Finding and changing negative anxiety loops

I’m John Glanvill, author of The Calmness in Mind Process for the Self-Treatment of Anxiety, OCD and Depression.

Just a quick reminder that in my past, I experienced anxiety, OCD, self-consciousness, shyness, perfectionism, bipolar depression, bouts of deep despair and painful periods of life where I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.

I am just reminding you of this – because this course documents the many things I learned and discovered on the way to emotional freedom, a quieter mind and a positive, new loving relationship with myself and the world.

And although all of my videos are important – the last one (number 20) about learning to live with a complex personality, staying out of your own inner conflicts – and what I will be teaching today can be profoundly life-changing – if you really embrace it and do the work I recommend.

Now, in this video, I will expand on our discussions from video 20 regarding anxiety loops – and how best to change the negative styles of thinking formed in your childhood from the adverse life events you experienced.

But before we do that, I want to spend a little time revisiting our emotions and their reaction to life’s major upsets, like death, divorce, redundancy, illness, separation, accidents, pandemics and other life tragedies.

What techniques can we utilise to handle these experiences? What can we do when we are suddenly overwhelmed by emotional turmoil? How can we shorten our period of pain and suffering?

If we look down on these events, they all have one thing in common, they all signify to the mind some sort of loss or a significant change in your life.

Your mind or ego will jump to stories of significant change, feelings of powerlessness, guilt or feeling responsible for causing it.

Each of which will trap you in negative thought loops and anxious feelings, where the mind believes there is nothing you can do about it – or that this event will be permanent.

All these stories invoke a storm of negative feelings, shock, disbelief, denial, anger, guilt, self-blame, feelings of abandonment or resentment at what your company, family or the world is doing to you.

All these disturbances surface, producing an overwhelm of negative emotions, as I discussed in Videos 9 and 15, trapped trauma from our atomic energy battery held as potential energy, is released as kinetic energy and floods through us – and perhaps triggering all our old wounds?

And as I have been teaching – you have a choice whether to fear the emotions coming up and get stuck in the unrequested stories your mind proposes, then loop them around and around…..

Or, you can just let the emotions flow through you, sag your body, just let the energy escape (it’s a good thing) whilst consciously staying out of those negative unconscious stories that were programmed into your brain when you were younger.

Typically, the mind tries to use reason – it tries to think its way out of these dilemmas, it tries to find explanations and justifications.

Why did it happen to me?
What did I do wrong?
It’s not fair?
I did everything they asked of me…

And remember, the reason you are following this course is to find Calmness – regardless of whether life is fair (or even makes sense!)

In an anxious person, the mind jumps to ‘what if, ‘if only’ and ‘why?’ stories about the event, others and yourself, and the body goes to emotional overwhelm.

However, if you want a new way to function in life, all you have to do is manage the emotions themselves.

That might sound surprising. But it’s true, it’s not the event that is the problem, that’s already happened.

Let’s say your Mother is in hospital. Well, it’s done, that is what happened, it is what it is, whether we like it or not – can you see that it’s how we feel about it that is the problem? You have the choice to; accept, change or move away from the situation.

You may need to really think about this?

Can we learn to let go of the facts – or the perceived truths that our old negatively conditioned mind tries to grab us with? Guilt us with, blame us for, project on to us expectations of how it thinks we should react!

However, in our new way of looking at life – the stories (our mind presents to us) don’t mean anything, or at least we are learning to not listen to them, to not be hooked by them.

Who cares about these stories? With practice, they don’t have to mean anything; you don’t have to believe or even acknowledge them.

Therefore, the only thing we need to handle from the events in our life (that have happened) are our feelings and emotions – or, put that a better way, the energy that arises within us.

How can we separate the story from the pain? How can we keep our attention on the emotions, relax our body and get out of the way of this emotional energy – how can we sag into, the grief, loss, pain, fear, and stay out of the stories and allow this energy to escape from us?

This is a far more advanced and conscious way of living – far better than the old behaviours, of getting caught up in all the stories about the event and then try to avoid or hold down all your anxiety!

Now, when I teach people this approach – they often say, “I hear what you are saying, John, but what about the problem? What will I do if my Mother dies? If I lose my job, where will the money come from? What if I am alone?

Well, in reality, these events can be surprisingly easy to handle once the emotions have been dealt with – and once you stop wasting your life, running virtual stories wishing life was as your mind wants it to be, rather than how it actually is.

In reality, life just goes on – life seems to fill the vacuum left by the event that caused the change – if you allow it to happen.

After my anxiety-driven nervous breakdown in my mid-thirties, I was in bed for six months – I thought I would never be able to work again, that I would be unemployable – that my world had ended.

Yet here I am, in a different career, in a job I love!

If a person had told me back then that I would end up self-employed and having no anxiety (except the startle response, to save me from being run over)….and NO OCD, I would have thought they were mad!

After my last separation, I wondered how I would ever love again, yet here I am in the most fantastic relationship.

When I lost my home, I wondered how I could ever get another house – yet here I am 20 years later in my perfect home, better than I ever could have imagined.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying, look at me, look what I did – I am saying that new stuff happened as I got on with my life.

As I learned to stay out of my mind’s old conditioned stories, I saw that I could try new things.

I realised that you’ll never know what will happen, but you have to be participating in life to stimulate new opportunities.

I saw that it’s what you do in the now that defines your future, not what happened to you in the past.

I learned that sitting at home worrying is not a good strategy at all!

What I am saying is, that – when bad events happen, stay out of the stories, let the pain escape, separate the energy from the story, keep your focus on the energy release, and your calm breathing – not the story.

Then, be open to life adjusting itself, don’t resist new opportunities, new people and new experiences from flowing into your life – to fill the vacuum of change- embrace them, explore them, engage with them – as this is living life.

And when you are open to receiving life, surprising things happen that your old negatively conditioned mind could never have anticipated.

A recent client of mine lost her job after being furloughed because of Covid and was offered a position by her friend, in that friend’s family business. I said, “Wonderful, how great that life has presented you with a solution.”

She said, “No, I didn’t take it because I don’t want to be indebted to her, and I don’t really have the right skills!”

Can you see how her old negative styles of thinking (don’t be indebted to people) and her fear of failing (I don’t have the right skills) – were negative stories her mind used to reject the very solution that life was providing!

Fortunately, I pointed that out to her, and she asked the friend if the offer was still open? It was, she nervously started and now is loving the job and all the new skills she is learning.

She nearly unconsciously talked herself out of her own new future! Now she is on a new path, one her old mind could never have imagined – and it’s a good path, her negative stories were wrong!

We need new positive stories to replace those old out of date negative ones.

Fortune favours the brave. Don’t wait for motivation; taking action generates motivation. Vulnerability plus action equals courage. How will I know if that new job will be good for me until I try it? I’ll date that person a few times to see what happens, rather than listen to my mind telling me it won’t work!

New positive stories, regardless of their truth, much as we use to encourage our children.

Now, for most people with anxiety or OCD (or even depression), the mind catastrophises, it worries, it judges you, it tries to convince you that it knows what is going to happen, it tries to talk you out of doing the very things that you know you need to do!

Therefore, our process’s next step is to recognise the negative thought patterns our brain was programmed with, then overwrite those old negative beliefs with new more positive ones that will form the basis of a new you as we move forward.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves how these anxiety loops function. I know you have seen this before; however, repetition is how we retrain our unconscious mind, bear with me, trust me.

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Our brain is full of programmed negative thinking styles, some we are aware of and many that are nested under all sorts of cover stories, family conditioning, or religious and cultural programming –

or the unconscious responses we developed in response to the adverse events we were exposed to growing up, that maybe we remember and maybe we don’t.

So, we will explore what negative words, beliefs, stories, values, or behaviours – do we have about ourselves? And to keep it simple, I am just going to call them negative stories – and your task will be to search them out and write them down.

If you can, it is good to share this process with a partner or friend who really knows you, so they can objectively point out what you might be missing; for example, a person with OCD might not think they are controlling, whereas their partner will know that they are!

To get us going, let me give you some examples of negative stories; I’m not clever, not funny, putting myself first is selfish, I must work hard, I must be perfect, I must put others first, I’m unlucky, I’m unlovable, bad things will happen unless I xyz, nobody wants to date a bald man or a fat woman, I am a loser, I can’t learn new things, I don’t deserve to be successful, I am too old to change, anxiety is

hereditary so there is nothing I can do, I am useless so there is no point trying, I am too tired to be able to work, I have never travelled so I can’t move to a new location. I am too old to find love, I prefer living on my own, I don’t need to be in a relationship, conflict is bad.

These are just a few – What are the negative stories, your mind proposes to you each day? What are the excuses that your mind comes up with or sabotages you with?

You can’t rush this process; it may take a few hours or even a few weeks to make a list. But I would like you to write them down, really explore them!

To get you started, let me share some of my negative story realisations with you, things I unearthed as I followed this process twenty years ago.

Growing up, I didn’t think I was funny; my brother is hilarious, as was my Father. But I was shy and anxious, I hated embarrassing myself or looking silly – looking back on it, I really didn’t know how to play or goof around.

People would say “John, you are very serious, why don’t you join in, what’s wrong with you, what are you scared of? Your brother is very funny.”

Of course, this is how my brain got wired; this became the negative story I formed about myself – “I’m not funny, I’m very serious, something is wrong with me!”

This is the negative style of thinking that my brain adopted. Of course, back then, my brain didn’t know that my Brother and Father were extroverts and I was an introvert like my Mother.

As I grew up, when people said to me, “you’re funny”, I used to wonder what they were talking about.

But after really examining that negative story in my thirties – I suddenly realised that I was funny, I had quick responses, clever wordplay associations and a deep observational humour.

Suddenly out of nowhere, I could see that I was funny, not like a comedian, not as funny as my brother, but funny, and it was OK, it was naturally within me, it was a significant aspect of who I really was, that I had been unknowingly rejecting.

Then, from this realisation, I could see that it was OK to play more, I observed that as a child, I was childish, getting angry and controlling if I didn’t get my way –

Whereas, now I could be childlike – playful, adventurous, in awe of life, happy to try new things, I could let go of perceived control and just have fun!

I broke that old negative story that I should be serious and installed the truth of who I really am – it took thirty years, however, better late than never!

I learned that although I am predominantly an introvert, I can act in extroverted ways to let my Nomad out from time to time. It expanded my behavioural and the emotional portfolio of who I am.

Another shocking realisation was about my intelligence. Growing up, I hated school and didn’t really try very hard, the reason being – I didn’t think I was very clever, or you could say my unconscious negative story was that I wasn’t very bright!

And the teachers were very good at reminding me how stupid I was, and how I would amount to nothing.

Although I had a good education at an excellent grammar school, I failed all my exams, I hadn’t even tried to revise because my mind said there was no point.

So, I left school at 16 because there was no point for a person like me to stay on for further education.

However, I lucked into a job that sent me back to school where I spent five years learning how to be an engineer, and although I enjoyed it and easily passed all my exams – I still unknowingly thought of myself as not a clever person.

Then every job I had – went really well; I was always being promoted and headhunted or made a director; people saw me as an intelligent leader.

Which really confused me, inside my head it made me feel like a fake – like I would be rumbled and the rug pulled from beneath me.

But, after doing this process, I had the most amazing aha moment! I saw clearly that I am very intelligent, street smart, adaptable, resourceful – a good researcher, a good teacher, that I was unbelievably creative and that I loved learning – I was a clever person!

Almost unbelievable – that I had been addicted to that old negative story of not being clever – even though all around me was evidence to the contrary!

This is how powerful our old negative stories may be and how (if we listen to them) we limit ourselves and confine ourselves within these unconscious false boundaries.

So, what I want you to do is – sit down with a glass of wine and ask yourself, “What are my negative stories, words, values, behaviours, conditioning or beliefs That I have about myself?”

Then write them down, share them with a friend – see what they say.

And because this is such an essential phase of the process, let me give you a few more examples from other anxious people who have gone through this process.

I worked with a pretty woman in her twenties who was very petite, shy and nervous – and when I asked her, “What is the dominant-negative story your mind tells you about you?”

She thought for a few minutes and then just burst out crying – she said. “Oh my God, I compare myself to other women, I see them as women, but me as just a girl, I think people take them seriously, but they see me as an immature, a girl!”

Then she burst out laughing and said, “Oh, this is all so obvious – I am the youngest of five children and they always treated me like a baby, I see myself as the baby, I get upset like a girl, but of course, I am a woman!”

And just like that – she saw two old negative stories – and we could begin work on installing the two new positive stories, of being a competent woman and modifying her behaviours to be more woman-like, rather than childlike, which of course would then retrain those around her to treat her differently.

One more story – I worked with a nice, kind guy who had problems with anxiety. He hated conflict, so he also had trouble standing up for himself, and therefore often felt put upon by others.

We went through a similar process, and like the previous woman, he had a huge epiphany.

He sat there laughing and shaking his head, and said, “I’m angry, that’s what I am feeling, not anxiety, I am angry!”

He said, “my dominant-negative story is that conflict is bad! But I can clearly see now – that just asking for what I want or standing my ground is not conflict; it’s just stating my preference; it is just honest communication of what I want – I can do that! – I deserve that!”

In that moment, memories flooded into his head from childhood, about fearing his Fathers angry temper and how he and his Step-Mother had always tiptoed around trying to please him.

That was the negative story programmed into his brain, don’t upset people.

He said, “How could I not see something as obvious as this? I need to process out all that anger I have been holding down, and I need to find my own courage, step into my own truth, and stop believing the story that was programmed into me all those years ago!”

He woke up – he learned that you can change your stories, and you can change your behaviours.

I could go on all day about realisations like this – our old negative stories seem so real because we have been living them for so long.

But they are ONLY the early programs installed in our brain, the default setting for our old negative thinking styles.

They are not who we have to be – and we can change those stories with the right process and with the creative techniques we have been discussing from video thirteen onwards.

If you want to go deeper, you can say, “what negative stories does my Warrior have? My Settler have? My Nomad have?

What negative stories have I inherited from my parents or by trying not to be like my parents?

What negative stories did religion or culture program into my early brain that became the default setting for my unconscious thinking?

What negative stories did my brain develop after that time I was ill, bullied, abused, rejected, embarrassed, shocked, left alone, ridiculed, stressed, estranged, orphaned – or whatever adverse events you experienced in your younger years?

Once you have made your list, shared it with trusted friends – which is a powerful form of exposure therapy, sharing your vulnerability, asking for help, opening your heart.

We then rewrite each old negative story into the new positive story that you will use to reprogram your brain.

Perhaps an old negative story like; “Never ask for help” could become a new positive story like; “It will be fun to ask for help should I need it, I am looking forward to letting people into my life and sharing my experiences with them!”

You will be using this new positive story to consciously redefine your values and beliefs – your new sense of self.

This new positive story will form the new basis of how you will behave (even if it makes you feel anxious); and this is exposure therapy.

And the new positive story you will be adopting to retrain your RAS, your reticular activating system, as I explained in video 18, which is key to your growth.

These will be the new positive stories you use to consciously, calmly and gently, talk over the old out-dated unconscious negative stories from your childhood.

How could you have known what was best for you back then? You couldn’t have, it was just how your brain happened to get wired – it’s not you and it can be changed if you do the work.

And like almost everything I have been teaching you up until now – just because your conscious mind understands what I am saying…

It doesn’t mean your unconscious mind does too! No, it will need reprogramming through repetition, repetition, and more repetition!

List out your observable old negative stories, rewrite them as new positive ones – step out and start living the new ones, and see what happens…..

Let life in, trust that whatever happens could be the beginning of something new and wonderful; how will you know until it unfolds?

You’ll also find that as you live these new positive stories – your new actions will expose deeper levels of unconscious resistance –

Which is good! More negative stories will reveal themselves; you document them, and rewrite them into positive stories that will allow you to align yourself with who you want to become and what you want to do with your life.

Play around with this, and see where it takes you. There is no wrong way to do it – except to not do it.

Will it be hard? Probably! Will your little eight-year-old try and sabotage you? Probably! Will you struggle to state new beliefs positively? Probably!

But none of these are reasons to not do it, especially if you really want to experience life differently.

In future videos, we’ll be doing lots more work on understanding and developing new values and beliefs and learning how to place your focus on who you want to be and what you want from life.

Especially in these turbulent times, where those who step forward with a plan of what they want and who they want to be – will probably fare better, than those who nervously wait to see what will happen, waiting to be told what to do!

In the next video, we will be learning how to train those around us to treat us differently, which, of course, is an essential part of developing self-worth.