Your thoughts are made up of 5 elements depending upon our 5 senses. Positive and negative feelings a person go through comes from these 5 senses.
Visual – What you see
Audio – What you hear
Touch – What you feel
Taste – What you taste
Smell – What you smell.
All your thoughts in your mind are filtered through these 5 senses. If you can take control of your mind and your thoughts, you can easily overcome fear and anxiety.
Consider yourself to be a movie character on a screen. Cinematic shots changes, how a character appears on a screen. Same is with the sound. If you have a big and large positive thinking in your mind, that will make you feel good. On the other hand loud negative noise and a bigger picture of something disturbing you, will make you feel down and sick.
Any moment in our mind is like a movie scene. On a screen, if you see a character in closeup, his/her emotions will impact you with hiher intensity as compared to shot where the character is far away on the screen. We can play the same trick with our mind. Making things bigger in your mind, makes them more intense, whether the feeling is positive or negative.
Let’s do a simple visual excercise.
Just sit with a straight back posture or stand up straight with your eyes closed. Think about a past memory or a worry about the future that is giving you fear and anxiety. Now imagine that negative feeling is getting smaller. Just make it smaller to an extent that it doesn’t disappear. Check how you feel now. Are you feeling less anxious?
Now bring it back to it’s original size.
Second part is to make the feeling of fear and worry move far away from you. Keep on thinking that slowly and steadly, it is moving far away from you. Again, don’t make it disappear. Check how you feel now. You must be feeling less anxious now.
Again bring it back to it’s original position where it was in a closeup near you.
Third part is to imagine that problem is getting darker. This will again reduce the intensity of fear and anxiety.
Also try to make the negative feeling lighter, fading in color giving you a feel that it is disappearing. Notice what happen now. Do you feel better?
Bring it back to it’s normal condition again.
Now make this negative feeling fuzzier. Just imagine that the through giving you stress and anxiety is getting fuzzier in your mind. Check how you feel now. This will help reduce the intensity of the negative thought disturbing you.
Now lastly, you can just combine all these 4-5 excercises you have tried above. Just stand with your eyes closed and imagine the negative thought moving away from you, getting smaller, lighter, fuzzier. You can get a quick relief from anxiet and stress by doing this excercise for even less than 60 seconds.
Just leave the negative thought, where it needs to be on this cinematic shot, so that your anxiety level is reduced to a level, that it doesn’t bother you.
Now let’s try the auditory excercise.
Think about the noise or the internal self talk in your brain that is giving you stress and anxiety. Just imagine that you are bringing down the volume of that negative thought in your mind. Once you have reduced the volume to an extent where it is not bothering you. Hold it there for some time and relax.
Check how you are feeling now.
Bring back the negative nose to it’s original level.
Now, try to move the sound far away from your mind. If there is a negative self talk in your mind, imagine that you are moving it out of your mind and away from yourself. Hold your mind in this condition for sometime and relax.
Now bring the sound back to it’s original intensity and try to imagine that the pace of this negative sound is reducing. Make it half of it’s original pace.
Next you should speed up the pace of that negative sound in your mind. Now it may make it more stressful or less stressful depending upon the person trying this excercise.
Personally for me, reducing the pace of this negative sound helps more as compared to increasing the pace of this negative sound.
Lastly, you can combine all these auditory excercises, simialr to what you did with the visual excercise. Imagine that the negative voice in your mind is moving away from you and it’s volume is reducing while the pace of the noise is getting slower.
Try this excercise for 45-60 seconds and check your stress and anxiety level.