This episode is also available as a blog post: https://health-of-it.com/2021/11/12/help-to-turn-anxiety-to-excitement/

Your self-talk will influence your moods.

What you focus on will manifest in your life.

If you find that anxiety is a major part of your daily life then doing these exercises will help you turn your anxiety into excitement.

Self-talk can initiate or even aggravate a panic attack.

You see a panic attack can start off with these increasing physiological arousal such as more rapid heartbeat, tightness in your chest, or even sweaty palms.

Biologically this is the body’s natural response to stress.

The fight-or-flight response is normally experienced when we perceive a threat or danger.

Understanding what role/roles you play will help you understand your self-talk and how to change it.

Are you “the Worrier?”

This is usually one of the strongest super personalities in people who are prone to anxiety. 

“The Worrier” creates anxiety by imagining the worst-case scenario.

The worrier” promotes your fear of what is happening is dangerous or embarrassing.

In short “the Worrier” dominates your mind.

It anticipates the worse.

It overestimates the odds of something being bad.

Their favorite expression is “What if.”

Are you “the Critic?”

“This Critic”, promotes low self-esteem.

“The critic” is the part of you that’s consistently judging and evaluating your behavior. It tends to point out all of your flaws and limitations whenever possible. It jumps on any mistake that you make to remind you that you are a failure. 

The critic” might be that voice of your mother or father or that dreaded teacher or anyone who’s wounded you in the past.

Their favorite expressions would be, “That was stupid. What a disappointment you are.”

The typical critic self-talk would be, “You’re so stupid. You can’t get anything right. Why are you always this way?  You could have done better.”

You might be “the Victim.”

The victim” promotes depression.

“The victim” is the part of you that feels helpless and hopeless. 

It generates anxiety by telling you that you’re not making any progress. That your condition is incurable and that the road is too long and too steep for you to make any real recovery. 

Their favorite expression will be “I can’t. I’ll never be able to do that”. 

You see “the victim” holds negative self-beliefs as I’m hopeless and nothing is ever going to work out.

Maybe you are the perfectionist?

You see “the perfectionist” promotes chronic stress and burnout.

“The perfectionist” is closely related to the critic, but its concerns are less put on you putting you down and it pushes you to be better. 

It generates anxiety by constantly telling you that your efforts aren’t good enough.  

“The perfectionist” has a tendency to try to convince you that your self-worth is dependent on something outside of yourself such as money and status, acceptance by others, your ability to please, and how nice you are to others.

Regardless of what they do “the perfectionist” isn’t convinced by any notions of inherent self-worth but instead pushes into stress exhaustion and burnout trying to pursue these goals.

“The perfectionist,” favorite expressions will be “I should, I have to, I must.

“The perfectionist” may even provide instruction as “I should always be on top of things, 

I should always be considerate and unselfish,

I should always be pleasant and nice. 

I have to get that job.

I have to make this amount of money.

If you are like me then you might be a combination of the different roles.

Changing from negative self-talk to positive is the first step but you have to do it daily for 63 days to truly make a new habit/behavior.

Each day I want you to write down all your negative self-talk and then write a counter to it. Change the negative to a positive.

Now if you have some negative self-talk that’s just not that easy to switch over find a positive statement to say I want you to ask yourself these questions for those beliefs.