How to change your personality & cope with anxiety through Introspection
Anxiety is a crippling thing. It can disarm even the strongest person making them feel weak and overwhelmed. So many people are going to their Doctors wanting help coping with anxiety and unfortunately they are coming out with scripts for medication. But we all know that medication for depression or anxiety doesn’t make it go away. It may make you feel you are coping with the anxiety a bit better, but you still know it is in there and the medication doesn’t change your personality to clear up the anxiety, it just covers it up with a band aid.
So what’s necessary to increase our ability to cope with anxiety and change the personality? Most people avoid change, generally I think it’s built in to some of us to find a comfortable road and stick with it even if it ends up full of potholes and all the bitumen is wearing off!
The simplest and easiest tool I can give you for coping with anxiety that will also change your personality permanently is introspection. Sounds simple but it is the most powerful tool there is. Why? Because it builds awareness and consciousness.
The moment you ask “why” to something, an immediate answer or sequence of more why’s pops into your head. These answers have always been there but we learn how to block them out. So it’s just about reconnecting with all the answers.
So the next time you feel anxious you ask yourself “why am I feeling anxious”. Usually an answer will pop into your head saying because I feel insecure today or I have a meeting today I’m not looking forward to, or my relationship is not going so well right now.
At that moment that you ask, you take the reins back on your life and you begin to change your personality. You realize that asking why you are anxious does not make you more anxious, it actually helps you with coping with anxiety and you get curious. Introspection is about a healthy curiosity for yourself and why you do things.
Instead of saying it’s bad that I’m anxious or I shouldn’t feel that way, feel curious about why you are and what situations make it better or worse. That is the most powerful tool for coping with anxiety and it also changes the personality and once changes occur they are permanent. You can’t turn back on consciousness or awareness (even though sometimes we’d like to). Once you become aware of something it is there to stay which is a great thing for people who want the best for themselves and the best out of life.
When we introspect a new part of the brain is created called “the observer” and the observers job is to look at what we are doing, saying and feeling with no bias or judgment. It will notice you being anxious and think mmm interesting I’m anxious talking to this person, I wonder why, do they make me nervous, do I not feel good enough for them, what is it??
Anxiety is also about fear of the future. So it’s expecting that bad things are going to happen and projecting it into future events. So if you are coping with anxiety it’s a good thing to know that when you are anxious you are not in present time any more. You’ve left present time and jumped into the future (and then probably back into the past where the anxiety was created). The most change occurs in the personality when we are grounded and in the present moment. From there we have a base to create the things we want in life (as opposed to the things we don’t).
So next time you’re trying to cope with anxiety, take a few deep breaths and try introspecting and see if it makes a difference.
