Mental Imagery Can Also Be a Great Anxiety Cure And Help Treat Insomnia

A knowledge of mental imagery and the way it works also enablesus to use it as an Anxiety Cure and deal with worry.

The chronic worrier indulges in painful, unpleasant mental images.

He is forever holding before his mind the pictures of what he doesn’t want to happen.

The creative thinker goes through the same motions as the worrier, but he holds before his mind pictures of things that he wants to accomplish, what he doeswant to happen.

Mathew Chappell, Ph.D., says that the practice of substituting pleasant mental pictures for unpleasant ones is the best AnxietyCure that psychology has yet discovered for combating worry.

Dr Chappell points out that this technique of substituting pleasant images for unpleasant ones does far more than furnish an escape for the mind.

It also reduces excess emotion, as well as excess effort, both of which are component parts of worry.

He says that if you attempt to use willpower against your worriesyou only worry more, for your additional effort increases the emotional tone.

The Power Of Mental Images

Instead, you should make no effort whatsoever to fight worry.

Relax from trying. For a period of several weeks, make it a practice to draw yourself up short whenever you start to worry,and realize that you are picturing unpleasant mental images.

When you do realize this, then deliberately begin to picturepleasant mental images. Dr Chappell recommends that you do not wait until you are worrying to decide upon a pleasant mental picture as an Anxiety cure.

Decide on one in advance so that you will have it ready for use in emergencies.

Remember some pleasant incident in your childhood that you can call up when needed – a picnic, the day you won the race at school,your first dance, a fishing trip – anything at all that has pleasant associations.

After you practice this for several weeks you break the worry habit.

Don’t resist your unpleasant mental images with will power.

Don’t bother with them at all. Just leave them alone and focus your attention deliberately upon some pleasant memory.

Another famous psychologist, David Seabury, recommends the same technique as one of the best ways to overcome neurotic anxiety.

Every time you are in a situation that tempts you to worry, hesays, substitute positive, wholesome images instead, and in timethe very situation that acted as a trigger on your anxiety willbecome a conditioned stimulus for calm, collected, creativethought.

The great thing about this Anxiety Cure is that you can use it whenever you like, wherever you are.

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