Everyday I read articles and hear stories about new and wondrous methods of helping us overcome problems and becoming better human beings, and achieving the ultimate of successes. 

Bearing in mind that being a therapist I read this on a daily basis and have done so for the last 16 years. The unfortunate thing is that I am bored stiff of the same generic and regurgitated material and I am seldom wowed by something new (I don’t doubt that my material may be repetitive at times too:)

This is unfortunate because I have become hypercritical of my own writing and everything that comes out of my mouth when I work with people in helping them achieve their full potential, out of fear of not sounding like the generic that we find out there.

I have titled this article “Fear, Anxiety and the Self Sabotage” for a reason. I believe that these are three fundamental words that I can compartmentalise most social and day-to-day difficulties that humans experience into. 

Lets begin with anxiety. 

Anxiety as we all know it is a bodily response that floods our system with two responses towards which we either react in a “fight” against it response or a “flying” away response. Both of these reactions are founded on the principle that we react according to our instinct and this is why these responses occur. Something you learn in pop-psychology 101 classes and yes a very interesting phenomenon, however does not necessarily apply to all the fears that we have come to create nowadays. 

I have come to realize and further observe that our bodies and minds are so advanced, that what when we encounter a problem and have a well of emotion to process, our bodies have a fail safe mechanism that creates anxiety which is the bodies ability to protect itself from a meltdown or bodily implosion or severe mental damage. It does this by drawing our attention to focus with undivided attention on the anxiety we feel in the body and the sense of fear and dread. For a second see anxiety not as a fight or flight response but instead as a bodily experience that your conscious mind will focus on to draw your attention completely away from your emotions. 

This may seem like a foreign concept for us, but bear with me. Lets say for a second that this anxiety forces our body and mind to focus solely on the anxiety because fundamentally we know that we will not die from anxiety, but instead if the unconscious mind draws all our attention to consciously focus on this response, we avoid having to face our emotional state in any context. Add conditioning to the equation and you have the perfect recipe for avoiding emotions entirely, because the more we condition ourselves into responding to this natural response the more we strengthen it which makes it near impossible to move past the anxiety. 

Now that we’ve scratched the surface, lets dig further into something we all avoid. Emotional pain! This is without a doubt one of the most avoided topics that I encounter, and have also experienced this for myself. Focus on any interaction or life experience where emotional pain was attached to it and more than likely your preferred choice would be to run away and not bother facing up to it. This is where I feel we all go wrong when it comes to facing up to things in life. It is not necessarily the facing up to the situation that is the concern, but it is the second we add emotion to it, that’s when things become clouded and more difficult to process.

For mostly anything we want to overcome or achieve there is an emotional component that is greatly overlooked, this is where I see strength and potential in enhancing the mind and body. I feel it is a misconception that to become successful or enhanced as human beings we have to learn solely to control the mind. On the contrary I feel that by consciously surrendering to your emotions and seeing the strength and potential therein you will reach a heightened level of acceptance and understanding of both your mind and body. This is true mastery of your life.