Falling Behind: How to Make Yourself Anxious by da-AL

This should be day 12 of my 30-day challenge to blog daily, but I’ve fallen behind. I’ve been too busy to even check email these past couple of days. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. My challenge allows for blogging more than once in in order to catch up to 30 blogs in 30 days.

Like most days, yesterday morning I woke to chirping birds and the sounds of neighborhood cars beeping as they unlocked and then swooshed away. As I opened my eyes to the hazy morning sunshine, I immediately reviewed my mental ‘to do’ list, vowing to check off everything by the day’s end. Like most nights, I brushed my teeth minty clean, lay my ear to the cool softness of my pillow, inhaled the familiarity of my bedroom, and did my best to muzzle an inner devil that threatened to tick off everything I didn’t get done.

Fortunately, I don’t suffer from full on anxiety attacks, but I have an inkling of how wicked they must be. I enjoy learning about the mind, the body, and how they interact. Lately, thanks to my dear public library, I’ve been listening to a 2-CD set, “Relieve Anxiety with Medical Hypnosis,” by Steven Gurgevich, Ph.D. Gurgevich is a colleague of Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D., who many either love or hate for his mixing alternative medicine with science-based medicine, as well as the fact that he sells an extensive line of alternative medicine products.

At one point, Gurgevich lists how to induce anxiety. Maybe it’ll make you laugh nervously, the way it did me? Here’s what I copied down:

• Drink lots of coffee or caffeinated beverages and sodas.
• Drink alcohol to excess.
• Give up all exercise and physical activities.
• Live on nutrient poor fast food.
• Withdraw from social relationships or hang out with those who thrive on gloom, doom, and catastrophe.
• Watch the news and read the papers every day.
• Look for the worst that’s going on in the world.
• Become a perfectionist and take that seriously.
• Look only for what went wrong. Look for what is negative in any situation.
• Give up all laughter. Avoid humor like the plague.
• Read and watch the scariest things you can find.
• Change your self talk to negative. An easy way to do that is to complain a lot.
• Get in a competition with everyone else that complains to you. Tell them that you have it even worse.
• Use your fear to avoid any thing, place, or person that causes the least bit of discomfort.

How do you make yourself anxious? What do you think about medical hypnosis?

Watch for my next blog on how to relieve anxiety.

My library love

Shipra’s library love

Medical hypnosis Dr. Steven Gurgevich