Dear all of you . . . (guaranteed to help)!

[Dennis]

Dear all of you, who like myself, have suffered from the horrifying thoughts and feelings developed while on and withdrawing from paxil...my mother taught me how to keep a grip on my thoughts while at the same time making progress towards healing and comfort (which helped prevent and calm down panic attacks): each and every time you have an uncomfortable thought or worry or feeling, remember that a worry is a want turned inside out!...replace each scary thought with a pleasant one...Eg: "I don't want to die or go crazy", Think or say to yourself, " I am completely healthy and comfortable." I am amazed at how fast and effective something so simple is, but have found that it is neccessary to use this technique in order to defend myself from the scary thoughts and feelings that bombard me. The more good things you say to yourself,the better (even if you don't believe it) you will come to feel it work.

Jackie

Very wise words Jackie! The mind is a powerful tool and can be "trained". Thank you for sharing!! Colleen

[Ariella]

Yup! Thought monitoring. EXTREMELY effective. It feed me from anxiety in tremendous ways.

I just want people to know that thought replacement, when put in contrast with a lifetime of not doing it, takes a while! Most of our negative ruminations are as old as our childhoods where they first began. So you can expect to take several years to really do the bulk of the work. I've been taking full acountability for my thoughts and replacing them with new ones based on the moment and not past experiences for more than 4 years and it has taken that long to even begin to get a grip on thoughts surrounding faith in self, esteem, ability to ignore the judgments of others and so on.

It's extremely rewarding work, and I want everyone to know it's worth dedicating your every spare attention to it. A couple of monks I know describe this process using these clever words:

Change your mind, and change your life

There was a book written on this whole process several decades ago called As a man/woman thinketh. If you can find a copy of these rare books, they're amazing!

The mind is a database. It can only display records that it has received and therefore, to replace an ocean of negativity/fear, you have to inundate with NEW ideas/thoughts/perceptions. These are all yours to control/hang on to/let go of. So drown yourself in opportunities for new thoughts and they will BECOME the new you! Who you are is NOT your brian, but the energy based awareness that is aware it has a brain that is its interface to relativistic physical reality.

[MizzT]

WONDERFUL!!!
To take it a step further using an EFT (emotional freedom technique)
follow these steps:
find your karate chop point on either hand between the base of the pinkie finger and the wrist....the fleshy part of the side of the hand where if you karate chopped a block of wood...you would hit your hand.
Tap there with 2 fingers of the opposite hand.....

So if you have the bad thought "i want to die"
Tap and say 3 times while tapping "Even tho i have this bad thought, i deeply accept myself"
and also the Positive affirmation of "I feel confortable and calm and wonderful"

the karate chop point is on the HEART meridian and saying this to your heart while tapping reinforces the affirmation even more!!

YEAH! this one is fun!
( i needed that today)

[CloneX]

For longterm pessimistic anxiety-driven folks like us, thinking positive can be pretty difficult.

It' soo easy for me to make up the worst ideas about how something will be or something will happen. But when I try to think positive about it my mind goes blank...

So that's what you gotta do:
- Write down your bad thought
- Replace it with a positive thought and write it down.

You have to write down the positive thought because your mind isn't good at thinking positive. Not yet .

[Scott]

i actually wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it when i have a negative thought.. my wrist is raw

occupation- thought policeman