How to control anxiety

The answer

Behind this question is the probable desire to prevent yourself from being triggered when you don’t want to be.

Here’s what you have to do:

Recognize that you currently have a particular way of thinking and beliefs–a way of being. Because of this current state of beliefs and thinking, there are certain stimuli/triggers in this world that, when encountered, will make us anxious regardless of our desire to be undisturbed. Why? Our beliefs get triggered rapidly. Fortunately, we (humans) have the ability to modify our thinking and beliefs and thus, eliminate the emotion-causing power of different stimuli.

A repeatable strategy:

1. Use triggered moments to neutralize the emotion-causing power of the stimulus/trigger by identifying and eliminating the emotion-causing beliefs you have about the stimuli.

A systematic process for eliminating anxiety triggers is here.

1. Anticipate future situations you’re going to be in and the possible triggers you’ll encounter. You can then work to neutralize the emotion-causing powers of those triggers before the situation happens in real life.

Illustration of what controlling our emotions looks like – from triggered to calm

We may unexpectedly get triggered by things

When we identify the anxiety-causing belief(s) associated with a trigger and drop them, we’ll be emotionally undisturbed when encountering the stimuli again.

Examples for how to do this work