One night shortly after getting married, my wife and I watched a movie together before bed. The movie was a romantic comedy written to make people laugh. But I had the opposite response. While watching the movie, I felt sick to my stomach. My heart beat harder. I felt a sense of impending doom.
About halfway through the movie, I figured out why I was having these anxiety symptoms instead of enjoying the movie like my wife. I had seen this same movie in the theaters two years earlier, on a day when my girlfriend (who is now my wife) had suddenly and unexpectedly broken up with me, leaving me in a highly anxious state. Now two years later, simply watching the same sequence of scenes from this movie triggered all of the negative feelings I experienced on the day of the break up.
Once I better understood my feelings during the movie, my anxiety lessened. For the second half of the movie, I concentrated on the peaceful feeling of relaxing next to my committed and loving wife. I have since watched the movie again without feeling the anxiety of a broken relationship. Instead, I was able to experience peace of mind and even laugh a little.
This story illustrates the power of pictures (in the life of a former agoraphobic). From only one viewing, I had learned to associate anxiety with the pictures of a movie. Maybe you have had a similar experience when a movie, a song, or other stimulus triggers strong feelings or emotions you felt in the past.
There are three powerful principles to be learned from my story. These lessons will help you tremendously in your recovery from panic attacks and agoraphobia:
1. Strong emotional memories, positive or negative, are often recorded as pictures in the right brain.
2. Similar emotions are triggered each time we see the pictures we associate with them. This is why you are likely to have another panic attack when you return to a place where you had one before.
3. You can disarm emotional triggers, including panic attacks, by changing the pictures in your mind. Just as you can learn to associate panic with a certain picture or setting – you can learn to associate a state of relaxed energy with the same setting by using the power of visualization.
By changing the pictures in your mind, you can change your actual life.
Now I would like to invite you to watch my free video course, 7 Keys to Freedom, to learn the most effective self-help techniques to free yourself from agoraphobia.
For free instant access to the videos, visit:
http://www.agoraphobiavideos.com
From Stephen Price
Panic and Phobia Coach
Agoraphobia Expert (through personal experience)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_Allen_Price