Studies have shown that we can indeed become addicted to the chemical released while experienced various emotions particularly anxiety.

There is a time for everything. A time when self help books, quotes… are helpful as they point to a different perspective we may not have noticed before, and a time when they don’t help…. and then we worry about why they don’t help anymore and feel anxiety about that.  It seems we love to create issues that we can worry and agonize over, even the issue of self help not helping.  If this is an addiction a 12-step program could help (not just for alcoholics.)

Having had similar problem, I feel the first step to take a step back and identify the main issue which it seems you have done. Persistent thinking and dwelling on the problem. The solution isn’t in fixing the problem your dwelling on, there will always be a new problem to dwell on, but on addressing the issue of persistent thinking.

I get it. I tend to over think everything and over analyzed on everything I was concerned about especially how I felt others saw me. This insured me a constant source to the chemicals released by anxiety. Eventually I realized that the number one issue I had that created the most anxiety for me we worrying about my persistent thinking… which I thought about all the time. It funny if you think about it, but not so much when your stuck in an infinite loop of your own creation.

Once I could step back from the situation I saw that  my persistent overthinking about the problem was the problem I created the space to deal with that.  I found that accepting my nature to overthinking help a lot.  I’m always going to overthink things, its what I like to do, and accepting it I no longer felt the same level of anxiety when I did it.  It took time but eventually when I felt my anxiety rise and understood its source I was able to accept it and move on. Simply noticing was enough to change. I still overthink problems but don’t experience the anxiety that that used to create.

Dear Ale:

An exam will trigger the anxiety, so you are more likely to feel anxious facing an exam than you are when not facing an exam. Certain life events, such as an exam, or meeting new people bring the fear to the surface so you feel it more intensely.

I like the idea of living simply, or “to live with simplicity” like you wrote. To me, it means to organize your life in such a way that you face less of those events. For example: if an exam is not going to help you in your life, don’t take it. That is making life simpler. Or if a relationship with a particular person increases your anxiety- limit or end that relationship. That too, would make life simpler.

anita

Dear Ale:

You asked: “when you are not able to live simply and you are not in the present how we can come back in?”-

the way every guided meditation and the way any meditation starts: by focusing on your breathing, inhaling, exhaling, breathing. Then paying attention to the  sounds around you, focusing on nothing but he sounds you hear, paying attention.

Coming back to the present is about changing your focus from thinking to sensing, starting with your breathing, then sensing something else. That something else can be anything from what you perceive through one of the five senses: hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste to something you perceive through other sensors, such as heat, pressure, hunger, and more.

Going from abstract thinking (the head, so to speak) to physiological sensing (the body), I’d say.

Regarding your last post, I didn’t understand this: “I want to change ever”- can you explain what you mean by it?

anita

Dear Ale:

Give your static mind a break, time to rest and get refreshed and become flexible again. Do it, if you will, by focusing on your body, in the ways I wrote about in my last post to you.

anita