Dr Shelagh.com - Anxiety

Most anxiety, compulsions and panic disorders don't just "appear" out of thin air, they are induced through:

You may have had difficulties in your past but that does not mean that you are doomed to a life of obsessive-compulsive disorders, anxiety, panic or phobias. There are many examples of people who have overcome a wide variety of difficulties without long-term mental health issues. This ability to overcome difficulties is based in an ability to retrain your mind to look at things from a different perspective so that you can once again enjoy the things you used to.

First you have to THINK differently thoughts and develop different beliefs and attitudes . Negative thoughts create negative emotions and actions.

If you've suffered from anxiety or panic for years and even decades, you know only too well that it often takes just a fleeting thought, sound or mental image to send you into a tailspin that may throw you into a full-blown panic attack, complete with the sweats, heart jumping out of your chest, light-headedness, dizziness, chest pain or feeling like you may die on the spot.

YOU Can Control Them

Doubt makes even the best decisions feel difficult and causes procrastination.

Likewise, the only things that can help you to do, be and have anything you want in life are also your thoughts and emotions.

A mental pattern is a "recording" in your brain tissue representing a memory of an experience you've had.

Every single experience you have, through your senses of sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell is recorded as a memory in your brain tissue. When you experience similar events over and over, your brain records a pattern for them.

Today, when you experience some event, your brain automatically, instantly searches its recorded memories, and within milliseconds, replays a patterned memory from a similar experience and you go on autopilot, feeling the same way and doing the same or similar thing you've done hundreds or thousands of times before.

This is why you almost always feel and act in the same ways in similar situations.

Mental patterns are the foundations of all our habits and personality traits. Mental patterns make us "predictable." We literally couldn't survive without them.

Unfortunately, as important as mental patterns are to our survival, they can also make us feel and act in ways that don't support us in being our best.

Here are 4 very simple examples of common mental patterns that can limit a person's ability to succeed long-term:

1) A salesperson who, as a youth, was routinely told he was stupid and wouldn't amount to anything by his parents may feel personally rejected and become despondent many years later from simply missing a sale. So on every call instead of excitement over a possible new business relationship, there is nothing but fear and anticipation of failure. And this poor person can't figure out why.

2) A former smoker may feel an overpowering urge to light up when seeing an old smoking buddy or even visiting a place that simply looks similar to an old hangout where he used to smoke a lot. And there is little he can do to stop the urge besides leaving.

3) An overweight person may have been given praise or rewards (like dessert) for eating everything on her plate as a child, creating a link in her system that food means pleasure, acceptance and love regardless of what contrary evidence she is presented with today. So no matter what new "how-to get thin" book she buys, she's compelled to keep eating.

4) A person suffering from social anxiety could have been teased unmercifully as a child (even getting a "nickname" because of a weight problem, for wearing shabby clothes, for crooked teeth or even because of one single traumatic event. Now, years later, even though this person may be skinny, may wear beautiful clothes, have straightened teeth and gone through years of therapy, they could still feel panicky whenever they are around people they don't know well.

We all have literally thousands of unconscious programmed patterns like these (many of them are good, empowering, supportive patterns) that control and guide our every thought, emotion and action...

...Habitual mental patterns override logic . They often don't seem to make any sense at all... but we are still controlled by them.

All success comes from behaviours (from doing something). But all behaviours start out as thoughts (mental activity). So if you want different behaviours, you'll need to have different thoughts.

People who don't have a specific negative habit or addictive thought pattern have the ability to literally "brush off" the distractions, change the meaning of temporary setbacks in their minds so that their mental states aren't negatively affected. When you are good at something (or at least if you have no trouble in a particular area of life), succeeding may feel effortless. When things go wrong, you don't let it rattle you. You aren't tempted to act opposite to what you know is best. You can keep fear at a minimum. Doubt is nowhere to be found. Once you are good at something, you do this without effort, without even having to think about it. It's just happens.

• The Magic In The Music

Recently, a study was done at UC Irvine's Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory . 36 undergraduate students were given spatial reasoning tests on a standard IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test.

* Before the first test , each student listened to Mozart's sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 for ten minutes

* Before the second test , they listened to a relaxation tape.

* And before the third test , they sat in silence.

The average scores for all 36 students were 119 on the first test, 111 on the second and 110 on the third test.

This and many studies like it are irrefutable... slow, rhythmic "mathematical" 60 BPM music puts you into the perfect state of mind and body for learning new mental patterns like nothing else.

I hope that you find what you are looking for but if for some reason you don't then please contact me and I will be happy to help. I aim to respond to all inquiries within 1 working day of receiving them.

Welcome to Dr Shelagh.com

YOU Can Control Them

• The Magic In The Music