Here we are at week six already in my self-experiment series with Lucinda Bassett’s program Attacking Anxiety and Depression.
So far in the past 5 weeks we’ve learned about:
– the symptoms of stress and anxiety,
– that panic attacks might be sending you to the frig,
– that negative thinking is the main downfall of any weight loss program,
– how dropping your unrealistic weight loss expectations will give you better results,
– and surprise surprise, the fact that what you eat and drink can make you feel anxious and depressed.
If you haven’t read these posts yet you can go ahead and do so now but first be sure to read my introduction to this series so that you know what this latest experiment on myself is all about.
Week Five – Controlling Your Anger and Mood Swings
Week five in Lucinda Bassett’s Attacking Anxiety and Depression program is about anger – how it can lead to anxiety and depression and just like negative thinking, how it can be a bad habit. That’s right – your anger can be a bad habit, a negative way of reacting to life events, which causes you more stress than you need!
The thing is that everyone feels angry at some time and it’s just like anything else that you could be “doing too much of” – if you react with anger to issues that don’t deserve it because you are overreacting and blowing things out of proportion, you are creating an awful lot of stress and anxiety for yourself.
Angry emotions contribute to stress and can also bring on feelings of fear because underneath most anger is fear. If you have the bad habit of negative, fearful thinking you probably also feel angry quite a bit. If you also take your anger out on others you are creating even more negative mojo in your life than you need!
Fear + Anger + Guilt = Emotional Eating
My concern with this topic is if you are perpetuating the negative habits of negative, fearful thinking, chronic stress, and anxiety and you are an emotional eater, well you can see where I’m headed with this. If you aren’t handling these negative thoughts and emotions in a constructive manner and are stuffing them down with food you not only aren’t solving your negative emotional and thinking habits, but you’re also heaping more problems on yourself with the emotional eating.
You may even be feeling some guilt over your negative reactions to your daily life and that will compound all of these problems (and lead to more emotional eating!). So while the issue of emotional eating would definitely need to be addressed, by learning new ways of coping with your angry and fearful feelings in a constructive manner you will at the same time be addressing your emotional eating, even if indirectly.
What I Learned
What I learned in week six of the Attacking Anxiety and Depression program is that so many of these negative ways of thinking and feeling are habits. I hadn’t thought of anger and reacting angrily as a habit before but instead categorized it as poor coping skills. I found it very interesting when Lucinda Bassett shared on week six’s tape that she grew up in an angry household and she learned how to react in that way, picking up that bad habit.
I also learned that anger and fear are closely tied together – anger hides fear. So, if you deal with the fear (those anxious, worrisome thoughts) you will dissolve the anger.
An A+ Program for Reducing Stress
Simply put, this is a great program for anyone who is stressed out and feeling anxious and/or depressed. I’m glad that I decided to be a human guinea pig again and do another experiment on myself so that I could share my experiences in this program with you, and because it’s helping me with my stress level!
I definitely recommend it to you but only if you are ready to take action on it. It’s just like anything else out there – if you take action and apply the lessons it will definitely work for you and improve your quality of life but if you buy it and put in on the shelf, it won’t work by osmosis. 😉
Photo by Michael Sarver
