This is an interview with someone who has suffered with stress and anxiety.

Tony: How did you feel at the time you were stressed?

A: Physically, I felt on fire inside. I felt very, very trapped, but I felt scattered, all over the place. Couldn’t gather myself together. I felt extremely restless, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t sleep properly, not in control of my thoughts, not in control of a lot of my actions, not in control of my dietary needs. I was smoking a hell of a lot. I would flip from feeling very scared to feeling very apathetic to feeling to feeling very excited to feeling very empty, nervous, strong, lost, weak, together. Never long enough in one particular mood. It was just too much, it was all over the place. Very rushed inside, everything felt very, very rushed inside. Like something had to be done, something had to be done, something had to be done, but I couldn’t gather myself together to make sometimes even the smallest of decisions. Angry with the outside world and my own internal world. Sad. Tense. Very aware of the stress.

Continue reading Stress and Anxiety - The Real World Experience

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It's February and my daughters party is looming ahead of me. It is actually in three weeks time but my mind is so consumed by this party you would think it is tomorrow. It is all I can think about, I make lists, lots and lots of lists about this day.

This I rationalise to myself will definitely make the day run smoothly. I spend hours and hours deliberating on every aspect of this day, what each member of my family will wear, what we will eat, drink, what we will eat off and drink out of.

What games will we play, where will we play them, how long will they last for, who will coordinate them. Who will do the make up, will they remember to call the names in the right order. Will this day run to my schedule?

Question after question is going around in my head.

Continue reading The Stressed Mum's Unheard Cry For Help

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Listen as Tony explains how your anxious thoughts are driven by adrenaline, and they trick you into producing an adrenaline response. Discuss in the forum.

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Your centre is located in your body. Rather than finding a solution to your anxiety in your head, it is better to find it in your body.

This is what we discussed in the core idea of the cognitive approach.

We don’t go with anything in our head but we come back to our centre.

Five means to finding your center in your body are breathing, massage, posture, exercise and nutrition.

You can change your mind through your body. The beauty of that for someone with anxiety is that you don’t have to “think” your way out of the problem. You only have to act.

Continue reading 08. The Body

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When we look at our mind, we seem to have an uncontrollable series of thoughts that emerge out of nowhere.

We have lots of thoughts and we identify them with words, metaphors, stories and images.

The lack of perspective that we have on our thoughts can bring on a lot of anxiety. What are all these things going around in my head?

We have so many thoughts and they’re flitting through our minds, often repeatedly, and we need a way to “capture” these thoughts and get a perspective on them.

Continue reading 07. Words and Thoughts

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When a person suffers from anxiety, the feelings can be so pervasive and overwhelming that, they often begin to identify themselves and even label themselves in certain ways.

‘I am weak’, ‘I am a loser’, ‘I am a failure’ etc.

We identify with our emotions or emotional states but actually, we aren’t any of those things.

Continue reading 06. The Sensitive Temperament

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If you have anxiety, it can often grow and grow. This is why focusing on actions regardless of your feelings becomes so important.

Focusing and taking action in other areas lessens the negative feelings and eventually becomes your strength.

Continue reading 05. Meaning & Focus

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Rules, expectations, standards, morals.


Identifying rules and what they are

If you think there’s a ‘should’, a ‘must’ or you have an ideal, or there’s a role that you’re playing, or you’re trying to be something that you’re not or you think there is a way to do it, then rules play a major part in your thoughts.

These rules and expectations I see as being above your head.
Rules and expectations keep you restricted, keep you small and push down on you. They’re strong, stringent, and harsh. They make life difficult for you. They also keep thoughts going, especially negative ones.

The simple approach is not to go with, or give into, those anxious, worrying, painful thoughts, but, as we know, that is quite difficult.
Being overly conscientious, overly responsible will take us into our head, thinking negative thoughts.
Perfectionism is a very powerful way for rules to cause us stress.
The first things to do is looking at these, notice them and write them down so we can actually assess what we believe.

Over responsibility, overly conscientious, even perfectionism we can justify, we can make reasons why we should do the things that we should do. It will be a positive spin-off, or we think that we can achieve something, we think that we’re a better person trying to be a good person, trying to be good, trying to be a better person.
Straight away, now this is not about not becoming a better person, this is saying that sometimes trying to be overly good or being nice, presenting a nice front, this is one of the great ways for us to play a role and start behaving in such a way where we’re pushing down unpleasant feelings.

Rules keep negative thoughts in place

Now you’re learning to dismantle those beliefs, thoughts and rules at the source.
Tension and forcing and moulding and pushing oneself into a certain way are signs that we’re doing this in a judgemental, judging, what we’re really doing is judging ourselves. If you have set up a huge number of things you have to do to feel happy, if you don’t meet them, you won’t feel happy. If you have to be the perfect wife or husband, and earn huge sums of money, and have amazing health, and always be there all of the time for your kids, and put on a front to the world, if you don’t meet these, you will suffer.

Once the anxiety starts, you know the cycle. The panic, the fear, the adrenaline, and then the cycle – the fear of the next time, and then the fear of the fear. After a while, it’s the fear of the fear.

Realise that they have been chosen
Whenever you’re pushing down unpleasant feelings, you’re trying to be a certain way – if you think about this – you’re pushing down the feelings, you’re not facing up to those feelings, you go up to your head. You’re in your head, thinking.
The opposite is to look at the beliefs, look at the things, change them.

Now if we look back at the old Freudian psychology with its super-ego, this is the part of oneself which judges. It’s like the parent still telling you how to behave now. The judge telling you how to behave. Trying to do things the right way or to be right, trying to meet high standards or ethics.
Now this is not about becoming a worse person, this is not about not trying to meet these standards, what I’m saying is that when you’re trying to meet these, literally forcing and effort and tension, then you’re trying to be a certain way at the expense of acknowledging the different parts within yourself, and the different aspects and the different emotions. That is the route to problems.

The little mind, the thinking mind wants to keep you stuck in this way of thinking because if it can, it can control your behaviour. But remember, if you’ve loaded up too many rules, too many moral ways of doing things, too many expectations, anxiety is around the corner. Even without anxiety, tension and stress is there.
Long-term tension and stress, long-term fear can put you in the situation where anxiety is around the corner.

Choose new beliefs
I’ve suggested that we want to go from our head down to our centre, as anxious thoughts emanate from there.

So what’s this whole step about? Being easier on oneself, being more who we are, facing up to our emotions, and taking away the patterns which make it very difficult to meet this.

Reading about certain patterns and certain things can help, sitting and talking in a group situation, looking at people seeing how their lives have been affected by holding these rules, and doing exercises on a conscious level and in hypnotherapy can bring huge beneficial changes.

So this step is about making life easier for yourself. That internal critical voice, there will be an internal critical voice, the part of you judging. There could be a voice you’ve heard, a parental voice, wherever, however it is still one of those things keeping you stuck.
Start dismantling this, life will become easier and easier.

So there’s a good indication of rules: expectations, tension and stress, your guide is tension and stress. Guilt and pain, you’re either striving to meet them, or if you’ve broken them, guilt and pain – there’s your starting point. So what is the way out, and the exercises to change?

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Learning to remember that little steps are the road to massive change is extremely important. Spiritual progress takes place over time with consistent effort. At times it may seem like very little progress is being made but there is still a change going on beneath the surface. As things change beneath the surface, the ground of your ego will slowly begin to give way and an eventual landslide is sure to come.

Continue reading 03. Attitudes

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This is the miracle bridge, where amazing results can happen.

It’s about using parts of us - the subconscious mind and imagination - which are closely linked with each other.

This is the place where we can get instant changes and massive results easily and effortlessly.

Continue reading 02. Your Subconscious Mind & Imagination

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This is the last bridge. However, it could just as easily be the first because your beliefs create your thoughts and create your emotions, which you act upon.

Everything in these bridges is about changing those beliefs to change your thoughts. A belief is something, a set of ideas we believe to be true.

Continue reading 10. Beliefs & Self-Belief

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Anxiety is part of a learnt response. First comes the thought, which is then followed by the adrenaline. Because it is a learnt response, this means that it can be unlearnt, or changed.

Perfect learning is what we refer to when a person has a phobic reaction to something at a particular time and then they go on to have that same response every time they are faced with the same situation. Perfect learning, however, is far from being the perfect way to develop your character.

As we grow older, we begin to see that our learnt responses were not entirely thought out and may need changing. Luckily for us, they can be changed.

Continue reading 09. Habits and Perseverence

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The starting point is choice. We always have a choice, however we feel. We can choose how we react to our thoughts, how we react to situations and what we will do.








If someone were to take a scan of you while you were suffering from anxiety, they would see that all your thought activity is going on in your head. All of your focus is there. Your anxious thoughts are driven by adrenaline, and they trick you into producing an adrenaline response.

Once the adrenaline is in your system, you think there’ll be more anxiety, you stay worrying, produce more adrenaline and the cycle persists. We buy into our thoughts and believe that they’re true, but they’re not.

Continue reading 01. The Cognitive Approach

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