This article is about Christian Goodman’s Overthrowing Anxiety program, so I assume you are here because you experience anxiety or worry and find it hard to control. Or because you have tried just about everything, but it just keeps coming back.
Perhaps maybe you thought to yourself that you have successfully got over it, only to find your anxiety comes roaring back with a vengeance.
Whatever your circumstances are, Christian Goodman’s Overthrowing Anxiety program claimed to help you beat anxiety for good.
Almost all of us had some sort of brush with anxiety in our lives. Luckily it is easy to beat anxiety with few lifestyle changes.
Some people have spent quite a bit of time learning and understand more about anxiety. As a result, we are becoming wiser to manage anxiety without medication.
Medication is not the answer to cure your anxiety. Although medications are made to help us, it is not without potential effects; they can harm us if taken incorrectly. The medication should be preferred as the last resort option.
That is why it is crucial to know ways to battle anxiety without medication.
What is the Overthrowing Anxiety program?
Overthrowing Anxiety is a self-help book that offers a better understanding of how you can alleviate your anxiety, worry, and stress. This book demands actionable exercises. It contains strategies that the reader can implement to help them reduce worry and get control of their life again.
According to Christain Goodman, anxiety in moderation is not necessarily a bad thing. It can help you stay alert and motivate you to solve problems. However, when anxiety is constant, it can get to the point where it is not healthy. It can affect the quality of people’s lives and keep them from living healthy life.
Strategies To Overthrowing Anxiety
The overthrowing anxiety program consists of a set of activities that claimed to help you gently melt away your anxiety.
Let’s discuss some of the activities which can naturally calm your anxiety.
- Daily habits- Following a daily routine can help you establish positive habits and priorities. Organizing your time will help you to build your daily habit, which, in turn, strengthens your mental health. It will also allow you to get a better result at work and have you to have a fulfilling life outside work. When you are making your daily routine, you need to include things like time to relax or a regular bedtime. When you implement them into your daily routine, it can boost your maximum productivity during the day.
- Exercise- Many studies show that exercise is one of the most important things you can do to combat stress. Exercise also has many health benefits. According to some studies, people who exercise regularly tend to have lower rates of anxiety and depression than those who don’t exercise. The Overthrowing Anxiety Program asserts that if you can engage in aerobic exercise even for just five minutes, it can stimulate anti-anxiety effects and ease anxiety symptoms for up to several hours. It advocates that even a brisk walk can deliver hours of stress relief. You can look for a type of exercise that you genuinely enjoy, whether it a pilates, biking, dance, running, but it should be something that you look forward to.
- Self-care habits- I don’t know about you, but you really need to take care of yourself. You may not realize how important this is, but it will give you a quick release from your anxiety misery. According to the author, most people don’t even know how to take care of themselves. The Overthrowing Anxiety covers some tips to help you stay happy and healthy over the short and long term.
By the way, what is self-care?
It refers to some good practices that you do to support your physical, emotional, and mental health.
When you have a mental illness, it doesn’t just impact your mind alone, it affects your physical health too, as your brain doesn’t exist outside your body.
How can you truly start to care for yourself?
The simple answer is to start questioning how you feel ( both physically and emotionally).
Anxiety can decrease your energy. Noticing what’s happening to your body will give you a better understanding of what’s happening in your mind.
Taking care of your body with good food and sleep will also help you look after your brain. Keeping yourself physically active will make a massive difference to your mental health.
- Action activities- Anxiety and depression can come in different shapes and sizes. There is no one size fits all approach in managing anxiety. However, there are some things that you can do to make your mind and body healthier.
Here are five steps to overcome anxiety. You can use these steps to help settle your emotions and refocus yourself on what’s necessary for your life right now.
- Try to know what your anxiety is and what causes it.
- What is your thought when you are feeling anxious?
- Learn how to identify and challenge your negative thought.
- Learn to face your fear, analyze the situations that are bothering you.
- Accept your imperfection and uncertainty. Don’t expect to be perfect when you are making progress. Always remember that doing is better than worrying about it.
What Happen When You Go Through With Anxiety?
When you go through with anxiety, it can keep you from getting the sleep you need. It can interfere with your work and other activities.
In a social situation, anxiety can even make it hard for you to mingle or talk to others. You may also feel like you are constantly judged.
Anxiety can come to appear out of the blue like a panic attack. When it comes, it can make you feel like you are about to have a heart attack and even go mad or lose control.
Anxiety disorder is more like a bomb, it’s swift and powerful, and it can strike suddenly.
It can also be present all the time; anxiety can interfere with your day-to-day activities when pervasive worry strikes you, you look to the future with dread.
It is essential to seek support and treat them early.
Studies show that if you left anxiety untreated, it could lead you to depression and early death.
Christian Goodman’s Ways To Overcome Anxiety
According to the overthrowing anxiety program, the way you cope with handling things in life has a direct impact on how much you experience anxiety.
The author firmly believes that you can lower your anxiety levels.
You may even feel like your life is out of control, and finding it hard to make a decision.
Well, to help you keep going and overcome indecision, Goodman suggested you keep your motto as “Do It Badly,” which encourages you to have courage trying new things.
This may sound a little strange, but according to the author, anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
And he has a point in saying this;
The reason why this may work so well is that it helps to speed up your decision-making process and bring you straight into action.
Otherwise, you could be spending hours on one project, thinking about how you should do something or what you should do, which is also very time-consuming as well as stressful.
Many of us often want to do something perfectly or tend to wait for the perfect time before starting.
According to the author, this can lead to procrastinating and even abandon us from doing it at all. And this can again develop stress and anxiety.
As human beings, what we do offer the world is always perfectly imperfect. All we have is now, and now is always the perfect time for action.
And most of the time, you’ll also notice that you are not doing it that bad after all, and even if you are, there is always a way to make it better later.
So don’t be afraid to make a start by doing things badly.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q. What are the things you see in a person with social anxiety?
A. Most people with social anxiety have something in common such as-
- Avoiding eye contact ( You may notice people with social anxiety wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact or stare at the floor or their feet while speaking).
- Rigid body posture
- Sweating
- Blushing
- Shaking/trembling
- Dysfunction and distress in daily routines
- Diverting attention from themselves to others
- Avoidance of social interaction, such as public speaking, conversations, etc.
- Quiet or soft voice ( It may be audible but you’ll find something is commonly noticeable)
Q. Can anxiety disorder kill you?
A. An anxiety disorder may damage the quality of your life, but it won’t kill you. However, when you have a full panic attack, you may have the following symptoms-
- Chest pain
- Flushing skin
- Difficulty breathing
- Racing heart
- It can also make you feel as though you are going to faint, lose your mind, or even die.
Q. What are the types of anxiety disorders?
A. There are six main anxiety disorders. They are-
- Panic disorder and agoraphobia
- Social Anxiety Disorder
- Specific phobia ( In this condition, a person may fear some ordinary object, activity, or situation. For example, a person with a fear of a dog may fear that dog will attack him or her, or he may be afraid that he will lose his mind, or run into heavy traffic, and so on).
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
Q. Can anxiety lead to Schizophrenia?
A. No!
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that may affect how a person thinks, feels, and behaves.
Although people with schizophrenia may suffer anxiety, there is no way that people with an anxiety disorder would develop schizophrenia.
Q. How can You know that You have an anxiety disorder?
A. You may be suffering from anxiety disorder if you identify any of the following symptoms or signs-
- If you are constantly worried and tense
- Your anxiety is interfering with your work and family responsibility.
- You feel that something bad will happen if certain things are not done in a certain way.
- You avoid daily activities simply because they cause you anxiety.
- You had a panic attack out of the blue and having a heart-pounding moment.
- When you feel like danger and catastrophe are around every corner.