I know exactly what you mean. When I talked about these issues with my therapist she would always point out that I was not sick and that I was a healthy person who has not been sick in many years. For me, it was mostly if I felt sick to my stomach because I have a phobia about vomiting (emetophobia). I can feel everything moving through my stomach and very often those sensations would send me into a panic attack. What I do is talk to myself when it happens. I keep saying repeatedly I am not sick. I am a healthy person. Even if I do get sick it will not hurt me. Vomiting can not hurt me and it can not kill me.

At first this self talk did not seem to help at all. The anxiety from this fear would last for weeks. In the past, before the self talk this fear would last months. Now, the self talk is working and the anxiety will last a few hours. I can see progress but it has taken me a year to get to this point. It's slow but I am seeing results. My therapist kept telling me that I would see the anxiety reduce and, slowly, I did. And if I missed it, she was quick to point out how much it had reduced. Eventually the self talk will work immediately. I hope it doesn't take another year for it to work but if it does, so be it. As long as it works - that's all I care about.

If you have self talk that you do to help reduce the anxiety please keep doing it because it will work eventually. Maybe not at the speed you would like (it never does) but it will work.

Take care

I have problems with emotional anxiety. Every little thing seems to trigger a negative thought. Every season brings back memories of something bad that happened. Could you explain how I could do the self talk?? Maybe I can talk myself out of this??

Mattie, it is a matter of changing your negative self talk to positive self talk. So if the normal script that plays in your head is "OMG! Here it comes again! I know this one is going to be a bad one!" You would change that to "Everything is OK. This anxiety has been here before and has not hurt me. I am safe." This is just a general example. You would change it based on what your negative self talk is. Here are some more examples:

*"I can't do this any more" becomes "I CAN do this because I KNOW I have done it before"

*"Everyone hates me" becomes "Most people do like me"

*"My past has been horrible. I will never heal from it" becomes "I may have had a horrible past but I survived and I am able to heal from it"

*"I ALWAYS have a difficult time with..." becomes "Very often I have an easy time with ..."

It's a matter of changing the scripts. Many of us have years and years of playing the negative scripts in our heads so it takes time to change them. For me, it took years for many of the scripts to change. And even though most are changed I do still fall back into the old way of thinking at times. That's when I catch myself and change the script again.

Be patient with yourself and don't give up on trying to change the scripts because they will change eventually.

Thank you Lucky, I admit I do do A LOT of negative self talk and I don't know the reason for it. I grew up in a great family and I have a great family. Sometimes I take the poor me thing out and dwell on that and I want to QUIT!!! doing that. Thank you for your encouragement.

Mattie, I never realized how much negative thinking there was in my family until I became a positive thinker. My mother is VERY negative about everything and my brother and I followed her lead and became negative thinkers. I worked very hard in my 20's to change my thinking to be more positive and I did succeed. Now I have a difficult time being around my family because of their negative views on EVERYTHING.

You will likely be successful though because you recognize it and want to change it. You can do it!