Much has been written and said about anxiety, yet every second patient I meet suffers from this problem. It seems that despite the great knowledge that has been accumulated in the treatment of anxiety, it continues to spread. Below is a list of several methods for overcoming an anxiety attack, methods based on NLP, mindfulness, guided imagery or time line therapy.
The fact that the brain does not distinguish between imagination and reality helps to overcome anxiety in some of the methods mentioned below. Hope at least one of the following will help you:
1. Concentration on breathing
Breathe deeply, and concentrate on breathing. concentrate on the incoming and outgoing air only. Welcome every thought that comes, and go back to thinking about the breath. Respect every thought, let it pass and return to thinking about the breath and only the breath, the only thought that dominates is the thought about the breath. In a few minutes the anxiety will disappear.
2. Meditation
Meditation can be a preventive measure for anxiety. It is advisable to do the meditation immediately after waking up every day. Persistence is the key to success.
3. Mindfulness
Take a mindfulness course that gives tools to overcome anxiety.
4. Imagine anxiety direction invert
See where the anxiety enters the body, change its direction in your imagination. When you change the direction of the entry of anxiety into your body in imagination it causes the anxiety to dissipate.
5. Use of sub modalities
Every occurrence is perceived with the help of sub-modalities and embedded within us with its help. Therefore, during an anxiety attack, if we manage to change the anxiety by changing at least one sub-modality, the anxiety will disappear. For example, a patient told me that for him anxiety is a black ball in his stomach. I asked him to paint the ball in gray in his imagination and move it towards the feet. He did so enthusiastically and felt immediate relief. It is enough to change something, in feeling, in visuals such as color, size, light or darkness, in hearing, such as changing a tune, or a smell to dispel anxiety.6. Using an imaginary instrument
Building an imaginary device to kill the anxiety also works great. The principle is to build in imagination a device that dispels anxiety. There is a detailed example in this blog I wrote in Kill Anxiety
7. Anchoring resources
Build an anchor, as in the Resource Anchoring Blog: anchoring is creating a deliberate connection between a certain sign and some emotional state, so that the emotional state can be easily and simply restored. Anchoring is a natural phenomenon that occurs randomly all the time in our life. Anchoring occurs when any sub-modality: visual, auditory, sensory, smell or taste connects to an emotional, thought or behavioral response. In the NLP approach, the anchoring phenomenon is deliberately used in order to create a positive resource, especially where there is difficulty to allow a person to respond in new ways. Anchoring is the intentional linking of a sign, movement to evoke a mental state so that you can easily recall that state later. The most common use of anchoring is to allow a resource to be more available in situations where it can be useful. For example, when we go to the sea or wherever we like to be, we will feel the experience with all our sub-modalities, and check what we see, hear, smell, touch or feel and then we will make an anchoring movement such as: we will pinch ourselves or put our left hand on the wrist of our right hand, or any other movement. Then during anxiety attacks we will activate the anchor, do the hand movements we did while anchoring and by doing so we will return to the same feeling we had during the positive experience, we had while anchoring. This is how the anxiety dissipates.
8. Strength Time
We will remember a time of strength, when we were anxiety free. How was it once when we were carefree, maybe during childhood, when we had no anxieties. With the help of thought and sub-modalities we will return to this point in time, in the timeline of our lives. Remind ourselves of this moment in life, with all our sub-modalities, what did you feel, see, hear, smell taste then. We will prepare such strong points in advance and in times of anxiety we will return to them. This will help us dispel the anxiety.
While using any of these processes we choose to use to dispel anxiety, we need to remember that we are doing the best we can, and then let go.