A 3 Step Plan To Stop Obsessive Thoughts And Panic
May 122010
Have you ever wondered what the root cause of all your panic and anxiety truly is? Well, in my opinion, it’s very likely to be the obsessive thoughts you experience. These obsessive thoughts are like snowballs that gather momentum and size and turn into the problems your anxiety causes you.
You might be thinking that this isn’t how anxiety works with you and that obsessive thoughts aren’t to blame, and if that’s the situation I’d like you to begin paying attention to your own anxiety and to what you’re feeling and thinking right before it gets out of control.
You’ll be surprised what you discover, because obsessive thoughts are at the heart of anxiety and panic in EVERYONE. I know this from talking and working with literally THOUSANDS of people who are just like you, and who are just like I was when obsessive thoughts were causing my own anxiety for 17 years.
Unfortunately, when you have an anxiety disorder, it’s impossible to drop a thought automatically like most other people can. So the solution to this problem is finding ways to consciously drop a thought before it becomes harmful – before it becomes OBSESSIVE.
So I’m gonna share a quick 3 step system you can start using TODAY anytime you have a harmful or negative thought that you need to stop before it becomes obsessive and causes you real problems. And here are the 3 steps:
Step One is to retrain your brain, ASAP. You need to get it to a place where it can spot a negative or potentially damaging thought the moment that it starts. This includes thoughts that start out very small and seem to be no problem at all. These small thoughts can grow into large ones that cause serious problems, so these need to be treated just as the obviously terrible thoughts are treated.
Step two is to learn a technique that will allow you to stop these unwanted thoughts, and the one I suggest is to simply use other thoughts to overpower the original one. This makes sense, because the only thing that can ever stop one thought is another thought. The key here is to make this second thought a positive one. Play around with thoughts – use anything that works and overpowers that original and unpleasant thought.
Step #3: Most harmful thoughts start when you’re daydreaming or when your mind is wandering. And these harmful thoughts are a HABIT. That’s why they happen so easily and sneak up on you, because you’ve trained your mind to slip into a negative autopilot. The only way to undo this is to retrain your mind, and you do that by thinking about nice things as often as you can, even if you have to use fantasies or old memories to do it. Think of it like creating a new default setting for your mind.
I firmly believe that if you can use and stick to these 3 steps that your anxiety and panic and obsessive thoughts will be in better shape than they’ve been for many years.