If you’re suffering with anxiety, this may be the most important thing you’ll read.
And I know that sounds like clickbait, but what I’m about to share with you is something that has helped many people break their anxiety.
Some even immediately stopped having panic attacks simply by understanding this.
And to prove that this isn’t another gadget, neuro-hacking trick or false promise that you see in your algorithm that seem too good to be true, let me ask you this:
“Would you be able to fill in for me and teach a group of people about anxiety for just an hour?”
This is what my mentor asked me a couple of years ago while I was still struggling badly.
The answer was no. I couldn’t.
And I’m guessing you may not be able to either. So then the real question is: how can we solve something we don’t fully understand?
That’s what this post is for. Today, I’m going to share with you something I call the “Anxiety Loop” and the “Emotional Limit“.
This is what blew my mind the first time I learned about it.
It started off my journey, and months later I had my life back. I stopped avoiding places, I started to travel again. I felt joy return and found this gratitude towards the little things in life.
So, take a couple of minutes – turn off your phone – and see if this lesson makes sense to you.
The Anxiety Loop
Anxiety is a pattern, a cycle. It’s not something you just ‘have’, nor is it a ‘disorder’. It’s actually created and maintained by… you.
The Anxiety Loop starts with an experience, like a physical sensation, a thought or a feeling.
At this point, we’re still fine.
But – we start to doubt this experience. For example, say you feel heart palpitations and you start to doubt whether or not it could be something worse! (Sounds familiar, right?!)
This is when you enter the cycle.
You start to 1) Question the experience. Often this is where we ask “what if?”.
“What if this is a sign I’m getting a heart attack?”
Or “What if I’m about to faint?”.
What happens when you ask your brain a question? It’s going to answer it. That’s just the way our brains work.
So to answer that anxious question, it’s going to create and show you a 2) Doomsday Scenario. This is where you visualize that scary, awful, future to happen.
You see yourself having to go to the ER.
Or you see yourself fainting in front of all these people.
Obviously, we don’t want this to happen – so we’re going to start making sure it doesn’t happen.
We’re going to 3) Focus on what we don’t want to happen. For example, the heart attack.
We monitor whether or not it’s getting worse.
Is it changing?
Where is the nearest hospital just in case?
Should I do a breathing exercise to calm my heart down?
And, paradoxically, what happens when we focus on something we don’t want to experience?
We start to 4) Experience what we don’t want.
The palpitations are getting worse. The panic is growing.
Because we are focusing on them – and we really don’t want this to happen. We fear it.
And this increase of symptoms will reinforce that 1) what-if question again.
So we go through the cycle again. The next question may be “what if it’s getting worse?” and we go through the steps over and over, until we reach a peak. For most people this is a panic attack or something like DR/DP.
Check out if this is something you recognize for yourself.
To recap, this is the anxiety loop:
- “What if?” question
- Doomsday scenario
- Focus on what you don’t want
- Experience what you don’t want
And often the thing we really don’t want to experience is fear itself – like a panic attack for example.
At the core of this cycle we find fear of fear. It’s the true reason behind why we do this.
The symptoms scare us – and we have a story around them – so we try to make them go away and return to safety again.
How can you break this cycle?
There are two points in the cycle where you can make a change that removes the power from it and stops it from looping.
The first part is the fantasy we engage in between step 1 and 2.
This is where we picture that doomsday scenario.
This is where we create a story we believe in, like heart palpitations being a sign of heart attack (instead of adrenaline).
We need to educate ourselves around how our body and anxiety works, so we can crush that story.
The second part where you can weaken this story is between step 3 and 4, where we resist the thing we’re experiencing, instead of allowing it to be present.
We don’t want it to get worse, so we do a lot of things to make sure it doesn’t.
We increase our focus towards anxiety. We do things like breathing exercises, analyzing, avoiding or escaping. And this just makes the anxiety grow.
Even if a breathing exercise works for a second to make you return to calm – the fear of fear is still there.
So you will eventually go and check-in again.
“Is it really gone?”, “Am I really calm?”.
And then you voluntarily go back into the cycle by focusing on what you don’t want (step 3).
Do you see how this is the case?
Now – to break the fantasy we need to understand the mechanics of anxiety and learn that we’re actually safe.
And to stop the resistance we need to allow or accept anxiety to be present, without interfering.
How do we do that?
Let’s do a quick exercise that I’m sure you’re going to like.
The Emotional Limit
Say we have these three emotions:
- Happiness
- Anger
- Fear
These emotions are all created in our brain, by the specific sets of chemicals that make us feel this way.
Since our body creates this chemical change inside us, it has a natural limit, right?
A limit to when the body can no longer produce more of these emotions.
And since it’s your body’s own production, we should be able to handle the emotion at its natural limit too, wouldn’t you agree?
And this is fascinating, because we often have a story as to why we can’t experience an emotion at the full 100% level – especially anxiety!
Let’s illustrate that with a little exercise.
For these three emotions, please write down what the limit is to what extent you allow yourself to feel them. I’ll start.
Happiness? Easy. I allow happiness to peak to 100%. That’d be amazing.
Anger? Hm, I may not have in the past – but I no longer suppress it and allow anger to peak as well at 100% even though I don’t like it.
Fear? What about fear? To what level do I allow fear to get?
Before I share my limit to fear, I want to ask you to pick a number in mind.
What percentage of fear do you allow yourself to feel?
Most people have a limit on theirs to where they feel they can still handle it – but it shouldn’t exceed it because then something may happen, like going crazy or fainting etc.
Say your limit to fear is 60%.
Imagine feeling anxiety build up and creep up towards that 60% level.
You still feel OK, but you are cautious because it shouldn’t go over the limit.
What if it jumps to 61%?
Now we’re doomed – because it’s more than we believe we can handle. Maybe we start to get nauseous, or we feel lightheaded or sweaty.
And naturally, the fear level shoots up to 100%. It peaks.
Why? Because the limit represents fear of fear. Because the fear goes over the artificial limit we’ve set, and we have a story around that limit, we add “extra fear” to it.
This extra fear makes sure we jump up and stay close to 100% fear.
The limit is there to prevent you from getting anxious – but instead it’s making sure you reach your body’s natural limit faster and more often.
The same applies to anger or sadness.
If you suppress that to below the artificial limit, and it does shoot over – you get an outburst. We all know people who often get those.
The only way to remain close to 0% is allowing fear to be at full 100%.
For me now, I allow fear to reach 100%.
Doesn’t mean I like it and doesn’t mean it does often – but I have created room for it.
Paradoxically, it remains close to 0% because of this. There is no limit to go over and peak. There is no resistance or control, because I know what anxiety is and I know that these chemicals are created by my own brain. It therefore won’t kill or harm me.
This is what I mean when I talk about accepting or allowing anxiety to be. It’s dropping that control and that limit.
It’s a must to allow any level of fear to be.
I hope you’re starting to see that a lot of things you’ve probably tried belong in the anxiety loop and support this artificial limit.
It’s resistance. It’s making sure you experience more of the things you don’t want to experience.
And it’s completely natural to do this as human beings. I did this too for six years, but it’s a paradox. It’s a trap.
What stood out in this lesson?
For most people who read this something has clicked. I’m hoping for you too.
That recognition of “hey, I do that too!” can really help in this maze of anxiety.
Maybe for the first time in a long time you feel a bit of hope that you too can break this cycle.
If that’s true for you – I want you to know that what you just learned is part of a more complete process.
Over the last few years I’ve created a Mentorship Program called ‘The Answer to Anxiety’ in which I – together with my mentors – guide you through the full recovery journey from A-Z.
We build that important foundation of what anxiety is and how the mechanisms work.
We work on building the skill of responding properly to anxiety, through acceptance / non-resistance, whenever it shows up.
It helps you build momentum and stay on track, even if setbacks occur. With personalized support you always get the help you need – even if it’s just to check if you’re on the right path.
The great thing about it is that changing your response and your relationship with anxiety works for any type of anxiety.
However it shows up for you, be it panic attacks, derealization, intrusive thoughts or OCD – the core of it is the same. The behavior supporting it is the same.
Ever since I started this, we’ve helped hundreds of people to get their lives back. You can watch a few of their stories here on my YouTube channel.
These stories are real, and there are many more like them. People who finally broke free.
Not because they were lucky, but because they learned how anxiety really works and how to stop feeding it. Consistently.
Decreasing sensitivity and symptoms over time and increasing confidence and trust in themselves.
You can check out some extra reviews on TrustPilot.
What’s next?
If you like to know more about my method and Mentorship Program, you can fill out a quick form and book a free discovery call with me or someone from my team.
In that call we’ll take a close look at your specific situation. We’ll cover what’s worked for you or not – and whether or not our program could be a fit for you.
Either way, you still walk away with clarity and some next steps.
I’ll also send you some free training and bonus content once you’ve booked the call.
So if this makes sense to you, book that free discovery call and let’s talk.
You don’t have to keep guessing and you don’t have to keep doing this alone.
Click here to book your free discovery call.
I hope to meet you soon and want to thank you for reading.
– Jort
