Anxiety Slayer™ with Shann and Ananga

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481Episodes

Mental Health

Award Winning Anxiety Relief Podcast with tips, tools and practices to help you calm anxiety, stress, PTSD, and panic attacks.

How to develop resilience and live an intentional life with Neil Pasricha

January 24, 2020

#481: Today it’s our pleasure to introduce you to NYT Best-selling author and speaker, Neil Pasricha.

Neil thinks, writes, and speaks about living intentionally. All of his current work focuses on the themes of gratitude, happiness, failure, resilience, and trust.

Neil is the author of six books including The Book of Awesome, a spinning Rolodex of simple pleasures based on his award-winning blog 1000 Awesome Things, and his new book, You Are Awesome, How to Navigate Change, wrestle with Failure, and live an intentional life. Neil’s books are New York Times bestsellers and have sold millions of copies across dozens of languages.

Points covered in this podcast

Ten years ago, Neil’s life fell apart after his marriage ended in divorce and his best friend took his life. In the ten years since those heartbreaking experiences, he worked through his suffering and has so much to celebrate.

How did you go from suffering these life-altering losses to living your life with intention?

Why do we need to learn resilience?

How can your nine steps or directional arrows help us cultivate resilience?

What can we do to support our children and adolescents who are struggling at an astronomical rate with anxiety and panic attacks?

If there was ONE thing our listeners could do today to start living more intentionally, what do you recommend?

Neil’s Two-Minute Morning Practice

Every day carve out a couple of minutes to fill in the following journaling prompts

1. I will let go of…
2. I am grateful for…
3. I will focus on…

Get your copy of You Are Awesome at neil.blog or wherever books are sold. You Are Awesome is packed with research-based strategies, tools, and lessons to move from thin-skinned to thick-skinned, failure-prone to failure-proof, and anxious… to awesome

You can also The Book of Awesome for free when you share your email at 1000 awesome things.

We invite you to take a look at our N ew Beginnings Course which is currently on sale at 30% until the end of January off with the coupon code: newyear

Thanks for listening to Anxiety Slayer.
Shann & Ananga

How changing your thoughts about anxiety can help you heal

January 17, 2020

#480: Today we're talking about how our thoughts and feelings about anxiety affect the quality of our life. We'll be looking at the benefits of clearing resistance and resentment towards anxiety, and how that frees up our energy to start taking action steps toward feeling less anxious and more hopeful.

This Anxiety Slayer podcast is brought to you by New Beginnings: Daily Steps for Self-Acceptance and Peace of Mind
Save 30% for a limited time. Review the course at https://anxietyslayer.teachable.com/p/new-beginnings

Thoughts that keep us stuck in anxiety

Some thoughts we often hear are:

"I will never be free from panic attacks!"

"I know I'm stuck with this anxiety for life."

"I've tried everything and nothing works."

These are beliefs, not facts, and beliefs can be changed. Freedom from anxiety begins when we challenge those beliefs and look beyond them.

Breaking through the wall of anxiety

When you see anxiety as an enemy or personalize it by saying you hate it, you are giving anxiety power over you.

It becomes something you have to fight, or you resent. Feeling this way about anxiety puts you in a victim mindset. You are feeding your anxiety and exhausting yourself.

We’ve all done it. It's the default setting of a suffering mind. You don't like how you feel, so you declare it. I hate this. I don't want to feel this way. But anxiety isn't personal. It's not listening and it's not going to back off and leave you alone - unless you make the choice to deal with it by taking action.

Two challenges for the anxious mind

The mind tends to form grooves. Like an old record, our thoughts carve tracks that our mind falls in to and plays over and over again.

The mind also has a negativity bias, which means it's particularly drawn to unhelpful thoughts and beliefs and likes to replay them and ruminate on them.

This replaying makes the grooves of negative thought even deeper and difficult to escape, but we can, with determination and support.

Changing our mind is easier when it comes from our heart

Changing the way you feel about your anxiety and switching your perspective to seeing it as an emotion, or a messenger that is trying to communicate something to you is a positive first step in regaining your power and sense of control over anxiety.

One way to do this is to ask yourself what would I love to do if I was free from anxiety?

When you practice looking for purpose and meaning in your life, anxiety becomes a hurdle between now and what you want to experience instead of a brick wall.

Using EFT Tapping to change unwanted thoughts

Tapping is a quick and effective way to change our unwanted beliefs and, in doing so, change your entire experience of anxiety from feeling trapped to feeling hope and finding freedom.

You can try it by yourself via a book or course or work with a practitioner for support and to make sure you cover all the aspects of the thoughts that are affecting you. Read the rest of our show notes at www.anxietyslayer.com

This episode is brought to you by New Beginnings

If you want to wake up each day feeling good about yourself. Energized. Happy & Peaceful. Join us on this journey of deep self-care work Special offer Save 30% for a limited time with the coupon code: newyear Learn more at AnxietySlayer.teachable.com

Two anxiety relief practices to help you feel more calm and relaxed in 2020

January 10, 2020

#479: We are sharing 2 anxiety relief practices to help you feel more calm and relaxed in 2020.

Today's Anxiety Slayer podcast is brought to you by New Beginnings: Daily Steps for Self-Acceptance and Peace of Mind

If you want to wake up each day feeling good about yourself. Energized. Happy. Peaceful. If you want to shed the layers of protective armor wrapped around your heart, this supportive course is for you.

Join us on this journey of deep self-care work; lighten your load, calm your anxiety and lift your spirits.

Special offer Save 30% for a limited time at anxietyslayer.teachable.com

Coupon code: newyear

Best of Anxiety Slayer: My anxiety has left me feeling housebound

January 3, 2020

We are responding to a listener question asking what helps when anxiety leads to feeling housebound or agoraphobic.

With over 6.5 million downloads and hundreds of podcasts, Anxiety Slayer is a podcast for anyone who is suffering from PTSD, panic attacks, stress, and anxiety.

Get your FREE Anxiety Slayer Starter Course with 4 guided anxiety relief exercises today anxietyslayer.com

Best of Anxiety Slayer: Guided Relaxation for Anxiety-Free Sleep

December 27, 2019

For the month of December, we're revisiting our most popular episodes and interviews from 2019. We've been receiving a lot of messages from members of our community who are finding anxiety is affecting their sleep, so in this week's podcast replay, we're sharing one of our guided relaxations for anxiety-free sleep from our popular Sleep Album.

You can find the full Sleep album, along with our complete collection of relaxation titles HERE.

With over 6.4 million downloads and hundreds of podcasts, Anxiety Slayer is a podcast for anyone who is suffering from PTSD, panic attacks, stress, and anxiety.

Thanks for listening.

Get your FREE Anxiety Slayer Starter Course with 4 guided anxiety relief exercises today anxietyslayer.com

Best of Anxiety Slayer: How to cultivate mindfulness and calm anxiety with Marc Lesser

December 20, 2019

Today Shann has the pleasure of sharing our most popular interview in 2019.

Introducing Zen Teacher and CEO, Marc Lesser. Marc is the Cofounder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute and the author of Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader - Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen and several other books. Marc leads mindfulness and emotional intelligence programs at many of the world’s leading businesses and offers trainings and talks worldwide.

We begin our conversation by talking about the origin of mindfulness and Marc's inspiration for writing his new book and the delve into the following topics.

How Marc's book can support business leaders who struggle with anxiety.
The Dalai Lama and Anxiety
How to begin a mindfulness practice
The importance of connecting to our pain
How simplifying your life can open you to more mindfulness

You can get a copy of Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader at Amazon and wherever books are sold.

5 Common Anxiety Triggers To Watch Out For

December 13, 2019

#476: We’re covering five common causes of anxiety to be mindful of. Listen in to know the triggers to look out for and how to stop them from escalating your anxiety.

Points covered in this episode:

OVERSTIMULATION

Ayurveda (India’s ancient science of life) teaches that the over-stimulation of the nervous system is the leading underlying cause of anxiety.

Too much incoming information overloads our nervous system. Social media, news, intense movies, noise, change.

Many of us live with constant noise and visual stimulation, even when we’re in bed trying to sleep there may be the rumble of traffic or aircraft or some other noise – these things are agitating to our nervous systems, and our nervous system becomes overwhelmed and overtaxed, and then we start to experience anxiety.

Ayurveda teaches that the mind is very sensitive and easily disturbed.

That is true for all of us; it is the nature of the mind to be disturbed. Accepting that fact and knowing how to help the mind feel safe and calm is one of the great lessons of personal development.

Find out about getting support for calming anxiety with an Ayurvedic lifestyle consultation with Ananga

CAFFEINE

Caffeine is a primary culprit in provoking anxiety.

Symptoms caused by caffeine include:

sleep disturbance
adrenal fatigue
feeling wired, anxious, or shaky
Coffee doesn’t give energy, it sets off a reaction in the body that provokes stress hormones to provide a burst of alertness.

Caffeine jolts the body into flight or fight mode.

Most relevant for Anxiety Slayer listeners to note is that caffeine can spark anxiety episodes because it can make us feel like we’re having an episode.

The physical responses to caffeine can feel the same as the symptoms of anxiety.

For example:

increased heart rate
feeling unsettled and restless
sweating or trembling

Look out for caffeine in over-the-counter medications, as well as in coffee and energy drinks.

LOOPING “WHAT IF” THOUGHTS

When unwanted thoughts arise, they often trigger an anxiety story in our head - something we fear, something we want to avoid at all costs, but the mind gets hold of the thought and starts expanding it into anxious predictions and possible outcomes and we get dragged along for the ride.

What helps? We need to be mindfully engaged in whatever we’re doing. Even if it’s chopping vegetables, washing dishes, taking a shower, whatever the activity is, we need to practice being present in the moment.

LACK OF ROUTINE

(again from Ayurveda) Change can increase anxiety. Especially for the vata body type. We become unsettled and ungrounded when our days are disordered and erratic.

What helps?

Set yourself a daily routine and follow it as much as possible: Try and get up and go to bed at the same time each day Eat regular meals - this will also help keep your blood sugar steady

Eat breakfast: Favor a warm nourishing breakfast like oatmeal made with almond milk with some chopped dates and cinnamon.

Bring Warmth into your day: warm baths soft, warm bed

PRESSURE/EXPECTATIONS

Practice replacing the need to be perfect and simply show up in your best light.

Please stop being too hard on yourself

What helps?

Replace your expectations with invitations and intentions

Self-compassion - Be gentle and loving with yourself

NEW COURSE!
Anxiety Slayer First Responder Series: Social Anxiety

Do you dread upcoming social events?

Are you missing out on time with your family, or friends because you feel out-of-place in social situations?

We understand, Ananga suffered from severe social anxiety as a youth and Shann often experienced stress and social anxiety as a public speaker. In this course, we share the techniques we used to overcome social anxiety. And how you can too.

Learn How to Feel Calm and Confident in any Social Situation this Holiday Season.

Best of Anxiety Slayer: How to calm unwanted thoughts that often come with anxiety

December 6, 2019

#475: For the month of December, we're revisiting our most popular episodes and interviews from 2019. This week we're discussing how to calm the unwanted thoughts that often come with anxiety. Listen in and start to claim freedom from your unwanted thoughts today!

If you want to go deeper into this topic, you'll want to explore our How to Calm Your Fragile Mind Course at the Anxiety Slayer Academy.

How to Stop an Anxiety Attack with EFT Tapping

November 28, 2019

#474: We’re talking about how to stop an anxiety attack. Learn the triggers to look out for that can provoke anxiety and how EFT Tapping is a powerful self-help tool that can help you stop anxiety in its tracks. This episode includes a guided tapping session at around 16:00 minutes to help you calm the fear of an anxiety attack.

Social Anxiety: You do not have to suffer in silence

November 22, 2019

#473: This week we're talking about how to care for yourself if you suffer from social anxiety and introduce our new course designed to support anyone who suffers in social settings.

Today's Anxiety Slayer podcast is brought to you by our brand new course, The Anxiety Slayer First Responder Series for Social Anxiety

Learn how to care for yourself with guided tapping sessions, affirmations, supportive commentary and our favorite Bach flower remedies for Social Anxiety

Enroll today and get our introductory half-price offer for a limited time.

Anxiety Slayer™ with Shann and Ananga

Anxiety Slayer™ with Shann and Ananga

How to develop resilience and live an intentional life with Neil Pasricha

How changing your thoughts about anxiety can help you heal

Thoughts that keep us stuck in anxiety

Breaking through the wall of anxiety

Two challenges for the anxious mind

Changing our mind is easier when it comes from our heart

Using EFT Tapping to change unwanted thoughts

Two anxiety relief practices to help you feel more calm and relaxed in 2020

Best of Anxiety Slayer: My anxiety has left me feeling housebound

Best of Anxiety Slayer: Guided Relaxation for Anxiety-Free Sleep

Best of Anxiety Slayer: How to cultivate mindfulness and calm anxiety with Marc Lesser

5 Common Anxiety Triggers To Watch Out For