“IN WORRY-SOME TIMES, WORRY-LESS”

(and you may be personally responsible for saving the world)


Call me PolyAnna or naive. Tell me to wake up and smell the coffee because “Everything is really bad” and it “Hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.” You won’t be the first and I can understand your skepticism. But at the end of the day, in the middle of the barrage of words like “crisis” pummeling my senses, I still feel great. And I feel great about feeling great.

I am not being smug or trite, nor am I even close to the enlightenment Buddha and the Dali Lama enjoy. I own a small business and have lots to pay for and to use. I am, however, one woman feeling her way through this life trying really, really hard to be a better person, to accomplish my full potential, to live consciously, and to master my own energy. In essence, I am sure I am a lot like you- I just want to be “happy”.

However, I am choosing not to suffer through what so many millions around me are telling me should be making me feel afraid, mad, frustrated, worried, defeated, shocked…you know the drill. And I do think that we mistake worry for an action step, almost as if we worry about situations that make us feel helpless we are actually doing something about it. After all, don’t you sort of feel like if you are worrying about something then at least you won’t get totally caught off guard when something goes wrong? Yet, I am choosing to feel sane, curious, pleased, peaceful, powerful, joyful, and totally abundant. And I am encouraging my clients and group members to do the same.

The key word here is choice. You do not have to jump on the fear bandwagon. And it takes such simple actions to get off and hitch a different ride. Consider these ideas below. This is how I sleep well at night and feel energized all day. And I suspect that if each one of us does them, we ourselves will lead the world out of “crisis” and into an even better future.

GO ON A MEDIA FAST. Just like how you are what you eat when it comes to food, the same is true with information. Have you noticed yet that the more you “inform” yourself, the worse you feel in your body, thoughts, emotions, family, and work? Energy is energy and you are absorbing very negative energy through most media outlets. You wouldn’t allow your child to watch violent or depressing shows all day and expect her to be jovial and well adjusted would you? Cut off the toxic flow and make a deal with yourself to watch or read a limited amount of news per day, if any at all. Also, get curious about why the news always focuses on what is wrong in the world- it is a strange phenomena that we pay them to tell us about things that make us feel bad. Consider investing in positive magazines and radio stations.

GET YOURSELF CORRECT. Cutting off the media fumes doesn’t mean you have to become negligent of the world or go on an ignorant free for all. Focus on what you can control by getting your own life centered and correct. Patch up your vulnerabilities by living within your means and focusing on reducing personal debt. Take this time when economic markets are “correcting themselves” to clean up your own imbalances- in how you eat, improving the quality of your relationships, in your own emotional state. As Gandhi said “Be the change you wish to see in the world”, as in “what is happening in the world around us is a reflection of our own personal energy”. If we each get correct within ourselves, the “world” itself will be corrected because we are the world.

BEHAVE ABUNDANTLY AND GIVE. The energetic universe loves giving and rewards the generous by helping them to feel good and often giving them even more material abundance. Give to the most needy in times of distress, hold doors open, smile often, make little pit stops to pet pounds and shelters with food donations, send a phone card to a stranger in the military. Then don’t be surprised when your own life- and wallet- seems to get fuller.

INDULGE IN DAILY AFFIRMATIONS. You may be of the mindset that this is crazy talk that doesn’t work. Yet, since we get back in our own lives what we put out in emotions and thoughts, you might want to check what thoughts and feelings you have been repeating lately. The trick here is to calm your fear with statements that relax you and are positive: “It’s okay, I’m okay. I will get through this. I am going to be just fine.” Yet, for those who really want to attract abundance, stretch your repeating mantras further: “I am at ease. I make lots of money. I have many opportunities to be financially healthy. I love feeling being financially wealthy.” Meditate and breathe often.

GET SOME PERSPECTIVE. I’ll be you have survived more than even your worst nightmare about the stock market. Step back and notice all that you have accomplished in your life and the amazing resourcefulness you have had when life kicked you in the teeth. Also, make a list of all that you do have and are grateful for. Even in “crisis” times, we are often the luckiest ones on the planet. Shifting focus to your blessings changes more than your mood, it changes what you attract.

FEELING FINANCIAL FEAR?? READ THIS!

If you are feeling financial fear and worry, here are 7 effective steps you can take to change how you feel (and what you create and attract):

1) Admit to yourself that you are feeling afraid. It's okay to feel that way, even if you are an avid positive thinker or believe in the Law of Attraction. Denying a feeling does not eliminate it, it only buries it. Then say "And even though I have fear, I am totally going to get through this."
2) Face it, Americans are not good at rolling over and giving up. We have come from a long legacy of not just survivors, but "thrivers". Think of people trekking across unchartered America for the gold rush, immigrants on Ellis Island, the Special Olympics, and Sept 11. We can do this and we will.

3) Get really creative like your life depended upon it. Even in hard times there are people who are financially and emotionally healthy. You can choose to be one of the stories about thrivers. Get really ingenious about your life and work. Think outside the box about new ways to make yourself useful to people. Rethink what you used to sell and focus on what people need now.

4) Be realistic about what is really at stake for you. Before you go into a panic about what will happen about money, take stock in what you might lose and actually look at your budget. Not having as much disposable income may be uncomfortable but is not life threatening. If your job or house is actually at stake, control anxiety by assuring yourself of what safety nets do exist if you "fall". Ask "If my worst case scenario happens, what would I do and could I still survive?" Many times the answer is yes.

5) Wake up to your spirituality and your ability to co-create what you want. Quit letting fear call the shots and start learn to take control of your thoughts. Rush Limbaugh recently said he is "choosing not participate in the recession" and just signed a 34 mil/year contract. Seriously, is Rush Limbaugh actually superior to you or is he simply creating what he believes he can create? When you feel the money worry, calm yourself by affirming: "I choose to participate in abundance and I happily accept new opportunities to have more money in my life".
6) If you're losing your hair, you can be mad that you are going bald or happy that you have a head. Your reality is simply based on how you frame it. So if you have lost your job, it makes sense to be upset. But then, to get the "thriver" in you to kick in, look for other ways to view it, like "I actually wanted to find a new career path and I am happy to pursue new avenues". Perhaps this "crisis" is how our lives and world are re-balancing. One client told me she makes her coffee at home and puts it into her Dunkin Donuts cup. This tiny gesture is not only saving her money but is also saving tons of thrown away Styrofoam cups.

7) Ask not what the world can do for you but what you can do for the world. I am willing to guarantee (and am happy to make a bet with you) that volunteering your time and energy will make you feel less worry, and likely will attract more abundance to you. Go help other people in any way that will light you up. Don't have enough time to volunteer? Collect all the minutes you waste worrying and contribute them to the greater good.

Bonus) Look to nature for your answers. Go for a simple walk, hike, or down to the water. Immersing yourself in the beauty of nature is the easiest and cheapest cure all for worry and helps you connect with new, creative ideas.

Tools to help beat Anxiety!

Beating Anxiety Takes Work and Practice. Here’s what Helped:

A few key therapeutic interventions helped in Maggy's case.

1) Validating and radical acceptance. I encouraged Maggy to acknowledge that she chose an inexpressive partner because she worried that she did not deserve more and how that made sense at the time. I also validated her feelings and asked her to reduce her judgment of herself and accept him as he is. This removes the anxiety-producing emotions of guilt and blame off of both him and her.

2) Centering. I taught Maggy how to reduce her anxiety with breathing and meditation exercises. She would not be able to make wise decisions if they were coming from a place of worry and other negative emotions.

3) Envisioning. I helped Maggy to create a clear vision of what she wants her life to look like. This takes the focus off of what is wrong and puts energy on what she is working towards. As Maggy began to understand that what she thinks about and feels about becomes the reality she creates, she started to read her vision statement upon rising and before bed. This helped her stay focused on her dream of having a job and a small home, and her daily decisions to get there.

4) Affirmations. Anxiety thrives on worry thoughts and without worry thoughts there would be no anxiety. Maggy learned how to become aware of her thoughts and replace them with thoughts that felt centering and calming. Thoughts like "Who am I kidding", "I can't do this on my own", or "He has so much power over me" became noticed and shifted to thoughts like "I can do this one step at a time."

5) A Good Plan. Maggy and I created a plan for divorce and life after divorce and she began taking the steps to achieve it on a weekly basis, including a financial plan, a self care plan, role playing conversations with her husband, and a housing plan.

6) Surrounding yourself with the positive. Maggy attends, along with hundred of other Long Islanders, workshops about positive energy and growth here at The Center for Self Growth. Recently, during a workshop about how to release anxiety both emotionally and physically, I asked the attendees to write down all of their worry thoughts about money. One person said she worries about losing her job, another worried about her children’' financial security, another simply worried about even sharing her worry thoughts. The workshop was sold out, as is any other event I do about anxiety or worry, because even those who don't typically suffer from anxiety are worrying more these days. I explained that "worrying is praying for what you don't want" and we must learn to master our minds and emotions in order to create the happy life we want now. However, I stressed, beating anxiety and being happy takes hard work and practice.

No one ever taught us the skills to do this and we simply have to be shown the techniques to feel better. For some, medication may help or be needed, but for anyone experiencing worry and anxiety there are tools that can help you master your thoughts, feelings, and life so that anxiety can be a condition of the past and peace can be your future. Practicing feeling positive not only feels better, it opens up opportunities that you may not have attracted or seen when worrying!

Beating Anxiety takes Work and Practice

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Life Coach, anxiety is one of the number one issues that bring clients through my door. For some, the anxiety is severe and is related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or having a ruminating worry-mind that seems to obsess more and more the longer it goes untreated. My clients that fall into the first category that began having intense anxiety after Sept 11 or remembering being sexual assaulted as a child. Their worry no longer focuses exclusively on terrorist attacks or perpetrators, but has globalized into a general feeling of lack of safety and negativity: always thinking people will do them wrong, obsessing about their kids and germs, second guessing every decision they make.

For others, anxiety is situation-related meaning that their worry thoughts increase when a real, external situation has caused them to be concerned. This second category of worriers has increased in numbers dramatically in response to the financial "crisis" that has gotten powerful media attention. For some, this increase in worry can become more than an unsettled feeling and can develop into panic attacks, negative thinking, depression, over-protective parenting, and an increase in poor coping behaviors like alcohol and food.

One such case that comes to mind is a client that came to see me a few months ago to finally gain clarity about ending her 20 year marriage. Maggy (not her real name) has two children under 13 and lives in an affluent part of Long Island and has been feeling anxious all of her life. At a younger age, her anxiety was related to having a mentally ill brother and an alcoholic mother, two conditions that no one in the family actually acknowledged but everyone tip-toed around. She felt unsafe and uncared for and translated that belief into a worry that she wasn't worth much and was unimportant. In her late teens, Maggy married a man that enabled her to feel as invisible and unloved as she did as a youngster, and her own anxiety about not being good enough was repeatedly confirmed back to her by his emotional distance and sometimes scathing criticisms of her. Her anxiety deepened with guilt about not loving him, wanting to leave for all 20 years and regretting not following her own gut to not marry him, and about the pain her children would go through if they did separate. She agonized about why she ever married him, wasting years of self development, whether she tried hard enough to make it work in couples counseling, and how he would cope with her leaving.

After a few weeks of therapy, Maggy began to own her own feelings and decided to do what she had been putting off for half her life at this point- she spoke up and filed for divorce. She stopped blaming her husband for not being loving enough as she became clear about why she chose him as her mate to begin with.

Relief replaced the terrible feeling she had been enduring for years about not following her own inner guidance. Yet, the wonderful feelings she felt for standing up for herself were immediately replaced by the second wave on worry. Questions like would she be more or less alone without him, how the kids would handle everything, and most of all how would she be able to afford being divorced. After all, she had given up her career early in their marriage and only worked a small, part-time job ever since her children were of school age.

In Maggy's case, we have both types of anxiety at play: the kind that has existed for years since her childhood and permeates into all that she does, the kind that finds a way to worry even when there is no immediate problem. Further, she developed anxiety about the real and current dilemma of getting a divorce and the complications this poses. Lastly, she became further anxious as she thought of her financial situation and the poverty that divorce could create.

Maggy's anxiety worsened as the economic crisis became more a part of her media diet. While the economics of divorce could encourage many women to stay with their partners, a worldwide economic "meltdown" threatened to make Maggy worry that she would never be able to leave. How would she find a job when no one is hiring, how would she feed her kids or rent and apartment?

Read on to "Here's What Helped" article for useful and practical tools to help beat anxiety!

Greetings and Welcome, Friends!

If you are anything like many of us here on Long Island, you are craving to feel healthier and happier. You want more ease and joy in your relationships, busy, finances, career, spirituality, emotions and mind. Perhaps you want to feel more peaceful, purposeful or passionate in your daily life.

These are specific areas of well-being that we take a great interest in at The Center for Self-Growth. Our mission is to provide health and wellness resources and support to the neighboring community on Long Island at our Setauket location. Now, we want to take that a step further and reach more people with as many helpful and free resources as we can through this blog.

We have been able to reach the community through one-on-one psychotherapy and life coaching with Beth Miller, health and wellness workshops open to the public led by a variety of topic-specific doctor's and professionals, on-going positive energy support groups, detoxification groups, our monthly newsletter, and more. Today, we are proud to add this blog to the list of ways that we strive to positively contribute to the community.

We plan to post a variety of health and happiness related articles, thoughts, meditations, inspiration and resources, as well as upcoming news about The Center and the people that make The Center for Self Growth an environment for learning and living your best life.

It's never too late to start to "think, feel and be happier." We will do our best to serve you with information and resources to make that possible.

Thanks for visiting our new blog, we hope to see you back here very soon!