Most people don’t realize how harsh and critical they are with themselves. Because our brains are hardwired for the negative, it’s easy to be oblivious to our negative self talk.

Limiting beliefs are thoughts or absolute truths that we believe to be fact and unchangeable. Limiting beliefs are just what they sound like— beliefs that prevent us from living our fullest lives.

Last month we uncovered five truths about anxiety, and this month we are diving in and sharing 5 more to help you feel more in control when anxiety shows up.

As an experienced Certified Anxiety Treatment Professional, I have found that these 5 Truths to Overcoming Anxiety can be very helpful to my clients. Anxiety is sneaky, and when we are in the throes of it we can easily be led to believing the exact opposite.

Many of us struggle with staying present in our day-to-day lives, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the difficulty increases when we are experiencing anxiety, grief, trauma, or depression.

Grief has been a somewhat taboo subject in our culture, leaving many of us struggling with what to do or say when someone we know has lost a loved one.

At its core, anxiety is often characterized by a cycle of avoidance and an attempt to control thoughts, feelings, and situations in order to reduce anxious feelings. Anxiety is about control. The more we try to control anxiety, the more we are controlled by it.

Most of us naturally want to avoid pain and difficulty. We think how nice it would be if life were easy. Our nature seems to be to try to avoid disturbance  and pain at all costs. But if we reframe that way of thinking and living, face our adversities with courage and curiosity, we can find hope and meaning in the struggle.

When we take on, or own other people’s feelings, thoughts, and/or behaviors, we are at risk of being or becoming codependent. In her book, The Language of Letting Go- Daily Meditations on Codependency, Melody Beattie talks about “Property Lines”, which is basically the knowledge of what is ours to own and what we need to let go of in order to maintain healthy boundaries and relationships. 

Have you ever noticed yourself or someone else becoming overwhelmed, or “flooded” with  emotion, finding it difficult to reason? This can happen when one’s ability to think rationally is  “hijacked” by the amygdala, which processes strong emotions like anger and fear. The result is an impairment of the logical part of the brain in the moment.

Where do we learn to trust and to connect with others? What is our first relationship in life? It is with our parents. As children, when our parents or primary caregivers don’t or aren’t able to meet our emotional needs, we can become fearful, mistrusting, develop low self esteem, establish a lack of confidence, and have difficulty forming meaningful, trusting relationships.

We often think of isolation as a bad thing –but, isolation isn’t always negative. There can be wonderful lessons in isolation if we allow ourselves the space to listen to that still small voice within, the whispers of God, and to just “be” in our circumstances.

I often wonder what others, who haven’t experienced a significant loss like the death of a spouse, think when they see posts from people like me, nine years after their loss– still missing, still remembering, still talking about their grief, still talking about their loved one and still sharing their memories.

We can’t live in the past because the past is over, but we can learn from it. We can’t live in the future because it hasn’t happened yet and we don’t have any way of predicting with certainty what is out in front of us. All we have is here and now. If you are living in the past or in the future, you are missing what’s happening right here, right now.

Have you ever found yourself getting stuck in thought loops, worrying that something terrible is going to happen? Do you sometimes find your heart racing, your mouth feeling dry, feel a knot in your stomach, muscle tension, irritability, fatigue? These can all be symptoms of anxiety.

I always tell my clients that I am not here to “fix” them or their problems. I am here to help them navigate their particular struggles, whether those struggles are relationship issues, depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, or life in general

Can illness teach us lessons we might not otherwise have learned? Can good come from being forced to slow down and live in the day we are in? I know from personal experience that the answer is yes.

Memories of holidays past with our loved ones who are no longer with us can be painful. It’s important to remember that the pain of missing the one who is gone is often about longing for what was and can no longer be, combined with the shared love and connection we had and still have.

What do you need during this season? Take some time to recognize what it is and do something to implement it.

Being flexible is about being able to ride the waves of change without being pulled completely under. It’s about acceptance of our circumstances even, and especially, if they are difficult.