So many people describe themselves as being an anxious person. And it’s almost like they use ‘anxiety’ as an adjective to describe part of their personality.

If so, please be careful whenever you do, if you say “I am Anxious” or “I am an anxious person” it will cause you a lot of pain and cause you to stay stuck feeling anxious!

Can you be an anxious person? Or are you just a person who is experiencing anxiety? Or are you just anxious in your feelings, your reactions, your thoughts, and your states?

Because we are far more than what we are currently feeling. But when we describe ourselves as being anxious we are actually creating a bigger challenge than we may realise at the time.

I notice that when clients come to me for help with anxiety, they come in from very different starting points, with the severity of their anxiety being the main difference. Some people have occasional attacks and some people have lived a life full of anxiety where it becomes the main director of their life. I have noticed that when anxiety becomes linked to their identity – how they see themselves in the world – it changes from being something that happens that they are scared of to something that they have to learn to live with. It also sets up the cycle for anxiety to repeat itself and therefore remains on-going into their future, and so many people have it move from an experience to a way of life.

Anxiety becoming part of peoples’ identity is very common and I believe this is because the nature of an anxiety attack can be very scary and frightening. Having anxiety takes up a lot of ‘thinking space’, and because we don’t want the experience to happen, we sometimes fight it and so it persists. Most people with anxiety that I have as clients have tried a few things as treatments like, drugs, therapy or breathing techniques, and received very little long term results. Because they received no relief they make the deduction in their thinking that they will just need to learn to live with anxiety for the rest of their life. Sadly this is not true and a very disempowering belief.

Linking anxiety to your identify is an unconscious process, but it is important to think about because when you see yourself as being an anxious person you can become stuck with it, recreating it for many many years.

If you want to live your life free from anxiety, then you have to move anxiety into your past and have it become something that you ONCE HAD. So stop seeing at as a part of who you are.

I am happy to help you discover how you can live anxiety free. The way I work with clients is far more than just a thinking or cognitive process. In fact it is largely an embodied experience of finding safety and peace within, by shifting the ‘tone’ of the nervous system so you can live life from a place of ease. If you’re interested in having me help you arrange a time or get in touch on [email protected] to get started straight away.