February 2019 - Training by BCFS

How to End Anxiety Through Meditation

Posted on February 24, 2019 by SPT-Techgirl66

How to End Anxiety Through Meditation

When it comes to using meditation to manage anxiety, multiple studies have reached the same conclusion.

Mindfulness can help you to stop worrying.

Almost 7 million Americans experience Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and many more have occasional bouts of fretfulness due to pressures at work or home. While you can’t remove the stress from daily life, there are steps you can take to feel more at ease. Try these natural remedies.

Anxiety-Related Benefits of Meditation

Researchers have been studying how meditation affects a wide variety of health issues. Last year, the American Medical Association reported that meditation appears to be most effective in addressing anxiety, depression, and pain management.

Focus on now. Most anxiety tends to be centered on rehashing the past or anticipating the future. Meditation encourages you to engage fully with the present moment. Your attention switches from useless regrets and fears to constructive endeavors.

Connect with your body. Chronic anxiety takes a toll on your physical health through inflammation and other symptoms. Scanning your body reminds you to lower your shoulders and relax your brows.

Change your brain. Meditation alters your brain so your contentment will grow. Stress hormones decrease and serotonin levels rise. Gray matter enlarges, while the amygdala, which processes fear, shrinks.

How to Meditate to Reduce Anxiety

Meditation can be adapted to suit your individual needs. Take classes or sit at home for free on you own schedule.

Start off gradually. The benefits of meditation can often be seen within a week or two, and even 10 minutes a day pays off. Set aside a brief time each day for contemplation.
Clarify your purpose. You may want to use meditation as part of your spiritual practice or take a completely secular approach. Meditation is not necessarily religious. You can develop greater peace of mind with your own set of beliefs.

Separate facts from feelings. Introspection helps you to distinguish between actual events and your inner thoughts and emotions. As you train yourself to think objectively, you can achieve greater control over your reactions.

Develop insights. Examining your mind also helps you to understand yourself and others. You may discover the root causes of your anxieties and how best to deal with them. Maybe you’ll want to replace negative expectations with a sense of curiosity. Perhaps you’ll pay more attention to the kindness you receive from others instead of conflicts.

See your doctor. While meditation is powerful, your physician may recommend treatments including cognitive therapy and medication if your anxiety persists. You can still practice meditation and other self-care to aid your recovery. Let your doctor know what you’re doing on your own.

Other Natural Anxiety Aids

Meditation is even more productive when you combine it with other healthy lifestyle choices. Take a look at your daily habits.

Eat whole foods. A diet full of processed foods and sugar aggravates anxiety and depression. Get most of your calories from vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, and lean proteins.

Limit alcohol and caffeine. Too much coffee may give you the jitters, and self-medicating with alcohol usually backfires. See if cutting back makes a difference.

Exercise more. Physical activity melts away anxiety and stress. That’s especially true for vigorous aerobic workouts like running or rowing.

Rest and relax. Fight anxiety with a good night’s sleep and occasional breaks during the day. Go to bed on a consistent schedule.

If anxiety is interfering with your life, help is available. Achieve greater peace of mind through meditation, and see your doctor if you need additional support.

Free Yourself by Overcoming the Fear of Loneliness

Posted on February 17, 2019 by SPT-Techgirl66

Free Yourself by Overcoming the Fear of Loneliness

The fear of loneliness affects almost all of us. It is only natural for human beings to want to feel close and connected with others.

Many psychologists and mental health professionals agree that being connected and having a support network is one of the most important prerequisites for a healthy and happy existence. Unfortunately, there are times when we find ourselves alone due to factors that are often out of our control.

The thought of being alone for extended periods of time can be terrifying or elicit feelings of anxiety and sadness.

Why is the idea of being alone so scary?

The Primal Switch

What is it about being alone that flips a primal switch in us, causing us so much emotional discomfort?

The answer probably lies within the fields of Evolutionary Psychology and Human Development. There are adaptive advantages to fearing being alone.

During ancient times, people that traveled alone would have been more vulnerable to attacks from predators and other neighboring tribes. Being alone also could have meant that one would have to fend for himself, which would greatly decrease one’s chances of survival in the wild.

We also know that people need contact and touch at a young age. A famous study performed on a group of monkeys found that when young monkeys were raised without physical touch and warmth from their mother, they would show signs of mental illness and distress later on in life.

This is not to say that humans are the same as monkeys. But, at a very basic and primal level, many animals (humans included) have an emotional need for contact with others.

Overcoming the Fear

Since we already know how powerful the effects of not having contact with others can be from an early age and from an evolutionary standpoint, it should come as little surprise that the feelings of fear that we experience when alone can seem overwhelming.

The first step to overcoming the fear of loneliness is to realize that the feelings you may experience can be intense and that this is completely okay.
Whereas most people try to fight the feelings of panic or discomfort at being alone, you are going to do something that most people never do and is also why they rarely overcome this fear.

The secret is to let these feelings wash over you completely without fighting them. Let the feelings permeate through you and within minutes you’ll feel completely different about being alone than how you did prior to doing this.

While it may take longer than a few minutes for the feeling to dissipate entirely, you’ll already start to begin feeling relief as soon as you stop fighting these feelings and accept them. They’re natural responses to our need for contact going unmet for a brief period of time.

The fear of being alone affects all of us, no matter how brave we are in other situations.

If you can let yourself feel the emotions fully when you begin to get scared, you’ll free yourself and give yourself a lifelong tool to work through any other unfamiliar or uncomfortable feelings you may experience in the future.

Eliminate Your Fear of Rejection and Enhance Your Whole Life

Posted on February 10, 2019 by SPT-Techgirl66

Eliminate Your Fear of Rejection and Enhance Your Whole Life

What would your life look like if you were free from worrying about the opinions of others? What if seeking the approval of other people failed to enter your mind? How would it change your life?

Our lives are negatively influenced by the fear of rejection. It holds us back in so many ways and limits our ability to experience the positive aspects of life.

Consider these ideas to banish your fear of rejection:

Rejection is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you’re constantly worried about rejection, it changes the way you act. You become anxious and defensive. Those actions may cause you to be rejected by others. After all, who wants to spend time with someone who’s unpleasant to be around?
- Consider how this fear is affecting your behavior. Are you acting in a way that’s causing others to reject you
Focus on how you want to feel. Most people focus on how they don’t want to feel, but they haven’t considered how they want to feel. It’s hard to accomplish something positive if you’re unsure of what you want.
- Choose how you want to feel in a situation that’s currently giving you trouble. Take actions that will bring you the feelings you want.
Use your imagination in a way that serves you well. We often look ahead to those challenging circumstances and imagine the worst possible outcome. This only adds stress to the situation and we’ve doomed ourselves to failure. See yourself as successful instead.
- Imagine being confident, relaxed, and carefree. If you do this enough times, it will become habitual. Your imagination has probably been hurting you up to this point. Put it to work in a way that is helpful rather than harmful.
What does rejection really mean? Suppose a child finds a gold nugget lying on the ground. The child doesn’t know what it is, so he just tosses it into the dirt. That doesn’t mean the nugget is worthless, but just that the person making the judgment is ignorant of its value.
- Many successful people were rejected at one time or another. A theater professor told Harrison Ford that he would never be a successful actor. The University of Evansville put out a scouting report on Larry Bird that stated he would, “Never play Division 1 basketball.” Record companies even rejected the Beatles.
- Sometimes others make poor judgments. Avoid giving the rejecter too much credibility.
Be wary of your own opinion. What if all of your beliefs were true? You’d be a billionaire and married to a supermodel. We all have false beliefs. These beliefs are highly limiting and steer you in a negative direction far more often than you realize. Question your beliefs.

Rejection is one of the worst feelings in the world. But remember that you have some influence on whether or not you’re rejected by others. It’s also important to keep in mind that rejection frequently has more to do with the person doing the rejecting than the one receiving it.

Eliminating the fear of rejection is a worthwhile endeavor. When you are free of this fear, a whole new world will open up to you.’

Dont Let The Fear Of Failure Limit Your Life

Posted on February 3, 2019 by SPT-Techgirl66

Don’t Let the Fear of Failure Limit Your Life

There’s not a lot to fear if you’re living in a first-world country. We’re free of wars, famine, plagues, animals that eat us, and dictators. However, fear is part of the human condition. We’ll always find something to be fearful about.

The fear of failure is a common fear that most people have experienced. We don’t like to appear inadequate in front of others.

Unfortunately, if you’re unwilling to risk failure, your life is going to be very limited. Learning to deal with the fear of failure is a worthy goal. Most people avoid situations where they might fail. That just means you’ll have less competition if you can get over your fear.

Take advantage of these strategies and refuse to allow the fear of failure to limit your life:

Define your fear. What exactly are you afraid of? Are you worried about being laughed at by your peers? Would you feel bad about yourself if you failed? Are you worried that you’ll never be successful? Define your fear.
Redefine failure. What is failure to you? Is it an inescapable and permanent result? Is it a sign that you’re incapable or inadequate?
- A healthier definition of failure is that it’s just an undesired result. You took a guess and you were wrong. You can learn from that result and do better on your next attempt. That’s not so bad.
Visualize success. Rather than imagining yourself failing, imagine yourself being successful. Take five minutes a few times each day and imagine yourself succeeding. Notice how great it feels and focus on that feeling.
- Give your brain more images of success than of failure. In time, you’ll grow to expect to be successful.
Consider the worst-case scenario. What is the worst that can happen? Can you handle it? Of course, you can.
- Develop a strategy for dealing with the worst possible outcome. Once you’re certain you can handle the worst, there’s nothing left to worry about.
Recall your past failures. You’ve overcome numerous failures. How many times did you fail while learning to walk? To talk? And yet here you are. You survived. We fail in small ways each day and the sun still rises the next day. The world will go on.
Become comfortable with discomfort. The thought of failure is uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean you have to allow it to influence your actions. The uncomfortable sensations of any negative emotions are just suggestions. You’re free to choose how you’re going to respond.
Start small. If you’re too uncomfortable to move forward with your plans, just start small. Take a small action and notice that you’re still okay. Tomorrow you can take a slightly bigger step. In no time at all, you’ll be taking massive action toward your goals.
Consider what will happen if you allow your fear to stop you. Imagine yourself 20 years from now having not taken this risk. How will you feel about that? You’ll almost certainly regret it.
- Think back to your high school days. Remember that boy or girl you were too afraid to speak to? How do you feel about that now? You know that you’d muster up the courage if you could do it again.
- We regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.

How much has the fear of failure impacted your life? It’s okay to be afraid, but it’s a little silly if you have a good understanding of failure.

What’s not okay is to allow your fear of failure to keep you out of the game. Your life is passing by. Refuse to allow fear to get in your way. You only have one life to live.