My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which has not happened - MONTAIGNE

It's been a while! However, as mentioned in my last blog, toxic worry is a common phrase used in the US and General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is also a very common complaint.

What is worry and what leads to toxic worry and GAD in people?

I believe that worry is excessive thinking about something or someone coupled with a creative use of your imagination.
People with GAD spend a lot of time and energy worrying.  Typically, it is over-use of the imagination about something or someone to the point where it begins to have a physical effect on our bodies.  It can lead to:

•     lack of sleep
•     lack of concentration and focus
•     lack of a sense of reality
•     normal reasoning impairment
•     lack of energy 
•     tiredness and irritability
•     feeling nauseous
•     palpitations
•     panic attacks

  
Charles Tebbetts went into detail in his book entitled 'Self Hypnosis and other Mind Expanding Techniques'.  He said, 'chronic fear keeps the body in a constant state of emergency alert and causes abnormal physiological functioning.  Anxiety is sickness of the mind which invariably results in sickness of the body'.  He went on to add, 'anxiety is often having a habit of exaggerating the possibility of danger which is out of proportion to its probability.  To constantly worry about scenarios that may happen is atypical.  People who tend not to worry accept risks for what they are, possible, but remote.  Excessive worriers literally worry themselves sick, treating each possibility as a probability'.

Abnormal fears can result from past experiences and this can, in some cases, develop into phobias.  When we are faced with danger, the human response is instinctively 'fight or flight', that is to stay and fight the oppressor or to run away as fast as you can from the danger.  It is only afterwards that emotions begin to be associated with the event and it is then that we begin to use our imagination to create 'what ifs'. This can ultimately lead to emotions being attached and fully associated with the original event whereby even a thought of the original event can trigger the physical symptoms we felt shortly after the frightening behaviour.

The Russian scientist Pavlov, experimented with dogs to discover conditioned responses and learned behaviour.  He conditioned dogs to salivate to a bell by presenting hungry dogs with meat whilst at the same time ringing the bell.  After completing this a number of times the dogs were conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell.  This trait is also prevalent in humans in that we are conditioned from birth and develop through learned behaviour.  We sometimes only require a trigger to begin to feel and experience physical symptoms within our bodies.  This can be a mere thought or thoughts, a smell, touch, taste, sight or even a sound. 

The mind is an extremely powerful tool and it can be very creative.  We only have to think about the dream we had last night, for example, to recognise that whilst we are in the dream it felt as true as reality and it can summon physical reactions within ourselves. 

So, learned behaviours; many are learned as conditioned responses to what we were exposed to in childhood.  If you had parents that were excessive worriers there is a high probability that you will have developed into a worrier as an adult.

Sidney Rosen in his book entitled 'My Voice Will Go With You - The Teaching Tales of Milton H Erickson' quotes from Erickson in the Pablum™teaching tale - Pablum™ is a bland soft cereal for infants:
   "When a six month old baby who is being fed Pablum™ looks at its mother's face and the mother is thinking. "that horrible stuff - it just stinks' the baby reads the headlines on the mother's face and spits it out.  All you have to do is watch small children study mother's face or father's face.  They know just when to stop short of receiving a rebuke.  They know just how many times to ask for sweets or candy and get it.  No matter how many 'no's' they receive.  They know when the 'no' is very weak, and an urgent request for sweets or candy yields a 'yes'". Sidney Rosen goes on to explain that Erickson is pointing out how much we are influenced by our parents' attitudes and tastes at a time when we are in no position to test them for ourselves.  This type of influence is instrumental not only in determining our habits, values, and tastes, but also, unfortunately, in our adoption of parents' fears, prejudices and phobias. So learned behaviours and conditioning for human beings begins from birth even before we learn to speak.

Excessive worry can also cause the following physical symptoms:

• a state of incomplete digestion
• high blood pressure
• rapid pulse
• general disruptions of the vital bodily functions

Deepak Chopra, in his book 'Quantum Healing', describes the mind body connection.  He points out that 'the immune system eavesdrops on internal thoughts'.  This simply means that whatever we think, can and does affect our health. Worry, therefore, is not a good state to encounter for long periods of time. It can lead not only to the temporary 'symptoms' encountered above, but to more serious long-term health issues.

We can learn to switch off our mind and choose our thoughts.  It is possible to take control and think only the thoughts we want to think.
As Ormond McGill stated, "Controlling the mind is a behaviour habit.
Let your mind think what it wants to think. Think your own chosen thoughts, not what others tell you to think.  Discipline your mind to make you make your mind up about what is best for you.
Make your mind think what it wants to think. Thoughts are energy therefore you use up a lot of energy, especially thinking negative thoughts, so control it.  Make it think what you want.
Make your mind stop thinking when you want it to stop thinking, just as you do when you go to sleep.
Become a witness to your thoughts.  Watch them as on a movie screen so you almost detach yourself from them.  Pick and choose which ones to use".

Hypnosis and meditation are excellent processes to use to help you to do this.  Hypnosis, particularly, can help you gain better control over your thoughts and to find and develop new learned behaviours to replace the old behaviours that no longer serve you.

Begin to make that positive transformation today for a more fulfilled and happier life.

Until next time..... Maria.

Toxic People - How they can and do affect your life.

Toxic is a word I have come across many times so far in the US.  Toxic people, and toxic worry, are common phrases here.  It is not a term widely used in the UK. Toxic people are typically called bullies.  The dictionary definition of a bully is an annoyer, antagoniser, browbeater, intimidator, oppressor, tormenter or persecutor.

So, who or what are toxic people?

Toxic people are those who have either been in your life or are in your life right now. They are the individuals that cause or have caused you upset and anguish.  They may have left you with emotional scars, which have resulted in you developing low self-esteem and having little or no self-confidence.  This is the result of their actions or words.

How many of us can remember a comment, either from our childhood or adulthood, that we can still hear now? This comment has stayed with us and has warped our opinion of ourselves or, worse, has contributed to low self-esteem, low self-confidence, or to a complex about our appearance, and has shaped what we believe we are as a person.

The comments may have been flippant or made in jest, as toxic people and bullies are renowned for passing remarks then quickly follow the comment with, 'but I was only joking!' Remarks like these, especially when heard in childhood, are instrumental in us developing an in-built belief about ourselves and it can affect how we think everyday.

Comments like 'fat slob' said by a school classmate may have led to the onset of anorexia in some cases. We have all read about the unfortunate teenagers who have taken their own lives as they could no longer face hearing disparaging words from school bullies; it's tragic! The majority of us, thankfully, don't resort to such drastic measures. Instead we keep the thoughts inside of us and sometimes persecute ourselves with reminders of what was said.

Nobody knows you better than you know yourself. That is a fact.  Irrespective of what others may tell you, nobody knows who and what you are as well as you.  Doubt begins to creep into our minds when we try to understand how others perceive us.  More importantly, we place value upon this perception above the knowledge we have of ourselves.  We can never know how we are truly perceived by the people we encounter on a daily basis. It's impossible.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has taught me a very important fact.  One person's sense of reality is not the same as another person's sense of reality.  Let me explain. We are bombarded with millions of bits of information every second of every day and our brains are not equipped to process each bit of information.  Thus, we process by deleting, distorting or generalising the information which is presented via our senses.  Once the information is processed we store it to our memory, but first we adapt the information based upon our filters, which include our beliefs, values, memories, attitudes, decisions, and meta programs (which in simple terms means habits of thinking).  Thus, everybody experiences life differently, as we each have unique ways of filtering the information, and as such, embedding memories. Such experiences and memories therefore become unique to each individual person.  Our experiences contribute further towards developing our beliefs, values, attitudes etc. Thus, we end up with a unique interpretation of reality.  If you ask two people, who have been present at the same place in time, to describe that event, it will result in two vastly different renditions of the same event.  This is because our perception and interpretation and subsequently our memory of the event, is unique. It is based upon how we filtered the information presented to us.

So, if you wonder about what other people perceive you to be, you are wondering how they are processing the information presented to them about you and their interpretation of reality.  Hearing a disparaging comment can contribute to us forming a belief about ourselves based upon the opinion or interpretation of somebody else.  Thus this belief about yourself is based upon another person's judgement of you.  We can even start to believe this to be true and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Who has the right to judge you anyway?  By giving credence to another's opinion it allows us to discount our own beliefs about ourselves.  Your opinion is the most honest, plausible, understanding of who you are isn't it?

Many people can go through life not really getting to the bottom of or quite fully understanding who they are and what they like and dislike.  Generally, people can tell you much more easily what they don't like rather than what they do like.  Their thoughts are all geared towards negative perception.  If we hear negative comments about ourselves therefore we can immediately begin to doubt ourselves and believe another persons 'perception' of ourselves above our own.  Toxic people are renowned for being particularly jealous, envious, and in the main suffering from low self-esteem themselves. This is their way of dealing with their low opinion of themselves, by having a very low opinion of others.  Why is that? They have probably spent years listening to disparaging comments made about them, been ignored in childhood by a parent or have abandonment issues.  They are basically using learned behaviour and are stuck in this loop.  The average toxic person is intent on discrediting another individual due to their perceived threat or because the toxic individual is jealous or envious.
If you were to begin to believe that when you hear a toxic person pass comments about you that are negative that they are merely passing judgement because they see you as a threat, are jealous or envious of you, then that would make a refreshing change wouldn't it?

Toxic people are prevalent in workplaces all around the world, and can even be a family member,  In such instances it can be very difficult to distance yourself from that influence in your life.  You cannot change that person but remember you can change how you react or respond to their influence and ultimately what you believe about yourself.
We will never rid the world of the toxic people, the bullies, but we can learn to disregard their words, better still, ignore them completely as we allow ourselves to believe the best about who we are, and to be fully confident.

Getting to know and fully understand yourself and being confident in your own abilities and not allowing others to upset or antagonise you is possible.  Ridding yourself of years of replaying hurtful comments from childhood is possible too.  If you believe you are a toxic person, you too can change years of unwanted behaviour.
Hypnosis is a great tool for building confidence and ridding yourself of low self esteem, by changing the beliefs you have about yourself at the unconscious level.  Hypnosis can pass positive affirmation into your unconscious mind, bypassing your conscious mind, to produce dramatic changes.  Be confident about who and what you are and begin today, learn to love the new confident you. Make that change today.

I welcome your comments about what I've written.  If you would like to discuss any of the above in greater detail or you have had or are having to deal with a toxic person in your everyday life and would like to talk about this you can e-mail me directly at Ri_new@ymail.com.

Until next time.

Maria