five steps to overcoming your anxiety symptoms once and for all chances are if you're dealing with bizarre mysterious physical symptoms that the doctors can't figure out if you're getting scary intrusive what if thoughts what if this is your life forever what if this is something you're always going to be dealing with whether you're getting feelings of unreality the depersonalization derealization you might have tried everything to make these symptoms go away you might have tried supplements breathing techniques yoga diet changes lifestyle adjustments EX exercise anything and everything to make these symptoms go away and yet you
can't manage to find any relief well in this video I'm going to be sharing with you what you can do to begin overcoming these symptoms once and for all not just coping or managing with these symptoms but really focusing on long-term freedom because the truth is that you don't have to cope or manage with these symptoms a lot of the things you've tried in the past have tried to find some short-term relief but if you can focus on some principles well what you can do is focus on long-term Freedom this way you're not always dealing
with shortterm Comfort but you can focus on long-term Freedom so let's get started now one of the most important stages in the recovery journey is in the beginning making sure you've gotten everything ruled out by your doctors truth is is that anxiety can be a side effect or a symptom of something else going on so it's very important to go to your doctors to make sure that everything is good your organs and vitals are functioning as they your blood tests have come out clear if you've gone to your doctor several times and they haven't found
anything the good news is that it is anxiety doctors are very good at identifying if there's a physical abnormality that needs to be dealt with but what often happens is anxiety sufferers will go to their doctors and when their doctors tell them that there's nothing wrong anxiety sufferers are one of the only people out there that will get upset from hearing good news because even though they might find that there's nothing wrong and that's a good sign they're not sure why they're experiencing these symptoms and they're still still not finding relief the unfortunate news is
that the doctors don't have much they can do they can provide some medication and they can offer you to go see a therapist besides that there's not much doctors can do it's important to recognize that doctor's main role is to identify if there's a physical anomaly but once you recognize that everything is good well this isn't a physical issue what's really going on is that your nervous system is sensitized and this leads me to the second step which is understanding the mechanics of anxiety see if you're dealing with these intense physical symptoms intrusive thoughts the
depersonalization der realization weird emotions you might be thinking that those symptoms are the problem and you might be doing anything in everything to make these symptoms go away well here's the truth a lot of these things that you're experiencing are a side effect of a root problem and what your doctors have labeled this root problem as is anx anxiety now when I'm referring to anxiety I'm not referring to anxiety as an emotion like feelings of Happiness feelings of sadness I'm referring to anxiety as what we call a stress response or think of it as a
state here's what happens whenever you're dealing with stressful situations no matter what they are your nervous system can handle only so much stress but once you hit a stress threshold well what happens is that your nervous system becomes very sensitive as a consequence often times this happens when people have their very first panic attack and often times they don't even know it's a panic attack what happens is that their nervous system becomes very sensitive because they've been in this stress response for so long that the nervous system adapts by saying if Shawn is dealing with
stress for such a long time well we might want to be more sensitive in case there's more threats or there more stressors out there this might seem counterintuitive why would your nervous system be more sensitive from dealing with more stress well it makes a lot of sense imagine if you saw a tiger and you managed to escape now what happens when you go to a similar environment well your body and mind has almost taken a screenshot of that environment so anytime you go to that environment well your nervous system is going to be on high
alert it's going to be more sensitive because it saw a tiger once the chance of it's seeing a tiger again is very likely so your nervous system becomes primed to see Danger in other words your nervous system has become more sensitive now why is this important well what happens is when your nervous system becomes more sensitive you have a lot of physiological changes and a lot of the symptoms you are experiencing is a side effect of your nervous system being sensitized this is why in the second stage it's so important that you understand the mechanics
of anxiety a lot of people are think that when they're told that they have anxiety they feel like this is just in their head that the doctors are Miss something but really what's happening is that there's nothing physically wrong but your nervous system is sensitive and this sensitivity is what's creating all the symptoms but inherently there's nothing physically wrong in fact I would make the argument that your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do once you start recognizing that all these symptoms are a side effect of your nervous system being sensitized then
what we say is throw everything in the anxiety umbrella what happens is a lot of people have all these different symptoms and they try to fix each specific symptom and that makes it very difficult what happens is that they feel like they have 50 problems or they have a 100 problems but once you realize that this is all a side effect of one issue well then what we say is throw all these symptoms under the anxiety umbrella now you might be wondering okay but how do I know which symptom is part of the anxiety umbrella
and which one isn't well it's really easy the answer is what has your doctors told you if they haven't really found an issue well then all the symptoms you're dealing with is part of anxiety if they find One symptom to be something else or if they found something else well then treat that for what it is but then throw the rest of your symptoms under the anxiety umbrella moving forward you don't have 50 problems you only have one problem which is anxiety the analogy I like to give is like almost having a flu if you
have the flu you don't have a thermo regulation issue you don't have a night sweats issue you don't have a fatigue issue you just have the flu once your body fights off the flu all those symptoms go away and it's the same thing with these anxiety based symptoms you might feel like you have that one really strong stubborn symptom that is an anxiety but it's very important to throw that under the anxiety umbrella as well now once you throw everything under the anxiety umbrella this leads me to the third step which is learning how to
respond to these symptoms see historically if you were dealing with these symptoms you might have done everything to find short-term relief to avoid these symptoms you might stop going places you might have developed compulsions you might have done all these different things where anytime you feel an anxiety symptom whatever that is brain fog dizziness nausea you try to do something to find some relief you'll notice very quickly that this doesn't work and in fact your anxiety can even generalize so what's the solution here well it's recognizing that the solution isn't through avoidance it isn't trying
to find short-term relief the solution is is actually within the symptom here's what I mean whenever you have symptoms arise rather than avoiding it it's more about responding to the symptoms think of your symptoms as just excess adrenaline your body is trying to burn off excess adrenaline and a lot of the symptoms you're experiencing is a side effect of excess adrenaline but every time you try to resist the symptoms the body can't burn off that adrenaline but once your body is able to burn off all the adrenaline you feel much better you feel relaxed but
anytime you're avoiding your symptoms every time you're fighting with it every time you're trying to fix it you're not letting your body do what it needs to do so it's important to recognize that responding to your symptom is what's going to lead to your salvation that's what's going to liberate you from these symptoms so it's recognizing avoidance doesn't work in fact you want to feel these Sensations these symptoms and learn how to respond now you might be wondering how do you respond to these symptoms well we've helped people around the world overcome their symtoms to
go back to living and we've came up with an acronym and the acronym is called alarm now the reason why we call it alarm is that well your anxiety is sort of like a alarm system it's designed to protect you from threats it's there to identify what is a threat and what's not but what's happened is that it's very confused right now it doesn't know what is a threat and what isn't so it's assuming everything is a threat every symptom every sensation every feeling every emotion is a threat so we want to reteach this alarm
system we want to re-calibrate it now the alarm acronym is very simple it goes like this the first a is acknowledge so recognizing when a symptom pops up acknowledging that the symptom is there call out the elephant in the room don't try to pretend the symptoms not there when a symptom shows up whether it's dizziness whether it's palpitations whether it's breathlessness whether if it was like me digestive issues vision changes acknowledge that it is there then the next one is L which is label the sympt remember how we identified each symptom as part of the
anxiety umbrella well it's important to label this symptom as just another symptom of anxiety remember you only have one problem moving forward you don't have 50 you don't have 100 you just have one which is a sensitized nervous system or you can say anxiety the next a is accepting the symptom allowing the symptom to be there at best if you can't even allow the symptoms tolerating the symptom but the focus is on accept and letting the symptom be there give it as much space as it wants and continue on with your day now the last
two are really important and it's something that people often miss which is refocus from the symptom now this is going to be very difficult especially when you're new at this the symptom is going to almost hit you like a train it feels like there's nothing else you can focus on if the symptom shows up at work continue your work if the symptom shows up while you're driving continue driving basically don't stop your life anytime you're experiencing these symptoms oh always acknowledge the symptom being there label it accept it and then refocus to whatever you're doing
if you're washing the dishes and you get a wave of panic let the Panic come and continue washing your dishes and then the m is move on meaning continue living your life your body is very Dynamic and it's going to be doing what it needs to in order to get you back to Baseline you don't need to figure out why each symptom pops up because whether you know why the symptom pops up or not the solution is still the same so it's better just to move on and make other things more important than your anxiety
now this solution is very simple and you might be thinking okay this sounds almost too simple how is this going to get me out well it's important to understand what's keeping you in the cycle now there's a lot of things that you're doing that's keeping you in the cycle that you might not be noticing my team and I have coined this as the 5f principle anybody that's dealing with intense symptoms that's in this anxiety cycle are doing at least one or more of these five fs and the five FS are simple it goes like this
you're always trying to fix your symptom you're always trying to fight your symptom you're always focused on your symptom you're always fearing your symptom and five you're always frustrated by your symptom it's very important to ask yourself if you're doing any of these five things what happens is when people are fearing their symptom it's because they think that this symptom is the onset of something more serious they don't understand the mechanics of anxiety or two they're always fighting their symptoms they have this compulsion of constantly trying to fight it or three they're always trying to
fix it they might be using um peppermint tea lavender tea uh mints supplements whatever it is to fix the symptom recognizing you don't need to fix anything and four you're always focused on the symptom you're always trying to identify is the symptom there is the symptom not there and five getting frustrated by it if your symptoms are high it's ruined your day you're in a bad mood when you're doing these 5 FS it might seem very innocent and Harless but it's these things that are keeping your nervous system sensitized when your nervous system is very
sensitive even small things like these can add more pressure so responding is two parts which is alarming it which is the alarm acronym and then also doing an audit am I doing any of these five FS whenever I'm experiencing symptoms now step four is dealing with setbacks look the truth is this anxiety recovery isn't overnight it's not like you do this for a day and the next morning you're fine in fact I would say recover is not even linear often times recovery feels like three steps forward and two steps back you'll have days where you're
feeling great and you feel like you're gotten out of this and then you'll also have times where you feel like anxiety just hit you like a train and it feels like you haven't made any progress at all dealing with the ups and downs of recovery is very important and so it's important to recognize that number one setbacks are part of the recovery journey and the second thing is to not measure your recovery based on your symptoms see what happen happens is when people have a setback they start experiencing intense symptoms and now they start monitoring
their progress based on their symptoms it's important to navigate these setbacks and it's also a good reminder that focusing on progress isn't based on the symptoms the key to your progress is how you respond to these symptoms when the symptoms are low or non-existent you have no problem accepting but when the symptoms come full force then it's very hard to respond but that's where it's counts so when you can respond to your best of your ability when the symptoms are really high that's the measure of progress setbacks are essentially waves they come and go but
if you try to fight it you're going to get thrown under the wave and you'll go underwater but if you're able to respond the wave always passes setbacks are a great opportunity for you to practice your response and what happened when I started being able to respond correctly to setbacks is that my recovery grew exponentially after each setback I felt like I leveled up I got stronger my nervous system was stronger I had more confidence in myself as you learn how to deal with setbacks then you're going to be focusing on the next step which
is regaining core confidence now confidence in itself is very situational if you're in a situation where let's say you know everybody let's say it's your party and you invite everybody it's natural to be confident however if you go to a group of people where you don't know anybody you might not be as confident recovery can feel like that if you're not experiencing symptoms you're feeling fine you're feeling good but what happens when the symptoms come back well it's very easy to go back into these avoidance behaviors so the key is gaining core confidence this means
no matter what situation you're in you're confident because you know how to respond and you recognize that recovery comes from within this stage is about learning how to regain core confidence no matter what happens in your life whether you're experiencing symptoms or not you begin living your life and you continue with your routine do this for long enough and and the core confidence comes on its own now as you learn how to respond as you learn the mechanics of anxiety as you learn how to deal with setbacks confidence arises on its own the mistake a
lot of people make here is that they try to become confident first but confidence is a side effect it's a byproduct of learning how to respond and dealing with setbacks as you push past your boundaries that's where the confidence comes in but too many people try to get confident first and then push past their boundary that doesn't work you're putting the cart in front of the horse now if you've made it this far in the video I want to give you another bonus step that happens in the recovery Journey which is never falling back into
the cycle because the truth is recovery isn't about just coming out of this but recovery is making sure that this never happens again in the future and as you're going through the recovery Journey you're going to learn the principles the mechanics the mindsets of what's going on and as you do that well you'll naturally never fall back into the cycle there are people that have gone through this recovery Journey unconsciously they don't know what they did but they managed to get out the reality is that was pure luck but what we want to do is
we want to get out of this consciously we want to understand the mechanics we want to learn how to respond we want to throw everything under the anxiety umbrella we want to be able to deal with setbacks we want to be able to gain our core confidence if you can do this consciously well you will never fall back in the cycle one of the biggest reasons why people fell into the cycle in the first place is because they didn't know what was going on they didn't know why they were experiencing panic attack they didn't even
know it was a panic attack they thought something phys physical was wrong they kept following their symptoms into this hamster wheel and they couldn't identify what was going on they were just questioning everything they were feeling disconnected but as you start understanding what's going on as you start seeing what's working well you recognize exactly the mechanics and forces that play if you know why you fell into the cycle well you'll naturally never fall back into the cycle again so the last day just making sure you never fall back in the cycle now this doesn't mean
that the self-development journey doesn't end in fact it keeps going except the focus shifts from overcoming these symptoms to life things you start recognizing that these thoughts you had was never you you start recognizing that these physical symptoms that felt so real for you well there wasn't anything there now you start diving into deeper topics self-development topics who are you what were the mindsets and beliefs that made you fall into the cycle but again this goes beyond the scope of anxiety so it becomes a NeverEnding journey of uh self-discovery and it's a beautiful Journey so
I hope this helps and I hope this gives you some perspective of why all these coping crutches didn't work why supplements didn't work why breathing techniques didn't work it was because you were trying to use them as a shield for feeling your anxiety symptoms but they were never designed to be a shield they were just designed to help you cope now as you learn how to respond to your symptoms now if you want to go back to these things that's fine but number one you'll do it with the right intention you know it's not there
to make the symptoms go away and number two you'll actually find the more effective because you're not relying on them in a desperate manner to make your symptoms go away I hope this video helps if you want to know more resources I'll put a link Down Below in the description bunch of resources to help you on your recovery Journey thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video