How to Manage Anxiety and Fear

---

Author: Andrea Hess, LPC

---

 

Anxiety is inherent in the human condition - we ALL have anxiety. How does it get created?  The cause of all anxiety is what happens when we impose our ideas on something, and then we overlay these ideas onto how things really are. This is called a Projection. Projections are how we see ourselves.  Projections are very powerful, and this is how we see the world.  Projections are promptly absorbed into the reality they create. 

How do we manage our anxiety and calm our fears?  The answer lies in challenging our current projections and ideas that has become our reality.  Many projections we hold onto are not even valid today!  When we face the fear, the projection will begin to diminish its strength within us.  Fear loves to keep us stuck and wants to keep us running away.  We need to slowly move into the fear. Fear is nothing more than a projection, an idea that you bought into one day. When anxiety is activated, try to do the opposite of what it is telling you to do. The only power fear has is when we react to it, as if it is real!

In closing, there is a poem by Christopher Logue -
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And he pushed,
And they flew.