This is absolutely true "An anxious mind cannot exist within a relaxed body". I've been proactively trying to relax recently and I am starting to feel the benefits. I find that when you're more relaxed you don't get as many obtrusive thoughts and the ones that you do get don't tend to cause as much hysteria.
I always thought that I was an emotional and psychological wreck and that my 'problems' would take years to sort out, but I'm now coming to recognise a few basic flaws in my thinking, which individually are fairly easily remedied, but need hard work to be maintained:
1) lack of confidence. i lack confidence because I have always accepted fear and let it prevent me from doing things. I have been too passive. I am now not putting things off as much, trying to be more assertive and trying to do things that scare me.
2) understanding myself better. There are things that I'm realising about myself. I'm realising why I think and behave in certain ways. I'm realising that I react automatically to certain things.
3) I often think in lose-lose sitautions. Eg. I don't want to live in my small town, but I'm too scared to move away or I hate my job, but there's nothing else out there. Which makes me feel trapped
4) I often want other people to fix things for me. In relationships I very often act like a child and expect to be fed and soothed by my partner
5) I often play the victim. I feel like I don't get the good things that I deserve and that bad things happen to me for no reason.
6) I will reject things out of hand. "I don't like him/her", "I don't like this place"
7) I am very tense, which makes it hard for me to enjoy myself or to make calm, rational decisions. It also affects my mood and makes it more difficult for me to develop a rapport with people.
8) I can feel isolated and alone. I often feel like the world is empty and barren rather than full of life and good people
9) I approach many situations with a sense of dread
10) I often fear the worst and brace my body for it. I'm a pessimist
The solutions:
1) Lack of confidence. I need to expand my comfort zone, I need to do thing which are uncomfotable to me or scare me. Remember how nervous we were when we first leaned to ride a bike or drive a car? As we practice and the skill becomes more automatic it becomes easy
2) I have 'anchors' a piece of music or a place reminds me of something and causes an automatic response. With me 80s music reminds me of my poor upbringing and unhappy childhood and it makes me feel depressed. I need to reassociate those experiences in my mind. My childhood probably wasn't as depressing as I make out, but that's another shortcut for my brain
3) I do often think in lose-lose situations. Again, this is a hard habit to break, but reaffirming to myself the benefits of my current situation and the fact that I'm not trapped, that there are benefits to alternative situations is important. With my current work situation I am feeling more relaxed at the moment because I have decided to do more overtime to use the money on things that interest and excite me, rather than going in and just doing obligated hours and then moaning about poor wages. I've also found that my days off aren't spent feeling low in my room and feeling like I've wasted a day off on the computer.
4) I am being a lot more proactive at the moment. Our vegetable steamer wouldn't work the other day and rather than giving up straight away and being lazy, i got a toolbox out and changed the fuse and checked it with different sockets and it worked! It gave me a lift to have solved a problem on my own too
5) I do often think "woe is me". At work there are jobs which are timed and pressurised and other jobs which aren't timed. I always used to moan that they same people were working in the less pressurised jobs, but after speaking to them it transpires that they do twice as much work as me off the clock anyway, so it is fair that they get to do the less pressurised jobs more often.
6) I do have a tendency to judge people. This is a hard habit to break. I'm trying t
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