Your anxiety cause is in your past.  Whenever a disturbing event happens in your life – from infancy on – the effects are stored in your body and your mind.  Unless you do something to clear them, they remain.

Cause of Anxiety Example

I’m sure you know this is true and you have many personal examples to confirm it.  But let me give you one clear cause of anxiety.

I have a teenage student who is terrified of dogs.  It doesn’t matter how friendly the dog is, how many times he’s experienced the dog licking him and being gentle, his fear remains.

How did he get this dog anxiety?  He got it when he was three years old and his uncle’s dog ran up to him and knocked him down.  It terrified the little guy, right!

And his brain and his body stored the memory, the fear the the anxiety about dogs.

Anxiety is a safety mechanism.

It’s how we learn about physical threats.  It’s designed to protect us from dangers.

Our bodies are designed to feel anxiety.  It keeps us safe.

The problem arises when we feel anxious more and more of the time.  When we feel a continual, nameless sense of dread that has no clear source.

This is the mind/body system taking the evolutionary safety mechanism to the extreme.  That’s when anxiety actually becomes destructive.  It blocks our creativity and effectiveness, saps our energy and causes physical damage.

Anxiety Cure?

Clearing the Anxiety Cause:  I know of one technique that is actually very effective at clearing the anxiety-producing residue from our past disturbing events.  It’s a meridian tapping method that looks silly, seems unscientific and doesn’t appear to have any chance of working.

But, surprisingly it does.  It’s called EFT tapping.  One tapping technique that’s especially effective for removing earlier life traumas is the Growing Up Method.

I know this has worked to remove the causes for anxiety in my, but I’d love to hear your results with trying out this method.  Leave your comment below!

When Your Inside Doesn't Match Your Outside

I had an ah-hah moment about the anxiety cause yesterday.

I was at the Arizona Desert Sonoran Museum giving a workshop.  It was on how to use EFT Tapping (aka EFT) for healing anxiety and to resolve any sort of emotional baggage.

After my workshop, one of the participants shared with me the issue she’d been working on in our practice session.  She told me that she kept replaying the relationship of her abusive father.

Over and over in her life, she’d get into the same types of relationships.

That is something I’ve seen in my own life, my friends’ lives and in the lives of my EFT clients.

Until we resolve our old junk, we keep attracting it…

…whether we want to or not.

But then she said something that really hit me.  She said, “I want my inside to match my outside.”

I perked up.  “What do you mean by that,” I asked her.

She went on to explain how people were always telling her how talented and capable she was.  And how she could do anything she wanted and succeed.

“But that’s not how I feel inside,”  she said.

I could see her beauty and her potential.    But I could see pain.

It resonated with me because I’ve been there.

Sometimes what we feel inside and how we see ourselves is totally different from how others perceive us.

Oozing Confidence?

Once an old friend told me I “oozed competence.”   I can remember thinking, why don’t I FEEL that way?

I was realizing that sometimes what causes anxiety is that we know our potential.  We can feel it.  Yet, inside, we also feel incapable of pulling it off.  Our inside doesn’t match our outside.  And it’s an anxiety cause.

Hearing it expressed that way helped me understand, on a new level, why and how EFT tapping works.

I truly think EFT Tapping is one of the most profound and effective of the anxiety cures.  Have you added it to your bag of tricks yet?

Often we don't even know our anxiety cause

What causes anxiety?

It’s simple. The anxiety cause is the fact that you’re human. You can think and plan and imagine your future. Therefore you can be anxious about it.

Healthy anxiety helps you plan for retirement, buy insurance, make sure you’ve locked your door.

It’s the unhealthy anxiety…

…the kind that keeps you worrying for days about something that probably will never happen. That’s the problem.

Anxiety Cause - Anxious about an unknown future.

Define Anxiety
Anxiety is concern about an unknown threat.

We call anxiety by many names: stress, fear, worry, concern. When you’re anxious, you might say you’re stressed out, edgy, irritated, frustrated, concerned, nervous.

In how you feel and what happens in your body, there’s actually no difference between anxiety and fear. Although we may think of fear as more intense than anxiety.

Actually, fear is the emotion and physical response to a clear and present danger. You react in fear if a bicyclist swerves in toward your car. You feel fear if an attacker leaps out in front of you.

Fear protects you from danger by setting off a number of physical reactions called the “fight or flight” response.

Anxiety Cause - a dog phobia can cause anxiety

Physiology of Fear and Anxiety

When you’re in fight or flight, your heart beats faster. Your pupils dilate. You get hyper-alert.

You feel “high” and full of energy and strength.

Blood goes from your digestive tract to your running/fighting muscles. Your immune system shuts down.

This is all great if there’s a real danger and you need to react to save yourself or someone else.

It’s not so great if the danger is the speech you need to give next month. Or the economic crisis. Or your discomfort with your super-critical boss.

The problem is that your body reacts the same way to real danger and imagined danger. All the fight or flight responses keep happening, even when you feel anxious about something for days, weeks, months or years.

Anxiety Cause - Worried over an unknown financial future

Our Anxiety Epidemic

You’re not alone in your anxiety.  The world is experiencing an anxiety epidemic.

Our depressed economic situation is real.  We’re bombarded daily with news of potential dangers – a flu pandemic, terrorist violence, global warming.

If you don’t know how to master anxiety, it’s possible to live in a constant state of fight or flight.

When you’re always ready to defend yourself or to escape danger, there’s no way to truly rest and relax.

It can take the fun out of your life. Exhaust you. And gradually degrade your health.

Bad News Good News

But paradoxically, the bad news is actually the good news.

Your human brain got you into this anxiety mess, creating the anxiety cause.

And your human brain can get you out of it, providing the anxiety cure. Stay tuned for information on the cure.