The Fear and Anxiety Solution (20 page)

4. Get an agreement from both parts to reconnect and collaborate with each other.
Turn your attention back to the anxious part and ask it, “Realizing that you two have the same highest purpose, would you be willing to share your gifts and strengths and to work with the other side?”

When you’ve received its agreement, focus on the positive side and ask if it’s willing to collaborate with the formerly anxious side to support your entire being and help you achieve your higher purpose more easily and effectively. Again, wait for its answer before proceeding.

Usually, the answers from both parts will be an instant yes. If not, ask for each part’s objections to working with the opposite side and continue to remind each part of the higher purpose it shares with the other side. Negotiate in a kind but firm manner, making it clear that it’s in the highest and best interest of the wholeness of your being for both parts to connect, communicate, and collaborate with each other.

5. Reconnect.
Now something almost magical will happen. Once you’ve received a yes from both sides, you’ll sense a magnetic energy developing between your hands. As you visualize, with your eyes still closed, the two parts walking toward each other, your hands will move on their own accord, inch by inch, until your palms are touching, which is a sign that the subconscious mind has been reconnecting these two parts. It’s an amazing feeling to realize that your subconscious mind is bringing your hands together without your conscious control.

When your hands are touching, notice what the parts are doing now that they are together. Are they holding hands? Are they giving each other a hug?
Are they merging with each other to form a “super part” with the gifts and qualities of both sides unified? Let your imagination guide you.

Take your time with this reconnection process. It may take from one to ten minutes. The subconscious strives naturally for wholeness. The movement of your hands symbolizes that your subconscious mind has overcome old blocks and boundaries that had separated the two conflicting parts and is now mending the gap between them. The ongoing struggle and separation of the “positive” and “negative” parts required and ultimately drained tremendous amounts of energy from the subconscious mind. Once you’ve resolved the conflict, the energy that was necessary to keep the parts separate switches its orientation to bring them back together. It’s like switching the poles of two magnets from repelling to attracting each other. This is why you may feel not only quite relieved but also a bit exhausted after this reintegration process, because you realize how much you were depleted by living in a state of subconscious conflict.

6. Reintegrate.
Focus on your heart, and visualize it as a pool of brilliant light, the seat of your wholeness and your true essence. Start gently lifting your hands toward that light and visualize these two parts entering into your heart, fully integrating inside your wholeness, coming home again.

During this reintegration, you may feel a tremendous amount of energy, warmth, or a tingling that starts from your heart and radiates out into your entire body. Spend several minutes simply allowing this healing energy to flow through all levels of your being. Enjoy the sense of peace and wholeness that is gently wrapping itself around you, leaving you with a greater understanding of your resources and true potential.

After this reintegration process, it’s a good idea simply to rest and let the process complete itself without consciously trying to influence it.

After completing the Parts Reintegration Process, you will feel immediately more relaxed, harmonious, and whole. However, this new, integrated state of being will require further attention to become completely solidified. Although the subconscious is a fast learner, it also requires repetition and consistency to achieve mastery.

To further consolidate the reintegration process, think about the following questions:

     
• What were the two parts of this inner conflict?

     • What did they discover their common highest purpose to be?

     • What are the special gifts and strengths of each part?

     • What does each part need, and how can the two parts support each other in the future?

     • How will you know that the conflict is resolved? How will you think, feel, and act differently?

     • Who are you now that you’ve reintegrated two very important parts of your subconscious?

Revisit these questions and your answers as often as you can to remind yourself of the fundamental insights you gained during this process. I also recommend using a journal to record the ensuing emotional and behavioral changes and the potential challenges you notice.

As a direct result of the Parts Reintegration Process, most clients notice a significant difference and are quite impressed with their ability to deal with previously anxiety-triggering situations with much greater calmness and confidence. Based on my experience, it is possible that sometime after you’ve gone through this process, old thoughts of worry, anxiety, or frustration with yourself may return to the forefront of your awareness. Why? You can look at these thoughts as echoes from the past or old grooves that your mind has slipped back into. However, there is another explanation, as we’ll see from the next example.

Andrew was hit especially hard by a resurgence of anxiety after the reintegration process. Initially he had, for the first time in his life, felt a great sense of self-worth and security. But then, a few weeks later, the familiar dark cloud of fear and sadness seemed to completely envelop him again. What had happened? Did his subconscious change its mind again? After a few days of dragging himself through his life, he suddenly remembered that I’d told him about the importance of staying in touch with his younger, sensitive, subconscious part. A light bulb went on. He took a deep breath and started visualizing Little Andrew inside, gently asking him how he was doing.

“This part of me was not only anxious,” Andrew recalled, “he was really distraught. It was as if Little Andrew had just started to gain some trust in the whole me, and I completely forgot about him again. No wonder I felt so bad.” What astounded Andrew the most was that within just a few minutes of
communicating with his younger self, all the worry and anxiety lifted, and he felt empowered again.

To stay in touch with your younger, inner protector, you could write a heartfelt letter reinforcing your commitment to support and care for that more vulnerable side of you. Another effective way of staying connected to that part is the negative-positive self-talk exercise you already know from
chapter 6
. Because you met and worked with this part of you during the Parts Reintegration Process, it may now be even easier to address its anxious and insecure messages with kindness, compassion, and reassurance. Paying a little bit of attention every day to these formerly conflicting parts is a very small price, considering the rewards.

Now that you have established greater congruency and wholeness, you are ready to address and resolve the second subconscious root cause of fear and anxiety: the emotional baggage of the past.

I
KNOW IT DOESN’T
make sense, but whenever I talk to my employees, I get really tense and stressed,” said my client John with a sigh. “Recently it’s getting worse—I start feeling anxious even when I’m talking to my friends. There’s absolutely no reason that I should feel this way.”

Mandy shared, “I’m fifty-three years old, and I’m still afraid of my father, who’s almost ninety and bound to a wheelchair. He only has to say something negative about my weight or my clothes and I become paralyzed with anxiety and shame. I want to tell him to stop, but I can’t get a word out. It feels as if I’m twelve years old again—going on five.”

Another client, Alice, said she felt anxious as soon as she left her house for more than an hour. No matter where she was or what she was doing—shopping at the mall, attending a party, or visiting her adult children—and no matter how much fun she seemed to be having, as soon as an hour had passed, the anxiety started to creep up on her. Her body felt increasingly heavy, her movements sluggish, and her mind foggy. The only thought that continuously flashed through this fog was, “You have to go home
now!
This place is no longer safe.” Most of the time, Alice gave in to the panic and bolted as fast as possible to the safety of her home. Over time, these symptoms worsened, and it became difficult for her to leave her house at all. “Eventually my world shrank to the size of my living room,” she admitted.

You likely have made the same scary observation John, Mandy, and Alice have: the longer you struggle with fear and anxiety, the worse it becomes. You’re triggered more easily, the emotions appear more intense, and they show up
more often—at inopportune moments in inappropriate ways. You jump when a fork drops, freeze when asked a question, or yell at someone for just saying your name—all of which causes you to feel overwhelmed and out of control.

Why do the intensity and frequency of our anxiety and our unreasonable reactions to it increase over time? Why can’t we just get over it or at least become more used to being a bit on the jittery side?

By now I’m probably preaching to the choir, but as you recall, to heal fear and anxiety we must identify and attend to its root causes. Remember the three subconscious root causes of fear and anxiety introduced at the beginning of the book: inner conflicts, emotional baggage, and unsupportive core beliefs. In
chapter 7
, I showed you how to resolve inner conflicts. Now in this chapter, you will learn how to persuade your subconscious mind to lighten its—and your—load by letting go of the emotional baggage of the past.

Emotional baggage is the subconscious accumulation of unresolved anxieties. As you try to ignore and suppress your fears and insecurities in an attempt to fit in and appear confident, capable, or at least “normal,” your subconscious storage space is filling to capacity with these unaddressed emotions. As a result, a harmless situation can turn into the proverbial drop that causes the water to spill over the edge of the cup or the last bit of steam that causes the pressure cooker to explode. The reaction to such a situation presents as panic attacks, unexpected free-floating anxiety, or a constant undercurrent of worry and doubt. As you become increasingly susceptible to these feelings you’ve tried to avoid, the heavy burden of unresolved fear and anxiety drains your energy, clogs your mind, and can even lead to severe physical problems.

“But wait a second,” you may be thinking. “Aren’t the two highest intentions of the subconscious mind to preserve our body and increase our happiness? If so, why does our subconscious hold on to fear and anxiety if doing so causes so many problems? Is it possible that our subconscious isn’t that smart, after all?”

There are three good reasons our subconscious mind hangs on to emotions from past events. I’ve already touched on the first reason in
chapter 4
: we all are provided with an innate ability to free ourselves immediately from “negative” feelings. As infants and toddlers, we don’t hesitate to strain our little vocal cords and vehemently express our discontent. As we grow up and learn that
we’re more accepted and appreciated when we control, suppress, or at least hide our feelings, we gradually “unlearn” the natural instinct to release emotional pressure. By the time we enter adulthood, most of us have lost sight of how to handle these feelings, other than shoving unpleasant emotions under the subconscious rug. Because our subconscious supports us like a faithful servant, it patiently continues to execute our conscious decision to suppress and store emotions until we instruct it differently—or until we have stuffed it to capacity and the subconscious forces us to address those emotions.

Another reason the subconscious mind holds on to fear and anxiety, along with other uncomfortable emotions, is to protect us. It securely stows away and safeguards memories that appear emotionally overwhelming or damaging, such as recollections of being molested during childhood, serious accidents, or other significant traumas. These traumatic memories can be reawakened when we’re confronted with certain situations that are somehow similar or connected to the frightening past. Or we might spontaneously remember suppressed memories during the most stable and comfortable times in our lives, as if our subconscious mind had been waiting until the circumstances were just right to address and heal these past wounds. Only when the subconscious is convinced that we’re ready and it’s safe for us to remember the trauma does it open the lock to the information and present it to our conscious. We may then remember these events in quick flashes of memory, in our dreams, or as strong emotional surges that arise either spontaneously, without any external trigger, or in situations we subconsciously associate with the trauma.

You may wonder why, if the subconscious mind can suppress traumatic memories, it doesn’t simply erase and eliminate potentially harmful and debilitating emotions. Good question. The answer is connected to the third and maybe most important reason: the subconscious mind is holding on to “negative” emotions.

It’s a basic evolutionary principle: only when we continue to learn and grow can we survive and thrive. We learn best from the events that have the most meaning for us, those that we feel most strongly about. An interesting phenomenon we’ve all observed is that the lessons we learn from a negative event can be more profound than those learned from a pleasant or neutral encounter. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. When it comes to sheer survival,
experiences that cause us to feel anxious or hurt are simply more important for our subconscious to store, process, and learn from.