How to Stop Anxious Thoughts and Recover from Anxiety

When you are suffering from anxiety, your mind can become bombarded with intrusive, anxious thoughts. Your brain will often worry about your anxiety, all your strange and bizarre symptoms, and if or when you will recover and feel normal again. 

Let’s talk about why you're experiencing anxious thoughts and how to get rid of them so you can once again have a peaceful quiet mind. 

By the way, if you want to get rid of your anxiety permanently, I have the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the link below. That will give you a step-by-step guide on how to get rid of your anxiety and all its sensations. It’s completely free, all you have to do is click the link below.

Alright, anxious thoughts affect almost all anxiety sufferers. The reason you experience anxious thoughts with anxiety is because your nervous system is in a sensitized state. It is engaging your fight-or-flight response unnecessarily and flooding your body with excess adrenaline and stress hormones. What this means is that your body and your mind are reacting as if you were in danger. So you’re in a heightened state of awareness, and your mind is constantly looking for what’s wrong. This means your brain is generating all types of fearful, anxious thoughts. These anxious thoughts are easy to recognize because they tend to start with the phrase: "What if:". 

            What if I have a panic attack at this dinner party?  

            What if I faint in front of all my friends?  

            What if I never feel like myself again?  

            What if I can’t sleep again tonight?  

            What if I can’t go to work tomorrow?  

Your anxious mind does a fantastic job of coming up with these types of anxious thoughts. We refer to them as intrusive anxious thoughts because they show up even when we don’t want them to. Even when we’re desperately trying to think or concentrate on something else. 

This can be very disconcerting because it can feel like you’ve lost control of your brain. You’re trying really hard to concentrate on something important, like a project at work, but your brain keeps going back to these anxious thoughts. 

Here’s what I don’t want you to do: don’t try to ignore intrusive anxious thoughts. If we try to ignore them by shutting the front door, they will come through the window. If we try to close the window, they will come right down the chimney. They are always finding their way into your brain.

You might’ve heard the advice to just let your anxious thoughts be. Let them happen and don’t address them, but that is the worst thing you could do. If you don’t address them, what will happen is you will go down the rabbit hole of anxious thoughts. Let’s use an example. Imagine, for instance, you're in a meeting at work when you begin to feel a big wave of anxiety coming on.   The first thought that goes through your brain is, What if I have a full-blown panic attack while I’m in this meeting?! That’s your first anxious thought….but your fearful brain doesn’t stop there. It then begins to play out possible contingencies and worst-case scenarios associated with that first thought:  

What if I have to abruptly leave this meeting?  

What if the panic is so bad that I need to go home?

What if I can’t finish the project by this evening’s deadline?!

If left unchecked, your brain will run wild with these thoughts.   That’s a problem, because these thoughts are perceived as potential threats, and that triggers your body to enter into a defensive state and release more stress hormones. So, in other words, these anxious thoughts just make your anxiety worse. 

Looking back at the previous example, notice how your first anxious thought acted as a springboard for more anxious thoughts? It is the first thought that helps to generate all of the other thoughts and sends you down a rabbit hole of anxious thoughts. 

To avoid this from happening, you need to dismiss your anxious thoughts, which is Step #1 of the Fearless Approach that I teach. The way we do this is by dismissing anxious thoughts by saying “Who cares!” each time an anxious thought pops into your mind:

Anxious thought:  What if my anxiety gets bad while I’m stuck in this meeting? 

Your Response: Who cares!            

Anxious thought: What if I have a panic attack on the airplane? 

        Your Response: Who cares!   

Anxious thought: What if I can’t sleep tonight? 

Response: Who cares!

By dismissing an anxious thought with Who cares!, you declare to your brain that you don’t care whether that thought manifests or not. You don’t care whether you get anxiety during the work meeting, have a panic attack on the airplane, or if your anxiety keeps you awake all night. If it happens, you don’t care!  

Dismissing an anxious thought strips away the fear that’s embedded in that thought, and by removing this initial fear, you eliminate all subsequent “downstream” fears. For instance, if you’re not afraid of whether you’ll be able to sleep tonight, then you’ll no longer be afraid of the consequences of not sleeping. This eliminates the need for follow-up anxious thoughts like “What if I’m exhausted again tomorrow?” and “What if I’m so tired that I can’t go to work?” You’ve stopped the anxious thought spiral in its tracks.   

Naturally, some of these anxious thoughts will be difficult to dismiss. It might be that you dismiss a thought, only for that same thought to return a few moments later. That’s because with some thoughts, the fear is deeply-embedded in your subconscious. For these, we’ll need to take it a step further by providing a reason for our indifference.  Here are couple of examples:  

Anxious thought: What if I have bad anxiety all day again today?

Your Response: Who cares! I’ll have more opportunities to practice the Fearless Approach!  

Anxious thought: What if I have a panic attack on the airplane?   

Your Response: Who cares! I can handle anything that anxiety throws at me! 

Your responses don't always have to be serious - feel free to be creative and have fun with it. One of my clients, Laura, recently told me how she dismissed one of her anxious thoughts as she was at the grocery store:   

Anxious thought: What if I faint as I’m walking down the aisle?   

Your Response: Who cares! I’m a bit tired, I could use a little nap anyway! 

In the beginning, there are going to be times when you don’t actually believe what you're telling yourself when you Dismiss these Thoughts. You might tell yourself that you don’t care whether you have strong anxiety all day, but still be genuinely afraid of that potential reality. That’s OK. Just keep on Dismissing Anxious Thoughts, because what you’re going to find is that it becomes increasingly easier to Dismiss these Thoughts as you start experiencing the sensations of anxiety in the right way, which is detailed in the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the link below.

Once you’ve dismissed an anxious thought, I want you to turn your focus to an engaging or immersive activity. It could be reading a book, running an errand, or having a telephone conversation with a friend. Do whatever you want, but just make sure it’s something you can really concentrate on. By diverting our focus to something actually worth focusing on, we reduce our brain’s ability to generate these anxious thoughts. Again, these thoughts will still pop into your mind, but just once again dismiss them and shift your focus back to your chosen activity.

With some practice, you will find that by Dismissing Anxious Thoughts you will regain control of your brain so you can concentrate on the things that you actually want to concentrate on. You will be able to concentrate on that work project, that hobby, or even that conversation with your child. You will once again be fully present in your life.