Have you ever considered how we label ourselves in this society. We are desperate to fit ourselves into categories of social class or musical taste. Things are no different in the field of mental health and psychological wellbeing. When we take a label like “agoraphobia” we tend to live up to it, taking on all the stress the label implies and accepting its limitations on our life almost unquestioningly. The end result is that we feel worse, that we have this talisman permanently hanging round our necks as if we had HIV or terminal cancer (now there’s a label that is only leading the patient in one direction!)
What we need to do is change our internal language, the constant dialogue we have with our self, from “having” to “feeling”. Instead of “I have anxiety” we should say “I am feeling anxious” (if it’s happening now) or “I felt anxious” (if it happened in the past). This change is important because we move away from labels and permanent states towards emotions which pass, as emotions always do. For more on this refer to the Labels section of the free anti-anxiety programme at https://www.anxiety2calm.com.
