In today’s podcast I present to you one of the most popular anxiety affirmations you’ll find from my YouTube channel. These health anxiety affirmations will begin building trust in a body that is healthy and whole.
The process of truly learning while healing begins with the recognition that we are Hypochondriacs. Often this pattern is coupled with panic attacks or generalized anxiety which makes functioning within society that much more challenging. This is where these health anxiety affirmations come in, to break our patterns that we’ve invested so much time and energy into. Most health anxiety sufferers won’t admit that this is the cause of their suffering until every physical test under the sun has been made. The idea that this suffering could be the result of a highly sensitized bodily intelligence that picks up on unconscious triggers within the environment isn’t something we really consider until later on in the journey (once we’ve finally concluded that our suffering could in fact be emotionally caused).
The health anxiety affirmations you listen to today will give us the clarity we need to reach the next chapter in our healing.
The body will react anxiously way before the conscious mind even knows what is going on. The conscious mind often is the last to know what’s really going on, and more often than not (within the context of health anxiety) tags along to the survival and emotional parts of our brain spurring on more anxiousness.
Like a dog chasing its tail, health anxiety sufferers chase a disease or illness that simply does not exist.
While at the doctors office, the doctor may provide 9 pieces of information that connects to good physical health, and 1 vague piece of ‘cautious’ information that opens up a world of ‘what if’s in our minds. We forget the 9 pieces of information and hyper focus on the 1 thing they said that confirms the gloomy spiral we seem to be heading towards. How do we let something like this happen? Why can’t we simply be content with the 9 pieces of information that confirms our optimal physical health? Because our systems want to maintain whatever emotional state we find ourselves in most often. These are the states we states and filters we must break, and today we do it through health anxiety affirmations.
The emotional refractory period, a system within us dedicated to sorting for and distorting information within our environment looks for familiarity.
So, if fear is the leading emotion for most of the day (and most of our lives) it will look for it, and even distort the words of another person to continue along the path of fear. Our subconscious minds don’t like change much. It likes consistency. When it comes to health anxiety the problem isn’t necessarily the difficulty in healing health anxiety, but rather convincing our subconscious minds that change is safe, necessary, and reliable. It’s vitally important that once you’ve received your diagnosis which connects you to anxiety, you don’t slap it on your forehead for everyone to see. You are not a victim here; you’re simply dealing with patterns and habits that have formed to make them feel so automatic that we’ve convinced ourselves that they are a part of who we are. When, they are a just bundle of habits. Some of these habits that spur on health anxiety within the different aspects that make up who we are come down to:
Imagery based habits: Waking up and predicting through pictures and movies how debilitating the day will go due to the anxiety symptoms and thought patterns we’ll have to grapple with. We may not be conscious of these movies and slideshows that we unconsciously run in our minds, but when feeling gets connected to thought we are imagining a future based on what took place in our past, we are not in the process of creating a future based on our desires anymore. Therefore it’s vitally important that we learn to consciously run mental movies of what we want to see happen rather than unconsciously run mental movies of what we don’t want.
The best time to do this is within the first 20 minutes of waking up, and the last 20 minutes prior to sleep as our brainwave states allow us to access the subconscious minds storage system during these times. If someone asked me what the single most powerful tool was that took me out of health anxiety and into inner peace, I would say incorporating mental movies into these 2 separate times of the day. You may do this in conjunction with these health anxiety affirmations on YouTube to get the most out of your dedication to healing.
Mental habits: When it comes to the mental realm there’s a difference between replaying and thinking. Most people think they are thinking as they go through the day when in fact they’re just replaying. Replaying is adopting the same ideas around a similar context day after day, it’s like a record player that plays the same record each day and what happens if you play the same song consistently? You’ll experience the same feelings you always have. Play a different record on that record player and suddenly you are thinking.
You’ve gotten yourself out of your mental comfort zones and into a place of curious vulnerability.
Although the new feeling connected to the new record (thought) may feel different, different in your world must be associated to safety rather than danger. Different is good, we must make that different feeling the new normal for you in order to heal health anxiety for good. Ideas are just that, ideas, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not the mental ideas that ruin us or lift us up, it’s what we do during the moments we first become aware of them. Leaving an idea alone makes it lose its power over us, so does replacing one idea with a new one.
However, adding feeling, words, and some sort of physical action to an idea makes it more real in our bodies which can then potentially spur on the stress chemicals that make us think that we are always in danger. Ask yourself this, for the greater part of your day are you replaying old ideas or creating new ones? You have more options on how to perceive something than you may think, and starting today you get to believe whatever you want to about your bodily signals, yourself, the world, unfamiliar experiences, everything. So, believe in change and have faith that these new ideas about your health and the safety within this world can and will turn into firmed up beliefs.
Verbal habits: Words are commands to yourself, which makes todays health anxiety affirmations that much more important towards your healing. What we say cements our beliefs and identity. Words hold tremendous power to encourage change or leave us feeling victimized. More often than not when we speak to others in a victim like manner due to our health anxiety, we’re actually just looking to gain something from the other person. These are called secondary gains. Consciously it’s a crazy idea to live in misery in the hopes of receiving acceptance, connection, love from another. But unfortunately, we aren’t conscious for enough of the day to realize what it is we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
When it comes to your verbal communication with others it’s difficult to completely stop saying things that spur on further health anxiety, and much easier to replace certain words with new words. A few words you must replace starting today are:
Trying. Instead of using the word trying in a sentence like ‘I’m trying my best’ use the word learning, as in ‘I’m now learning what works and what doesn’t for me in regard to the goals for myself. Trying literally means failing and to be honest this unlimited storage bank known as the subconscious mind/body would much rather hear you use the word trying than learning. Trying isn’t committing, and committing could change all that the subconscious mind believes is best for you. As we go through this book you’ll begin recognizing within you the vast number of defence mechanisms the subconscious mind/inner child uses to keep things as they are, even if that means continued suffering.
How. People use the word how to justify not knowing what to do to heal, when in fact they simply don’t trust deeply enough in what they already know. Health anxiety is a lack of trust, health anxiety healing is driven by trust, trusting in a direction that feels unfamiliar and vulnerable to us. When someone says ‘how do I heal that one lingering anxiety symptoms?’ What they’re really saying is ‘I’m afraid to be courageous enough to believe in a new idea and action so I’ll stay in a state of confusion instead.’ This state of confusion is a place that is safe and reliable to a health anxiety sufferer in that they feel like it won’t get any worse than this at least.
They know what to expect from one day to the next in terms of how they’ll feel, however if things start to change, they unconsciously feel like things may spiral uncontrollably and they won’t be able to handle it. The easiest way out of constantly using the word how, as in ‘how can I do something’ is to simply look at what doesn’t work. Today through theses health anxiety affirmations you will notice that clarity comes to you more often. Look back on your worst health anxiety days recently. What sort of habits did you engage in upon waking up, showering, driving to work, conversing with others, while having dinner, prior to bed etc.
The most straight forward path to freedom from health anxiety is to recognize what doesn’t work.
Always. Health anxiety sufferers over-use the word always to convince themselves that the same experience happens to them repeatedly, when in fact it happens sporadically. A good example of this is ‘I always feel the same lump in the throat feeling when I’m at work.’ I wouldn’t be so sure though, since the throat is our avenue of expression (we’ll be going deep into the true meaning behind your symptoms in later chapters) and you may be feeling the restriction around one particular person, or when your workload gets too heavy, or during a meeting.
The inability to express trickles down through childhood for most of us since a certain authority figure made us feel smaller than small. While listening to these health anxiety affirmations it’s important that you repeat the words back in mind or out loud. We couldn’t express our thoughts and needs then, so anything that feels similar to the subconscious mind in the present moment will spur on a feeling of restriction or a lump feeling in the throat today. Instead of using the word always, replace it with sometimes. I sometimes feel this physical symptom of anxiety during this experience. Now we are moving away from generalizing and moving towards flexibility in perception.
Behavioral habits: Behaviors are the foundations of our identity. What we do and don’t do from moment to moment dictates what we believe about ourselves and the world. Act like a health anxiety sufferer and all that comes with it will be yours. This doesn’t mean you must ‘fake it till you make it’ since the mindset of faking it will lead to never owning what it is you are doing. Rather, I’d like you to see yourself as a bundle of ‘persona parts.’ There are parts to you that are generally connected to fear and parts of you that are connected to love. Your fear-based parts have been making up your persona for some time now and your loving parts have been neglected. For example, when you wake up and look in the mirror recently you probably see someone who is a victim of their inner circumstances.
This would be to follow the lead of your fear and anxiety centered persona parts.
However, the moment you catch yourself about to go down that familiar path and listen to your loving and encouraging parts you will begin the process of replacing the old outdated beliefs you have about yourself. Today’s health anxiety affirmations will guide you. Changing behaviors can be intimidating at first, so it’s best to focus on listening to the positive parts of you that you’ve neglected and let them lead you towards what action is best in any given moment. Some of these parts can be connected to:
- Patience
- Optimism
- Humor
- Being content
- Creativity
- Wonder
- Playfulness
These are just a few examples of your loving parts. Remember, if it feels like an unfamiliar behavior it’s most likely the one that will help you to grow into your true divine, loving and peaceful self. Is today the day you place more priority and therefore energy on bringing out your loving persona parts while simultaneously turning down the volume of your fear centered parts? I sure hope so, since the simple recognition of the fact that you’ve been prioritizing your fear centered persona parts more is enough to ‘get the wheels turning’ so to speak. So much of healing health anxiety for good is giving ourselves the permission to believe in and be someone different.
Once you feel like you’re beginning to step over this hurdle you are on your way to trusting in a physical body that is capable of healing pretty much anything, and a mind that is capable of perceiving things as they are, not worst than what they are.
Enjoy today’s health anxiety affirmations my friends, and I’ll see you in the next anxiety guy podcast episode.
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