585: How to stop fear of the future from shrinking the present moment
This week on the Anxiety Slayer podcast we’re talking about how to reclaim peace and space from anxious thoughts about the future.
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Points covered in this episode
Anticipating the worst exhausts us and robs us of the present moment
This kind of anxiety is like a pre-trauma, or pre-grieving, by going over our worries in our minds we are living out the scenario of our fears. And each time we do that, our body and nervous system have to go through it as if it’s happening now.
All the worry, with none of our coping skills
The other challenge here is that the thing we dread is not actually happening so we can’t get practical. When something significant happens in our life there is help available in getting support, seeing what can be resolved, making a plan.
When it’s all swirling around in our head we can’t do any of that so we’re just stuck at that initial fear loop.
Future fear takes away our power of choice in the present
A key challenge with anxiety is that it robs us of our power to change in this moment. We feel stuck and overwhelmed and that shrinks our life.
There is always something we can do to calm anxiety and when we focus on what we can do and push back on the fear we can build resilience and the strength to cope better with whatever may come our way in the future.
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