Anxiety Control Workshop is organized around two big principles, three learning categories, with four training goals to keep in mind. Here’s where your new responses start.

Two Big Principles: 

#1. Friendly Process of turning toward… “Always remember: this is a friendly process of turning towards what’s happening & how things are, so we can discover how it can be different.”  Jim Kelley, Director, ChangeWorks Institute

#2. We’re Determined to Learn…In everything we do, we’re Determined to Learn more about:

1. What’s happening?
2.  How do you know?
3.  How can things be different?

“Determined to Learn: This is a core ChangeWorks Institute Mastermind Principle.”            Jim Kelley, Director

Three Learning Categories:

Mindset: Get your mind right. Appreciate scope and impact: Understand. Focus on what’s needed to gain mastery over the impact of anxiety on one’s life. Understand the scope and impact of how anxiety works and its effects. Include information from and about clinical studies, real life stories about types of anxiety experiences, and ideas for re-patterning responses.

Solution Orientation: Go for change. Available Options: Apply. Focus on some of the available interventions for anxiety, highlighting those I consistently find most useful for managing and healing the anxiety experience.

Durability: Hang in there and thrive. Practices and Skill-building: Integrate. Keep the progress going, even when things get rough. Learn a few essential practices that I consistently find most useful to develop and master skills to better control anxiety.

Four Training Goals:

1. Get the basics. Identify & eliminate stumbling blocks, and set it up so even if the learning doesn’t seem to stick at first, there are benefits that last in between practice sessions. Do that, and from the beginning we create an unbroken experience of learning.

2. Create a robust awareness. Make the mind/body connection. Make learning both more practical and more conceptual. Do that and the mind can be used as the gate to the body, and vice versa.

3. Notice your patterns, work with them. Build intuition about and experience working with problems. Learn to say, “oh, that” when the cycle runs and respond in kind. Start playing with problems of anxiety to help find solutions that work for you.

4. Develop reflexes. Feel and live into the difference instinctively. It’s like developing a new habit — a positive one with good consequences.

“Always remember: this is a friendly process of turning towards what’s happening & how things are, so we can discover how it can be different.”  Jim Kelley, Director, ChangeWorks Institute

 

 

 

Anxious people often feel like they’ll try almost anything to make life better. Here are 3 classic mistakes anxious people make when trying to change, and what to do instead.

Mistake #1 – You’re blaming yourself: “My life sucks.” – Disliking yourself and your life, instead of realizing it’s just the experience of anxiety you dislike. 

What to do instead – Decide to make a change. Begin to heal difficulties in your life by learning to recognize both the true nature of the anxiety, and how to have compassion for yourself. You are not the problem, the anxiety is the problem.

 Mistake #2 – You’re thinking: “Maybe this is just who I am.” – Encountering obstacles on the path to controlling anxiety, and feeling as though those obstacles are permanent and immovable, even feeling them as part of your identity.

What to do instead – Decide to change your thinking. Most obstacles are impermanent in nature. Go ahead and take this opportunity to grow, to develop new skills and abilities. Adapt and start to see yourself changing. What if this is like a hero’s journey and you are that hero?

Mistake #3 – So, you try stuff: “I should be able to fix this!” – Trying to fix anxiety symptoms, instead of first transforming the response to anxiety and then discovering how it’s possible to heal.

What to do instead – Decide to get the wisdom and skills you need to live beyond anxiety.  At first it may seem difficult to see the opportunities your anxiety presents. Deciding to get wisdom and skills to live beyond anxiety will make you able to: (1. become the hero of your own story, and (2. learn how to be well every day for the rest of your life, even when life gets difficult.

Conclusion:  Change your response to anxious thoughts and feelings, and begin to heal the anxiety. Imagine, “what will my life be like?” In fact, what we’re going for is to change the way you respond to the experience by learning how to tolerate difficult feelings and be less reactive. You are not the problem, the anxiety is the problem. Start to heal by recognizing the fluid nature of anxiety — how it arises and subsides, ebbs and flows; and learn how to have compassion for yourself.

The answer is sanity, and moving towards it begins with a decision.