Anxiety

If you aren’t feeling good right now and want to change it—remember, you are just one thought away from it. I receive some skepticism when I say this. “Okay, I agree. If I am not feeling good thinking a certain thought, I can always pick a better thought and feel better instantly. But what about the problem? Doesn’t that have to be dealt with, too?” If you think that choosing better thoughts is one way to avoid dealing with the underlying issues, it isn’t. You can’t change a difficult situation into an easy one by repeatedly thinking about it. ...

According to the renowned family therapist Virginia Satir, there are primarily 5 personality types. (You can also watch my video on this. Please maintain gender neutrality while going over this content.) When you are in a difficult situation, your communication style changes to cope with the stress. You unconsciously take actions to deflect your feelings. Do you identify with any of these? Blamer: This personality type does not take any responsibility for his contribution to a situation. He blames others and is usually the one to initiate the conflict. ...

Has it happened sometime with you that you wanted things to be in a certain way but despite communicating your needs, you got nothing in return? You feel worse because you told the other person what you wanted and their not complying makes you feel uncared for. You might even feel that it was better when you said nothing, as that way you could live with the myth that they would change if only they knew your views. ...

Most people think that the will to survive is the strongest instinct in human beings, but it isn’t. The strongest instinct is to keep things familiar. –Virginia Satir, Family Therapist We sometimes hear incidents like when a person dies his/her partner commits suicide. It’s because the need to keep things familiar is greater than the need to live life itself. Richard Bandler, the co-founder of NLP, said that we make something familiar and even when it doesn’t function anymore we stick with it. That’s when we start to make our lives dysfunctional. People persist in extremely uncomfortable situations as they are familiar to them. They are unaware that they have choices (from the book: Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-formation). ...