In this article, I’ll share with you a natural anxiety relief method I used to break a life-long problem with anxiety.  I tried many anxiety cures, but I didn’t overcome my constantly anxious state until I used this simple method.

The Problem

Anxiety is slippery.  Unlike anger or fear, it doesn’t have a clear and obvious cause or stimulus. The causes for anxiety are not always obvious.

Anxiety is scary. Often, we don’t want to look closely at the cause of our anxiety for fear that it will… well, scare us!  As silly as that may sound, we fear that if we look closely, what we find may be even more terrifying than living with the anxiety.

Anxiety lays low. Anxiety can be like a low grade fever.  It can be running constantly, even when we are working, sleeping and going about our life.  The bad news about that is that you can live for years with continual, low grade anxiety.

Anxiety is damaging. Anxiety saps your energy, reduces your resourcefulness and undermines your health. It puts stress on all your organ systems.  It accelerates aging.

It dims your brilliance.  When you’re anxious, you can’t function at your best.  And when you feel constant anxiety, you can’t love fully, feel and express your creativity.  You can’t think as intelligently as you have the capacity to.  You are less patient.  And just less fully you.

The Solution

The solution to anxiety is to use some skillful techniques.  Here is my three-step method for quelling anxiety.

Step One – Look Your Anxiety in the Eye

In this step, grab a pencil and paper, sit down, get quiet and tune in.

First, notice your anxious thoughts. Notice the beliefs fueling the thoughts.

Then pay attention to the emotions.  Give them labels.

Third, notice the physical sensations of anxiety in your body.

List what you observed.

Step Two – Do Emotional Freedom Tapping on your list.

This is a simple process of saying a statement, while tapping on one of the EFT tapping points.  Tapping the energy points while being in the anxious state breaks up energetic blocks that have kept the pattern of anxiety operating in your body and mind.

You use one of the statements you listed at each meridian point.

You’ll probably want to learn more about how to do EFT tapping.  You can learn Emotional Freedom Technique tapping quickly and be on your way to one of the best anxiety cures and your own natural anxiety relief.

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!

The Anxiety Cause Can Be Mysterious

Those of us who suffer from anxiety often wonder, “What causes anxiety?”  Really, the anxiety cause is no mystery.

In today’s highly technical, speeding world, anxiety has become rampant. Most of us have some anxiety about finances, our family, our health, our future.

We can’t avoid anxiety-provoking news of world terrorism, economic collapse, diseases, environmental destruction, global warming.

This is no doubt part of the anxiety cause for so many of us are experiencing non-stop anxiety that can become an anxiety disorder. Why this is happening and what you can do about it are the reason for this article.

I used to have nearly constant anxiety.

It was preventing me from – well from everything.  It kept me from feeling comfortable and happy.  From doing what I wanted to do professionally.  And it was torture on my poor body – I was afraid it would ruin my health.

That’s why I became passionate about learning as much as I could about what causes anxiety and about anxiety cures.  I had to learn about healing anxiety for my own survival.

What I’ve read and what I’ve done has taught me that it is possible to to overcome anxiety and live in a calm and confident state, even in uncertain times.

Now here’s some info about the how doctors have described and classified the types of anxiety we humans get.

Anxiety and Depression Often Happen Together

Common Anxiety Disorders

Here’s an overview of the most common anxiety disorders.

They can each range from very mild to a serious disability needing specialized medical treatment.

These conditions can be triggered by many things.  The triggers can include recent or decades-old trauma, environmental stressers like toxins or radiation, diet, genetic predisposition and the habit of repetitive anxious thinking and reacting.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder – GAD
This is the most common anxiety disorder.  It starts with repeated anxious thoughts and emotions.  It becomes labeled as GAD when it’s chronic for six months or more.

If you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, you may feel nervous, jittery, edgy or irritable, and you might find it hard to focus and think clearly.  You may get tired easily or be chronically exhausted.  You might have a hard time relaxing and sleeping, and your muscles may be constantly tight.

Having GAD means you’re constantly on the alert – mentally and physically.  Your body is in anxiety cause of fight or flight all the time.  It’s tiring.  And it’s really bad for your health.

I know.  GAD is what I had.

Mine was luckily a fairly mild case and wasn’t noticeable to others.  But it was obvious to me.  It wore my body down and kept me from really succeeding in my life.  My declining health was the wake-up call I needed to get help and take action.

What causes anxiety in the case of GAD, can be a single big T Trauma, or a series of smaller traumas.

Traumatic Events Can Cause Ongoing Mental, Emotional and Physical Problems

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
With obsessive-compulsive disorder, you keep repeating obsessive thoughts or actions.  With OCD it can feel like you have no control over your thoughts and urges, like your a victim of your thoughts. It can really wear you down.

The anxiety that causes the obsessive thoughts leads to compulsive behaviors, in an attempt to relieve the anxiety.  These behaviors can be rituals like repeatedly washing your hands, checking locks, counting things.

Panic Disorder
Panic disorder is diagnosed when you have repeated panic attacks. With a panic attack, the heart beats fast.

What goes on in your body – the physical sensations – in a panic attack, can be terrifying themselves. It can feel like you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dieing.

Phobia Disorder
Phobia disorder is a fear of dieing or losing control in a certain situation.  This creates a need to avoid that situation. People can have a phobia of just about anything.  Some common phobias are of heights, snakes, flying and fear of panicking in an elevator or in public.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post-traumatic stress disorder happens after experiencing a traumatic event or serious emotional shock.  PTSD can be caused by witnessing a violent or horrifying event or experiencing an emotional or physical injury.  PTSD often results when we suffer a shock when we feel helpless.

These are the many answers to “What causes anxiety?”

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.