How to solve fear of anxiety in 15 minutes a day?
Breaking through and overcoming fear of anxiety in 15 minutes a day is not difficult. It simply requires 15 minutes a day of your time to learn how to break through this fear of anxiety. Then you continue practicing for 30 days until this new pattern has become a habit in your brain. With a structured daily support program, it's even easier because you'll be guided until you reach your desired outcome.
Both anxiety and "fear of commitment" are associated with an overexcitation of the Amygdala in the limbic system of our primitive brain.
What is healthy fear?
What is unhealthy anxiety?
What is fear of anxiety?
Why do I have anxiety about anxiety?
The trigger for fear of anxiety, is often an anxiety-producing event in the past.This (historical) trigger is usually not the cause of the continuation of fear in our later lives.
The original fear creates
- a conditioned reflex
- An increased general level of stress
This leads to an increased excitability of our nervous system and a re-activation of the over-stimulation of the amygdala. This in turn then leads to the emergence of fear of (the recurrence of) that fear.
This happens through an activation of the memory or memory of that old fear and the re-activation of that conditioned reflex that was then "burned in" or programmed into our primitive brains, as it were. The scientist and expert Konrad Lorenz called this process "imprinting."
Types of fear
It is important to distinguish between
- fear of a real danger (= healthy fear)
- fear of an imagined (or remembered) danger.
- fear of (the return of) the fear, while the original danger has long since ceased to exist.
- increased tension without fear. (This often occurs in OCD and sometimes in excessive perfectionism in people with ASD or Autistic Spectrum Disorder)
- hyperventilation
Who can be affected?
Anxiety can occur at all ages and in all cultures.
People who live in Western cultures and try to follow the ever-accelerating modern rhythm of life are at much greater risk than cultures that try to put people on a less fixed schedule.
The incidence has been increasing especially sharply since the use of cell phones and increasing use of social media.How can you treat fear of anxiety?
When treated with daily 15 minutes of self-help online, we see the fear of anxiety already decreasing after 7 to 21 days. After 21 days, more than half have already broken the vicious circle of fear of anxiety.After another 30 days, anxiety-free living becomes a new habit.
Then the average participant still has about six months to practice relapse prevention in order to live a relapse-free life from now on.
What if you do not treat this fear?
If left untreated, anxiety of fear often evolves into a chronic, progressively disabling condition with worsening anxiety disorders. At a later stage often complemented by panic attacks.
How does anxiety arise?
Anxiety is built up as follows:
- Input from the 5 senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting) is processed into (anxiety-increasing) emotional stimuli.
- These emotional stimuli excite the sensory thalamus in the limbic system.
- The sensory thalamus activates neurological circuits in the sensory cortex.
- From the cortex, nerve endings run to the amygdala, which activates it directly. Simultaneously, the thalamus also sends signals to the Amygdala, which provides an indirect "modulating" effect. The latter acts as a kind of amplifier on the signals that activate the Amygdala from the sensory cortex.
- This leads to activation of fear.
In fear of fear, these same brain pathways are ultimately activated, but with one important difference: The input this time is NOT from our senses.
- The input is now the output of our mental thinking, imagining, fantasizing and feeling. So now no longer linked to the reality around us.
- This output is already "fearful" in nature because our Amygdala were already fearful as a result of all kinds of (relevant and also non-relevant) overstimulated triggers.
- As soon as the output of our fear experience in itself becomes the input of this neurological brain circuit, a vicious circle is created that can no longer be easily or spontaneously broken.
Possible complications
This vicious cycle of fear of fear, can be exacerbated by addiction to stimulants or worse, to anxiety-inducing medication. Your body needs more and more of that medication or stimulant to "numb" the same amount of anxiety.
How to break through anxiety?
The most accessible approach to breaking anxiety for anxiety is to spend 15 minutes daily doing computer-based online self-help. Most participants score normal again on "anxiety" within 21 days or 3 weeks, with an average 60% decrease in their anxiety within 30 days and even down to -70% after 49 days. In this way, the vicious cycle of fear of fear is broken.
How long will it take to resolve my fear of anxiety?
| Topic | Time to resolution with guidance from 15Minutes4Me.com (Median, according to our research) |
|---|---|
| Breaking the cycle of fear of anxiety | 7 days |
| Feeling fear-free and mindful without thinking | 21 days |
| Living free from fear | 90 Days |
| Building Your New Life After Fear | 4 months |
How to break through anxiety preventively?
People who start preventively at the first signs of excessive anxiety, tension or stress with a month of daily online self-help can often prevent the onset of "fear of anxiety.
Risk factors anxiety
Some important risk factors that increase the risk of healthy anxiety spilling over to excessive anxiety and, subsequently, even to the more difficult to break through "'fear of anxiety" are the following:
- traumatic events in the past
- addiction to medication, anti-anxiety drugs, sleep aids, tranquilizers, benzodiazepines, cannabis, or heavier drugs such as cocaine, heroin and others .....
- a history of weeks to months or even years of living under great pressure or chronic stress: both work pressures and problems in one's personal life
- death of a loved one, friend, family member or important figure in your life
- long-term care for a loved one, family member or friend
- major events such as a move, pandemic, lockdown, quarantine, war situation, or even a very intense positive experience such as even marriage, moving in together, new love or engagement.
The importance and role of relapse prevention in anxiety
An important tool for doing relapse prevention is to follow a proactive module online to create a relapse prevention plan and learn relapse prevention skills. This can be done either immediately after healing or treatment, or months or even years afterward.
During such relapse prevention you learn to recognize signals preventively and early, and to draw up an action plan what you can do best at that moment to prevent real relapse. Some participants do this completely independently. Others do it in consultation with a friend, partner, family member or neighbor who may or may not be involved in the support during a difficult or risky period or after risky events.
Relapse prevention always pays off, both in the fully independent form and in the form in which you involve a loved one as a 'second opinion'. This process is guided and supported online during the relapse prevention module of the daily online self-care program so that it is easy to learn, and relapse will be prevented.
Symptoms of Anxiety
Possible symptoms of anxiety include:
- anxious feelings,
- fretting,
- being agitated,
- being overexcitable,
- trembling,
- dry mouth,
- avoidance of certain situations such as squares, large spaces, car lanes, shopping malls and the like.
Symptoms of anxiety of fear are:
- Being busy day and night with thoughts or behaviors how to avoid getting into a fear situation.
The different stages of anxiety
Stage 0: Healthy fear of real danger. This helpful anxiety helps you make better decisions to achieve your life goals while paying enough attention to avoid, prevent or handle dangerous situations
Stage 1: Excessive fear of a real danger, but whose proportion you push to an unreasonable level.
Stage 2: Unrealistic fear of a non-existent danger or one that will almost certainly never occur in your life.
Stage 3: Fear of the fear, sometimes even for years after you experienced a stage zero or stage one fear, but whose potential danger is now nonexistent.
Are there other subtypes?
There are an infinite number of manifestations of anxiety:
- panic or panic attacks
- a phobia
- agoraphobia or agoraphobia
- arachnophobia or fear of spiders
- Fear of commitment or bonding
