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Writer's picturePhilippa Jolley

Why Can´t I Overcome My Anxiety? ⭐Number 1: "The dirty little secret" about learning...


If you are reading this article, then I'm guessing you are interested in helping yourself or helping your loved one to overcome anxiety.

And...


Being here, now... searching for solutions is a fantastic thing, so I am celebrating the fact that you are dedicating your energy and time to helping yourself or your loved one in this way. Because... Not everybody cares enough to do this for themselves or for others 🥰 And not everybody has what it takes, to be open to growth and to desire change ENOUGH to physically act to find and search for help in this way. So very well done for being here 👏 Because this already makes you very special. ❤ And it means that you are exactly where you are meant to be right now, reading this with me.


So, I don´t know what else you might be doing, to help yourself?


But....I can take an educated guess though... 💻 Perhaps you have been watching videos on Youtube or Tik Tok? 📚 Or maybe, you have been reading self-help books or listening to "gurus" and different podcasts? And perhaps you have even tried out some sort of therapy before?


And this can all be so very helpful. ` But... the thing with therapy is that there are so many different therapy styles and coaching options these days, aren´t there? 💺 Psychotherapy, CBT, ACT, Hypnotherapy, Mindfulness, NLP, Reiki, Acupuncture, Sound Therapy, Life Coaching... the list goes on. But, for any therapy or coaching to work...


You need to have a really great rapport with your therapist or coach, and you need to trust that THEY know what they are doing.


And, the fact is that you also need to be prepared to be very honest with yourself and them.


You need to be ready to keep on going, even if it might get a bit uncomfortable here and there.

You need to be ready to approach it with the attitude of "I am totally ready for change, it has to be now, AND it has to be me, to make that change happen" Or sometimes... without these things, even therapy can fail. So when people come in to see me, they may have already often tried many of these things first. 🙄 And they can´t understand why they might still be struggling, even with everything they have been doing to try to help themselves. And, they can feel like there might be something really "wrong" with them. They often believe that they must be very different from others, just because "stuff" isn´t really working for them. This makes me feel very sad, because when we get talking... it becomes apparent that there are some really valid reasons that the "stuff" they have tried isn´t working for them so far. 🤝 Often, these are things that they may not have realised, and my first task is usually to let them know that they are not broken ❤ They do not need to doubt their ability to "get better" or feel so hopeless or helpless. So...


Just in case, this might apply to you or your loved ones, I will clear some of these things up for you a little more in each of my coming blogs. Because I don´t want you to give up hope or feel like there is something "wrong" or "broken" about you or your family. So... Let´s blow this wide open now, and I invite you to read on if you want to explore something that might have been stopping you or your family from improving.


The "dirty little secret" about learning "stuff". There is something about watching content, reading books and articles and learning things, that is so disturbing that I almost don´t want to share it here with you... 🤫 It is a "dirty little secret" that nobody really talks about much in life. But it is super important, because the truth is, that no matter what we do, we cannot escape the fact that we are just human beings.


Ultimately, we are all limited by what we as humans are truly capable of doing. ⛓ Both physically and mentally. Now... I am all "for" testing and stretching our own limits and believing that we can do way more than we ever "think" we of capable of doing because the fact is that WE CAN all do so much more... But this does have its limits too.... (unfortunately) We are not human calculators or AI robots, which means that our brains and our bodies function in a certain biological way. 🧠 And...so this limit also extends to our memory abilities and the capacity in which our memory can operate. So when I ask you... for example... How much information do you believe that you can remember about yesterday? 🤔 What percentage would you guess you can recall? What if I told you... That, within one hour, scientific studies now show us that most people will have forgotten an average of at least 50 per cent of the information they have just learned. And.. Within 24 hours, they tend to forget an average of 70 per cent of any new information they have learned... 😲 And within one week, we can forget an average of 90 per cent of all of our new learnings. Some people can remember slightly more and some slightly less. But, this is quite shocking, don´t you think?? ❤ Don´t despair too much though... or throw all your self-help books away in anguish just yet... Because there are solutions to this and there are factors that influence our ability to remember, retain and use any of the information that we learn each day. Sleeping well, eating enough and resting enough, as well as lowering our stress levels, all act as an aid to helping us to optimise our memory capacity. And...here are some other factors that help to make those learnings more concrete for us in life: ⭐1) We need to physically use and apply whatever we learn in an "experiential" way.


(Think about learning to drive, riding a bike or swimming, for example.) Experiencing our learnings in a multi-dimensional way commits the information into our unconscious, where it can stay forever and be easily accessed as and whenever needed in the future. Think about it...


You could not "unlearn" how to swim once you have trained your body in this skill. (🤪 Unless you have been hypnotised to have amnesia to forget this or you have experienced some sort of brain damage that affected your motor skills) So... Whatever techniques and theories you are learning, it is imperative that you apply them physically through "experience and practice" in your real life, to make them a part of who you are. This is just one reason why active therapy dialogues and practising "doing" various techniques inside of sessions together (online, face-to-face, in groups or one-to-one) can be much more powerful than relying on self-help as a form of recovery. ⭐2) You can repeat something over and over again until it commits the information you are learning into your unconscious mind. For example they way we tend to learn our times´ tables at school. This means that if you are listening to a podcast or youtube video, it is a great idea to repeat the same one over and over again so that the learning can sink in much more deeply.


Take time to make notes if you can, and refresh your memory by reading back over these several times. ⭐3) You need to feel a strong emotion or a sense of surprise as you learn something or alternatively have strong, visual imagery that goes along with the new idea that you are learning. The stronger the imagery and associated feelings, the more it creates instant learning and storage in the brain. For instance, if you have an atrocious meal in a restaurant. The memory will stay with you long after the event and will influence your future drive to go away from that place in the future.


When we feel strong emotions our brain takes a snapshot of what we are experiencing and glues it onto the emotions. This is then used to influence whether we will go towards or away from a similar experience in the future. ⭐4) You can pop yourself into a "trance" and learn whilst in "trance". This also commits ideas straight into your unconscious mind. (Where it can be safely stored and will be useful whenever you need it again). This can require guidance from a hypnotist, self-hypnosis skills or you can cheat a little and play certain types of music in the background while doing an activity.

So if you have been reading book after book, and watching various videos to try to "get better" but finding yourself feeling frustrated because you cannot remember how to use those new ideas and techniques.


Or you have been feeling that change is happening, but its far too slowly, then do be kinder to yourself.🥰 Because I want you to know there is nothing wrong with you.


This slower progress is normal, and you CAN still overcome your issues and help yourself in this self-driven way, because it will work eventually. But... do remember that with only 10% of the information sinking in each month... It probably will take you a longer time to master the skills that you may need to overcome your problems fully. I hope reading this has shed some new light on this for you... And that you can recognise that you are not "broken" and so can be more gentle with yourself. You can lower your expectations and reduce the pressure you feel about that gap between where you think you "should" be in your healing journey and where you actually are. And... In the next blog, I am going to cover the second obstacle that stops you improving as quickly as you might like... Number two... "The body divorce". So do stay tuned if you are interested and want to know more.

If you are tired of trying to do it alone, here is the link to apply for my coming group program, to go from "worrier to warrior" and to make sure that you are among the first to receive all the details. (BIG PINK BUTTON HERE)

❤ It could be the start of discovering a whole new you 🥰 ⬇⬇⬇:

Or, if you do want to start a journey of helping yourself or your family in one-to-one sessions, please feel free to book a complimentary 15-minute chat with me. ❤ We CAN all change and set ourselves free - this is the beautiful thing about doing inner "work" or learning new ways to support ourselves and our loved ones. There is hope for us all. And... I want to remind you that I am right here to give you further one-to-one attention and help, and we can talk more about what you need. Because...there are honestly no awards for struggling alone by yourself. 🥰 I have already helped myself, my own family and so many others successfully... So if you do want to experience wonderful life changes too, I have many amazing tools and techniques from Clinical hypnotherapy, CBT, NLP & Mindfulness modalities all ready to help you to achieve the great things in life that you really want. But please don´t worry, if you are not ready to get help like this, then this is OK too ❤ I will be sending my emails and posting more blogs regularly, full, as always of more helpful tips and advice. Lots of love and appreciation for you, my lovely I´m right here ready to support you, and I´m listening very carefully to what you need ❤ From Me (Pippa)


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