Anxiety: Is it a Choice?
by Karla Rodriguez
Hi, I’m Karla, and I am one of our lead Mind-Body-Spirit Integration Coaches here at Modern Holistic Health.
I love working with our integrated team of coaches because our approach to healing and health is the most comprehensive I have ever seen. Together our coaches help our clients to identify the root causes of their illness and why they haven’t been able to heal, and once we find answers, we have many people on our team to help our clients learn the solutions that actually work.
Over the years, our studies have found that when people get sick and are unable to heal, there are usually several underlying causes, not just one. All of these can be tested for using data- driven systems. These underlying causes can include:
● Inflammatory or toxic foods
● Chemical toxins
● Heavy Metal toxins
● Mycotoxins (toxic mold)
● Medications that have led to serious side effects
● Other Epigenetic factors
….And then there is trauma – unprocessed emotions, mindset, and belief systems. While these can’t be “tested”’ for in the same way, these can be some of the most complex underlying causes of disease, mental illness, and other chronic conditions. And if trauma, mindset, emotions, and belief systems are not addressed, people often continue to suffer without complete resolution of their illness, disease, or symptoms.
And that’s where I come in. Together with some of our other amazing coaches, I work in the area of trauma and emotional healing so that our clients can have the best opportunity for healing.
Today I want to share with you a perspective on the emotion of anxiety because we see many of our clients come to us with this unresolved and life-depleting emotion that they just can’t get a handle on.
Have you ever found yourself creating stories in your mind about what “might be”? Have you ever found yourself in a state of anxiety because you created ideas around what hasn’t happened yet… and what “might” happen?
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
For almost 25 years, I thought that I was just weird and unlucky because I was living with anxiety.
At random times, my body would tighten up, and I would sometimes not know how to get out of that… What’s interesting though is that it would always happen when I would worry about what might happen…
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there are various types of anxiety!
There is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and other Phobia-Related Disorders.
Generalized Anxiety can be described as when you feel restless, on edge, irritable, and have sleep issues.
Panic Disorder/Anxiety usually includes changes to your body physiology that can include heart palpitations, sweating, and the feeling of being out of control
Phobia-type Anxiety is an intense fear of specific situations or objects. Some experiences with this may be irrational worry or even taking active steps to avoid that which you fear…
With each of these types of anxiety, there are effective modalities that can be used. These effective tools work consistently and quickly to stop anxiety, panic, and phobia feelings, and we teach these most effective modalities when working with our clients.
An example of one effective tool you can use is to think about the specific thing that you are anxious about, and then imagine how you can make it into a more pleasant experience by imagining the desired, more pleasant experience instead.
While it’s not uncommon to experience anxiety, which stems from fear of the unknown or something that hasn’t happened yet, the difference between those who continually suffer from anxiety versus those who don’t often lies in their ability to recognize what their mind is creating and then consciously deciding to change their thoughts to a more pleasant experience. Anxiety can become a challenge when we are either not aware of our choice to change our thoughts or when we choose to stay in the thought pattern that is creating the anxiety.
I realize this may trigger you, but I invite you to keep reading.
As someone who personally lived with this for many years, I would often find myself in a state of worry and fear, until something would distract me, but without a random distraction, I was unconscious of how to get out of my anxiety state on my own. I didn’t have the awareness to realize that I could steer my thoughts to influence my desired emotional state.
It wasn’t until many years later that I became aware of my unconscious behaviors and learned that my anxiety was a choice — and one that I could change.
Yes, anxiety can be triggered by environmental toxins, mold toxins, or even toxic foods that can alter my brain chemistry to make me more susceptible to anxiety… but I discovered that my power to choose my own thoughts was MINE. I became a master of my mind (rather than my mind running away with its stories and mastering me) and took a deep dive into understanding the complexities of the conscious and unconscious mind, and learning tools and modalities to help others.
Recently, I worked with one of our clients, Heather, through our Mind-Body-Spirit Integration & Empowerment Program (our trauma healing and emotional release program). Heather was already anxious about our call even before her first appointment. It’s a state that she admitted is natural for her to get into, and after I spent time teaching her awareness around her thoughts and how she has the power of choice, her anxiety went from a 7 to a 0 in just her first visit!
Heather had no idea she could experience that fast of a result on the same day!
At Heather’s next appointment with me, I put her through what we call a 1-Day Intensive, where we spend between 5-7 hours together, working through trapped emotions and traumas. By the end of Heather’s 1-Day Intensive with me, Heather and I checked back in with some of her body symptoms she experienced when she had the anxiety, and to her delight, her body symptoms were completely gone.
Over the course of her continuing healing journey with us, Heather will sometimes say, “yes, sometimes it (the anxiety) wants to come up, but I think about what I want to feel instead, and the anxiety goes away”. You see, Heather learned to take back control of her mind, and she is getting to experience the powerful healing taking place in her mind, body, and spirit.
One of the amazing things about becoming aware that you have a choice is that you become ok with allowing yourself to experience feelings and emotions that come in through your body. You realize that you are simply the observer of your emotions and feelings, and they are there to guide you, not control you, and they will pass if you know how to master your mind.
This is just one small example of the work we do to help people learn how they can process their emotions of anxiety to allow them to move through the body.
So, let me ask you this: What are you choosing to be afraid of? How long will you choose to be there?
What if instead you chose to create an alternate story from what you are creating now? Because when we go into this fear/panic/anxious place, it is just us creating a story that may never actually happen.
I can tell you that after I learned about our power of choice and how our unconscious mind works, my years of living with anxiety were finally gone. I rarely experience those old anxious moments, and if they want to creep in, I am now consciously aware of what is happening, which allows me to then choose a different story, one that takes me in the direction of how I truly want to feel.
So as you continue on your health journey, experience each day with gratitude, and realize that you don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s ok. Now that you know something new, something different, what will you choose to do with this information? 
Once you become aware, you’ll find you have so much capacity to choose all that you want for yourself.
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Modern Holistic Health
3267 Bee Cave Rd, Ste. 107-187 Austin, TX 78746 - 512.550.7933 | (888) 260-3377
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