226. Why anxiety feels addictive | 90,000+ thoughts a day

🔗🔗Links for today:

Kathie Owen Links: https://www.kathieowen.com/links 
Blog Post for today: http://www.kathieowen.com/blog/is-anxiety-an-addiction-breaking-free-from-anxiety-cycle
Reality Transurfing with Kathie: https://www.kathieowen.com/reality-transurfing 
Fitness with Kathie: https://www.kathieowen.com/fitness 
Corporate Wellness: https://www.kathieowen.com/corporate-wellness 
Dr. Claire Weekes book: https://amzn.to/3H6eL2F

In today’s video, we discuss:

Is Anxiety an Addiction? Breaking the Cycle and Finding Peace

In this episode of Kathie's Coaching Podcast, host Kathie Owen explores the idea of anxiety as a potential addiction. 

She discusses the anxiety cycle, how it can become a familiar and addictive pattern, and shares her own experience with breaking free from chronic anxiety. 

Kathie outlines effective strategies including mindfulness, meditation, gentle physical activity, cognitive restructuring, and the importance of support systems. She also emphasizes the long-term nature of managing anxiety and the role of self-love and compassion in the healing process. Tune in to learn how to float through your fears and rewire your thoughts for a more peaceful life.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction: Is Anxiety an Addiction?
01:23 Understanding the Anxiety Cycle
03:15 Breaking the Anxiety Loop: Mindfulness and Meditation
04:18 Physical Activity: Moving with Kindness
05:07 Cognitive Restructuring: Rewriting Your Thoughts
06:02 The Power of Support and Community
08:18 Long-term Management and Self-Love Practices
11:33 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Thank you for being here!! Please share this with someone who can benefit! Your friend, Kathie

Transcript

Kathie: 0:00

Hey friends, it's Kathie Owen, and today I wanna talk about something I've been reflecting on a lot lately, and that is this question here, is anxiety an addiction? Now, I know that might sound strange at first, anxiety feels like more like something we suffer from, not something we choose. But hear me out. When anxiety becomes chronic, when it loops in our bodies and minds day after day, reacting to the same thoughts, the same fears, the same physical patterns. It starts to look a lot like an addiction, and just like any addiction, breaking free requires awareness, self-love, and a new relationship with our thoughts and feelings. So today I'm walking you through not only what the anxiety cycle is, but also how I've personally been breaking that cycle in my own life using tools like Louise Hay's mirror work, revising anxious thoughts and practicing floating. Yeah, exactly. Through fear instead of fighting it. Let's dive in. You are listening to Kathie's Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen. First, let's talk about what is the anxiety cycle. At its core, anxiety is your body's survival response. It's actually healthy, but when you start getting anxious, thoughts about feeling anxious. That's when it becomes a loop. It's called second fear. Anyways, here's how it usually works. You might feel a trigger, a thought, a sensation, a memory that trigger sparks fear. The fear causes physical symptoms like a racing heart, a tight chest, or dizziness. Or all of the above, and those symptoms make you think something is wrong. So your brain doubles down, it's just doing its job, and now you are afraid of the anxiety itself. Boom, you've been trapped in the cycle. And like any loop, the more we repeat it, the stronger it gets. It becomes familiar, almost comfortable. Almost addictive. And for me that addiction looked like constant worry, especially about, I don't know, finances, about my dog's health, and about whether I was doing enough or being enough. Yeah, but once I realized I was rehearsing the same anxious script every day, I knew something had to change. I mean, we think over 90,000 thoughts a day. And imagine this, if they turn into a pattern and they keep repeating, it's time to change that pattern. So how do we interrupt the loop? Here's what's helped me, and it might help you too. Number one, mindfulness and meditation. There's this thing called floating. It is inspired by Dr. Claire Weeks work, and I learned to face the fear. Accept it, float through the feeling, and then let time pass When I'm anxious. Now I picture myself floating on my back in a gentle river, but you can also picture yourself floating on a cloud and you don't resist it. You don't fight. You just float and accept it. Meditation in nature has been a game changer. I sit by a pond near my house. I live near a golf course, and I just sit there and I breathe, and I let the ducks and nature, the trees, remind me that peace is available even when my mind is loud. Number two is physical activity. Exercise releases built up adrenaline and tension, but I don't push myself anymore. I move my body with kindness, with walks, gentle workouts, yoga stretches. The goal is release, not punishment. And let me tell you something, I've been in fitness. All of my life, I've been one that loves going to the gym and loves working out, but I practice something a little different. I practice kindness. I mean, movement is important. I realized that. So I changed up my fitness routine and I do walking, or I do a gentle workout, or I do yoga and stretch it out. Number three is cognitive restructuring. So let's go back to how many thoughts we think a day. If we think over 90,000 thoughts a day, imagine that. And a lot of times we don't even know what those thoughts are. So cognitive restructuring is all about rewriting those thoughts, rewriting the inner script. I ask myself, is this thought even true? I then revise it. I rewrite it like a loving mother would, or as a loving parent, would write to a child. Instead of, I'm never gonna figure this out. I say, I'm figuring this out one step at a time, and I'm doing better than I think. This is cognitive restructuring. And let me add something. There's power in support. Breaking the anxiety cycle doesn't happen in isolation. So I'm part of a mastermind. I'm part of flow-based Mastermind with my mentor, Joseph Rodrigues, and I will have links to his YouTube channel in the show notes and description below. But inside. Of this Mastermind. I have met coaches like Cintia who is a manifestation coach, and Mark. Mark would talk during the Mastermind about working with his clients who had anxiety. I. He had anxiety in in his lifetime, and I knew it from the stories that he shared, and these stories really inspired me. And I reached out to him, and Mark is the one who taught me about floating, who taught me about these things. And I'm breaking out of that cycle. I'm breaking through, but that's the power of support. Here, here's what helped me. I talked to family and friends who listen without trying to fix me. You don't need to be fixed. You just need somebody to listen. And then I. Hired coaches and mentors like Cintia and Mark who remind me that I am not broken. In fact, I'm learning ways to help other people, which inspires me and lights me up. And then there's people like you who listen to my YouTube channel, who read my blog posts and this is an amazing community. The support here lifts me up every single day, and I believe in that ripple effect. So when I'm talking about what I went through, I believe that that ripple effect helps others in your life as well. And let's be real. Sometimes we need professional help. Therapy, medication coaching. There's zero shame in getting tools and guidance. And let me remind you of something. It's a long term management. You don't just beat anxiety once you manage it over time. In 2006, I was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. This means I'm on a journey. I'm not at a destination and what helps me is helping other people as well, and that's how it works and it's just such a blessing. Again, you don't beat anxiety once you manage it, you manage it and you manage it over time. So there's daily self-love practices looking in the mirror, like I talked about with Louise Hay and saying, I love you. You're safe. I got you. Journaling, gratitude and thought revision several times a day. Trigger awareness. I now expect certain things to bring anxiety, so I prep my mind ahead of time, like a mental umbrella in a forecast of rain. Anxiety is not a flaw. It's just your nervous system doing its best to protect you. But when you treat yourself with compassion, you shift from surviving to thriving. And I have to tell you a story here about one of my mentor's clients. So he coached this client who hired him because she was stressed out about college. She had anxiety over her college classes, and she worked with him for several years. Well, at one point in time, her brother got shot. In front of her and she was able to remain calm. This means she managed the anxiety. Not only that, he saw her several years later and she told him how her life was going she told him that she had just graduated college, and she said it like, no big deal. So what happened was she progressed over time and the anxiety was managed and to think she even managed her anxiety. With her brother being shot and was able to remain calm in that situation. Can you imagine? Anyways I aspire to be like that as well. So it's maintaining progress and preventing a relapse. This part is key. Keep practicing even on the good days. Keep reflecting. Even when you think you've got it and when anxiety whispers again because it will, I promise you, meet it with love, not fear. The goal isn't to never feel anxiety again. Remember, anxiety is a healthy response. The goal is to no longer be afraid of it. Final thoughts here is anxiety an addiction? In some ways, yes, because it is a loop. It is familiar and it feeds on repetition, but guess what? So does healing. With enough love awareness and gentle consistency, you can rewire your brain. Again, let's rewire those 90,000 thoughts a day into something more productive. You can float instead of fight or flight. You can revise instead of rehearse, and you can love yourself into safety and calm. And if I can do it, you can too. All right thank you for listening today. If this resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need a little hope. And remember, you are not your anxiety. You are love, you are light, and you are free. And also remember, inside every video I do, I include a blog post that has links to all the things I talked about in the video today, including bonus resources. So be sure to check that out in the show notes and description below. And until next time, keep showing up for yourself one floating breath at a time. Alright, peace out and namaste.