MindHealth by Sara Stevens

Most us have a few superstitions, but it doesn’t have a negative impact on our lives, but if we have let these habits get out of control, it can affect our anxiety levels and also stop us from being our true selves. The key to life is balance, not too much or too little; it can be a bit of a tightrope at times, but once we find ourselves and are true to ourselves, it’s easy. Superstitious behaviou...

Control is a confusing issue and for many of us we have got it in the wrong place in our head; if this is the case we can be causing ourselves lots of issues.  Lots of people say to me that they don’t like being out of control - this can be situational, like being on a plane or in a meeting, it can be future based, for example, "Will I get the job?" or "Will I have enough money?&quo...

Do you find yourself unable to sleep, as you are worrying about what’s been happening that day, or what’s coming tomorrow? Do you worry about the smallest things? Do you blow things out of proportion? Do you feel unable to concentrate and focus on things because you're anxious? Do you feel on edge if things don’t go as planned, teary and emotional from anxiety? Or do friends and family comment...

This is the next part. You may understand now that the learnt habits of worrying is something we are in control of and not a big scary issue out of our control.  After decades of helping people to become anxiety free, one of the key factors is knowing that we can change and we don’t need to live this way forever. With your new-found knowledge, commitment to change and of course, like anything in l...

If a stray cat came to your house and you fed it, it would come back, and the more you feed it, the more it comes back. This is just like the habit of worrying, the more you worry about something, the more the worries grow and the more they will come back. If you keep feeding the cat, it will grow bigger and scarier, taking over your garden; this is the same thing that can happen with your worries...

This is exactly how a habit grows. It starts with just a small thing, like feeding the cat.

This is another one in the series about anxiety and how we can be doing things unknowingly that could be part of your anxiety issues.  Anxiety has a massive pull on our inner mind and can easily distort our perception of things. We can then start to find that we delude ourselves a little by maybe saying, "We’re not that bothered about going out or going on that trip" and we may say to ou...

We’ve all been around people that can elevate us, and then we can also have people that hinder our ability to be the best version of ourselves, just by the toxicity of the connections we have with them. We can often be afraid to speak up and confront those who produce toxic vibes, and this can then keep us in toxic relationships, friendships, or even jobs, due to this toxicity and how we can get t...

Often, we can get focused on everything else, but at times it is important to bring the focus back onto you. We have to always be real with ourselves and not let denial or any level of non-acknowledgement of what we are doing or not doing get in our way. We need to see things clearly and if we’re not sure, we can just stop and think of someone who isn’t suffering from our issues, and if they are n...

Life is like a game of tug of war, in most, if not all our relationships and interactions, we all have our own agenda and hopefully, we all strive to be fair too. Confidence is a learned and developed habit, with this being the case it is super important that we create the right lines in every area of our lives, and then we can just “hold the flag” over everyone we interact with.  But there is a f...

Last week we looked at when anxiety is at its worst, how it can immobilise us, and how the freeze response takes over how we feel and often negatively impacts our nervous system as well. We used the analogy of the rabbit, which is one of the best creatures we know to use the freeze response to stay alive, and how we can’t just shake the rabbit awake. At this point, their nervous system is shut dow...

Anxiety is bad enough at any age in our lives, but when we should be living our lives to the full without the full pressures of adult life, it is, I feel, an even harder situation to go through. This week I had a young woman come in with her boyfriend, this young woman is an inspiration to us all. She has been battling with her childhood issues, and severe, demobilising, anxiety, for many years no...

In the last blog, we were looking at the British stiff upper lip, and how we, as British people, have grown up with this. Now we need to explore this line of truth we have with ourselves, and how if we don't have this, it can cause lots of anxiety within us. A client came into my office today and we were talking about this, and I was explaining how this can trigger an anxious outburst from our unc...

The difference between a lie and the truth can be a very fine line. It is even right or wrong, black or white, a truth or a lie. It's great to be open and authentic but we all know in certain situations we can't always be this way. This is because we need to be diplomatic and considerate of others' feelings. We also have to hold back from the full truth and tell those white lies. Life...

I think it can be very hard to be our true unique selves, as historically this has not often been possible, and we’re maybe holding onto those old patterns and habits. For many of us, our parents couldn't be who they wanted to be, and beyond that, it got more and more difficult to be ourselves. We still had slavery in 1865 in the UK, plus in many parts of our western world too, and before 1967 it...

Being safe and secure is the key to our deep, inner, confidence, which I believe is essential in helping you feel and live with confidence in all levels of your life. Our minds are amazing, and they are always trying to help us find ways to automate what we are doing, helping us to free up more mental inner space, which is fantastic for things like walking and driving a car, but if our mind starts...

From the stone age to the 1950’s, all over the world we lived in fear of a neighbour or another country invading our homes, villages, or territory. Slaughtering our friends, family, and community, to take over and occupy our land and resources, or if they didn’t slaughter us, they brought health epidemics which did it for them. We are also over the era of being helpless beings in our powerful, wor...

I was reflecting on life the other day while looking through some of my old photographs and some of the things I used to do when I was younger. I must say at this point that I am making myself feel very old now!! But I think for many of us we can see how much our world is changing. Some things we don't even realise weren't always the way it is now. But for parts of our mind, we struggle with chang...

Life, I think, can have many ups and downs for everyone. This can be hard at times to cope with. We must try and deal with things in the best possible way that we can, by not feeding these low feelings. This is not to say that we should avoid them either but that we should try not to catastrophise what is happening at the moment and do our best to deal with things head-on. This might sound sensibl...

We have been looking at ways to help us reduce our fear levels even when life can be a challenge to us. This is a key thing, not only in helping our fear, but also in keeping our levels of anxiety in a stable and low place.  If we spend lots of time with those worries and what-if's, we will be creating lots of inner fear and anxiety, if it is left unchecked it can run riot within us.  A good plan...

We have been looking at the fear response, which we are quite aware is something that can be heavily based in our unconscious and primeval minds. This is because it is part of the fight, flight, and freeze response, which is very important for us to have, as it helps us deal with real-life dangers. This helps us to stay safe, by our inner minds alerting us to any dangers in that milli second when...

According to psychology research, fear is a primal emotion that involves a universal biochemical response and a high individual emotional response. Fear involves a wide range of both physical and emotional symptoms and our fear response is different to everyone else's.

I think we can enjoy life more if we do the things we need to as quickly as we can. If we have lots to do then it not only feels like a weight on us but it can negatively impact our mental health and anxiety levels. You might be thinking why is this the case? It is because our minds can get overwhelmed when too many things need to be done. Even if they are small things, they can still trigger anxi...

Setting goals is a great way to help us move our lives forward, also it is great for us to be the best version of ourselves as well. I think life can really fly by, days become weeks and weeks become months and years. This is fine as long as we don't end up with regrets and we find we are looking back on our lives wishing we could have done more. We do live in a fast-paced life, and this can mean...

Over thirty years ago I spent nearly two years backpacking around the world, this time in my life was the freest I have ever been. This I think was because of many factors, and it is very hard to create the same freedom I felt in the commercialised world that the UK is. Also, I think that having less belongings, in fact hardly anything, just a backpack, was liberating. With having no fixed abode,...