The link between thoughts and anxiety

Prolonged feelings of anxiety impact us negatively both in body and spirit.

Anxiety keeps our bodies in a constant state of low-level fear which produces cortisol in our bodies. It limits the possibilities we are aware of and what we are able to envision for ourselves.

In the article How to lessen the impact of anxiety, I shared two strategies you can implement to help you begin to control the impact that anxiety has on your life.

In addition to gaining a body awareness which includes both feelings in the body and actions we take on a daily basis, we want to pay attention to our thoughts.

What we think about others and the world around us, the beliefs we hold about ourselves, and the stories we tell ourselves to help us understand the world around us greatly affect the amount and frequency of anxiety that we feel in our lives.

We know that what we think directly relates to what we feel and to the actions we take. Focusing on our thoughts can be the second layer of awareness that begins to shift our levels of anxiety.

More than likely, your thoughts greatly affected the feeling and sensations that you translate as anxiety. Once you can notice what anxiety feels like in your body, you can begin tracking what exactly caused those feelings. 

Our thoughts directly impact our emotions so tracking what we are thinking and which thoughts lead us down a spiral and create anxious feelings is a life-enhancing skill.

Once you can notice which thoughts lead you down the spiral, then you can begin making changes in your thought patterns.

One skill you learn in the Mastering Your Energy Body class is determining the origin of the thought patterns. You can consciously make changes to your thought patterns, however, our thoughts are so automatic that it takes great effort to make the changes with our will alone.

When we engage the energy body to inform what changes we need to make, we find the shift in thought patterns is much easier to maintain.