The Surefire Cure for Anxiety without a Medical Prescription

Do you suffer from anxiety?

Does your heart race when you face a difficult challenge? Once upon a time, anxiety was just a normal part of daily life. Going back to caveman times, this was referred to as a fight or flight reflex. When dinosaurs were coming to attack us, we knew that we needed to get into flight mode lest we be eaten.

Maybe we were hungry; going out to attack an animal or some other dangerous [animal] source of food. As time went on, we began to see anxiety -- rather than natural reflex -- but seeing it as malady or something that was wrong with us. That old familiar feeling of sweaty palms and headaches and heart palpitations was just too much to bear. Some of us needed to seek medical attention via a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Perhaps we were prescribed some type of pill regimen. Yet the majority of us simply experienced a difficulty with coping with daily living activity. This normal difficulty with daily living became disguised as anxiety.

Eventually, anxiety became a disease. It found its way into the American Psychological Association’s diagnostic statistical manual [DSM-IV]. With various degrees of anxiety, every human being on the planet has suffered some form of anxiety from time to time. 

Anxiety is nothing more than a feeling. Our bodies and minds uses this anxious feeling to let us know that we need to produce a higher level of hormones or biochemical [adrenaline or some type of neurotransmitter uptake] to meet the needs of the situation or event. 

Anxiety has taken a life of its own. Today, television commercials suggest different types of medical prescriptions or treatments to combat this feeling or overactive emotions of anxiety. For the purposes of this article, I submit that anxiety is a natural phenomenon.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is nothing more than excessive or out-of-balanced heightened spirits. I did not say that this is abnormal, but that this is just a level of emotion. When our mood becomes low or blue, we become depressed. Anxiousness or depression, in and of itself, is a natural part of human existence. Once human behavior, as dictated by extreme anxiety or depression [mood disorder], goes out of balance, it takes on an abnormality or medical necessity.

Anxiousness can give us that desire or motivation to achieve our desired goals. This anxiousness will come or will manifest itself in the absence of grounded thinking. The brain or the mind will fill itself with solutions and practicalities in the absence of clear and concrete instructions. When we’re stuck in traffic and we were unable to find out the cause of the traffic jam, then our mind sends out anxious messages to our central nervous system (CNS). “We will be trapped in this traffic jam and may be late for dinner.”

Our anxiousness is often created by our own undoing. We can create anxious states or moods. This is referred to as jumping to conclusions. The mind wants order and concrete ideas and thoughts. It wants solutions -- in the absence of those solutions -- it will create solutions.  These floods of thoughts give rise to anxiousness or anxious thinking. I submit that anxiousness or anxiety is nothing more than faulty thinking.

How Come I can’t make it [anxiety] leave me alone?

Now we’ve established the roots of anxiety, we can begin to recognize it for what it is. Simply, anxiety within its cloak of faulty thinking, is a bad servant. In many times, we think that our thoughts are our masters. Yet, thoughts are servants. Thoughts are not ourselves but are our servants for practical solutions.

As a result of its inner circle of counsel, our own thoughts lead to feelings -- leads to actions -- leads to things. These things can become our masters or our friends or our servants. Faulty thinking does not serve us, therefore it is important to recognize it and see it for what it is. To accomplish this, we need to have a sense of detachment. We can form thoughtful detachment by adopting a helicopter-up approach.

We rise above ourselves and look down to analyze the different moving parts of these thought patterns. We can recognize the situation -- we can look at ourselves in the context of past, present and future -- and we can look at what’s feeding our humanness. By examining the thoughts through an impartial field of vision, we can determine if they [our thoughts] are our friend, our master, or our servants. We can even begin to analyze whether or not our thoughts are our enemies or foes.

As interesting, or as uninteresting this may be, we can now begin to understand the power that we have over our own anxiety and how this powerlessness is nothing more than the power we have given to the anxious state(s). Thus, anxious states are our own self-creation. Many thought leaders, psychologists, and philosophers have concluded that our destinies are a result of our own creative thoughts. Philosopher James Allen wrote, As a man thinketh, so is he. William James, Ph.D., wrote, We become as we think. Even Christ Jesus (as written in the New Testament) spoke, Be Ye Renewed, by the Transforming of your Mind!

The Permanent Cure!!!

To become anxiety-free, we must go back to the source and the center of this anxiety or anxious state. At its core, anxiousness is a manifestation of us. The smallest piece of this manifestation of anxiousness is our thoughts and mindfulness within any given moment. Yes, our mental images are the core of the anxiety issue.

What we need is a new mind. Notice that I said new mind rather than new brain. The question is, ‘how do we gain a new mind’? It requires a conversion…a converting to a state of mindlessness. Mindlessness is a single term to describe mental quietness. The quiet mind…one that is free of thoughts. To gain a quiet mind requires real work and practical commitment. Meditation make offer such a solution to achieve mindlessness.

An anxious mind or state can also be calmed and soothed via encouragement. An encouraging word fitly spoken is more precious than apples of gold (Solomon, Book of Ecclesiastes). Encouragement leads to hopeful thoughts in the face of a perceived fearful outcome. When faced with unease and/or anxiety, the solution [cure] is quite simple.

Empty the mind and [then] go quiet.

**Author’s note: This article is not meant to replace sound medical advisement from a licensed psychiatrist, psychologist, and/or master social worker. Persons that have a diagnostic mood or social phobia disorder should first consult with their practitioner before adhering to the advice in this article.**