If daily skirmishes with anxiety leave you frustrated and worn out, you are certainly not alone. I was a worrier for many years. Back then I thought anxiety was just the way things were. If you’re alive… you worry. My mother worried and so I worried.
Those of us navigating the 60+ years, may easily find ourselves mulling over health concerns, retirement issues, or family problems at any moment of the day… or night. You name it, we worry about it.
Turns out, generalized anxiety is the most common mental health disorder among older adults. A 2017 study of older adults in six countries found that more than 17 percent had experienced an anxiety disorder within the previous year. While increased anxiety is normal as people age, it doesn’t have to be that way at any life stage.
Reasons to Feel Anxious
Often, there is much to worry about! Will Social Security cover needs? What’s the best time to retire? Would it be wise to move closer to adult children? How can physical ailments or illness be managed? What’s going to happen with difficult family relationships?
Living with questions like these generates stress and feeling constantly overwhelmed. All kinds of concerns make a calm and focused mind a fantasy. Staying preoccupied and distracted creates frustration and sleepless nights. Thoughts like “What’s wrong with me?” and “I’m just not good enough to manage life” cloud logical thinking and decision making.
About 10 years ago this was my life. I was smack dab in the middle of an emotional nightmare.
I was a cesspool of anxiety. A good night’s sleep was a mystery. Disturbing relational and legal problems surfacing in my family had me tied in knots. I was obsessed with negative, scary thoughts.
Visits to my doctor increased. Xanax became a calming friend. To say the least, I was a major mess. Months later, as this crisis shifted into low gear, I declared, “I’m not living like this anymore!”
How I Changed My Life – and You Can Too!
The therapeutic help I found prompted a 180-degree shift in my way of managing stress and worry. I learned how to become free from the tyranny of anxiety. You might say I’ve become immune from excessive worry and fear. Find out more about my story here.
Since then, I’ve become a certified Anxiety Coach and helped many women become anxiety free. Here are the exact steps I use to help women overcome anxiety and live anxiety free lives.
Identify the Source of Anxiety
You need to dig deep here. You may know the situation or experience prompting your anxiety but what is really driving the anxiety and fear? What is triggering you? What stories are you telling yourself that cause you to feel so much anxiety? Are you imagining worst case scenarios?
You want to get to the heart of your deepest fears so that you can begin to release each of them. Once you know what is really causing the anxiety, you are on the way to becoming anxiety free.
Learn How to Slow Down Anxious Thoughts
When you have sorted out what’s really driving your anxiety and fear, you can make a life-changing shift. You can let go of old thoughts and accept new ones. You need to learn how to stop the anxious thought pattern and replace it with new, positive thoughts.
There are lots of tools you can use to do this. You can learn how to use the tools and with practice things will really begin to turn around for you. Why is this critical? Because if you don’t shift your thinking, you will stay anxious and stressed.
Create a Strategy for Anxiety Immunity
You need to develop a personal plan to create a daily practice of anxiety free living. You need to create new habits and set up your life, so you have regular time to relax, calm down and recharge. And you need to create a plan for what you will do to calm yourself when you are having anxious thoughts or feelings.
Have a plan in place for how you will challenge “anxiety” thinking and replace the anxious thoughts with more calming, positive thoughts. Learning how to calm yourself and deal with anxiety in the moment is key to becoming immune to anxiety. When you do this, you truly can be on the path of anxiety free living.
I can help you with this 3-step process of becoming anxiety free. You can explore my “Blueprint for Anxiety Immunity” program and learn how to calm down, relax, manage your anxiety and become stress free.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Are you an anxious person? What do you worry about most? Why do you worry about it? Have you considered any solutions? What helps you beat your anxiety?
