 weeks he was feeling calmer & happier.
He was having conversations with his children and felt closer with them.
This had helped them to talk to each other too and the whole atmosphere at home was more chilled.
He had walked away from several situations that we would have reacted to before.
He said he was noticing small things like the sun shining, and children playing.
He realised he was smiling more and singing in the car.
He was delighted with the result.
Wished he had done it sooner.
And couldn’t wait to see what other changes would happen.
If this sounds familiar and you want to do something about it.
Let’s chat.
