Anxiety is among the most common issues that regularly bring people into therapy. Anxiety is a future based state of mind. When we experience anxious feeling we are, more often that not, disturbed by the fear of the unknown. What we cannot yet control. When worry captures our mind, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

 

What is Real?

 

How we think determines our experience of how we live. In her new book: Fear is Not an Option; my dear friend and author Monica Berg directly addresses this topic. Monica begins by laying out the components of healthy, real, and illogical fear. Through the telling of her own personal story of living under fear; she highlights the importance of getting to know your fear through perspective. Monica says, “When overcoming your fears look at the expectation you may have that is connecting you to your fear and change the rules”. Creating a story about what could happen often gives us a false sense of control. She proposes the idea of having a choice. We can begin by looking at how we construct our narrative.

 

What is your story?

 

When we allow our mind to stray from the present we run the risk of becoming captive to worry about the future. If we pay attention to the fear in the moment, it loses its power. We are not reacting to the story we tell ourselves. We are connected to the unfolding events in the moment. Instead of fighting fear we can work with it. In the last segment of Monica’s book she suggests making an action plan and poses these questions: “What am I choosing?” “Is it comfort over curiosity?” “Am I choosing limiting beliefs?” Or “Am I choosing to grow and expand?”