#456 The Alternative To Anxiety and Worry

Anxiety to Confidence - The Personal Development Unplugged Podcast

The Alternative To Anxiety and Worry

An empowering deep dive into how you can take control of anxiety and worry — and replace them with clarity, calm, and confidence.

An empowering deep dive into how you can take control of anxiety and worry — and replace them with clarity, calm, and confidence.

In this episode, Paul Clough (yes, me!) shares personal experiences and tried-and-tested NLP and hypnosis-based techniques to help you break the cycle of anxious thoughts, worry loops, and emotional overwhelm. Discover how to:

• Dissociate from unhelpful feelings, thoughts, and mental movies

• Rewire your internal voice to one of calm, strength, and clarity

• Use simple yet powerful visualisation and anchoring techniques

• Access the emotional states that truly support you

• Stop rehearsing failure and instead direct your own movie of success

• Prepare for real-life situations with ease and confidence

You’ll learn how your unconscious mind can work with you rather than against you, so you’re no longer hijacked by imaginary fears or future catastrophes that never even happen.

💡 This isn’t theory — it’s a hands-on process you can do as you listen.

So grab a notebook or just settle in with your headphones and let’s stop anxiety in its tracks. Because there is an alternative… and it starts right here.

🎧 Listen now — and please share this episode with someone who needs it.

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/456-the-alternative-to-anxiety-and-worry

👉 Also available as a full video on https://youtu.be/nrHeU1B_Ug8

Shine Brightly 🌟

Paul

Hey there! I’d love to hear from you—questions, feedback, requests—all welcome. Drop me a line or leave a comment. If you've enjoyed this episode or any other, please share and subscribe! You can reach me at [email protected].

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And the transcript WARNING if you're a lover of the written word this may make you frustrated, or angry - you have been warned - is it an 'ism

#456 The Alternative To Anxiety and Worry

An alternative to anxiety and worry. What a great title, isn't it? Great title.

Well, it is Cloughie. I can back it up, I assure you. But first of all, let's just think for a minute.

And this will probably be a little bit of me. And let's see how it matches with your experience. How do we experience anxiety, worry? Well, for me, when something happens like that, I get a weird feeling in my tummy.

It's really quite low in my tummy. And it's not really the most pleasant of feelings. But, hey, that's what it is.

I might get butterflies. And it's more than butterflies. It's more intense, because it's like having ten times more butterflies than butterflies.

So, that's the feeling I get. You know, I could get sometimes, when it's not good, I've had like a dread. Some might say deep dread, but I don't know quite how deep a deep dread goes.

But it was something I dreaded. You know, because it's worry. Something, I can remember a particular thing, it really did worry.

And I couldn't understand why, but that's what was happening. And when I thought about it, that was my heart. You know, it wasn't going into palpitations, but it was quickening.

And it made everything so intense. And do you know what the weird thing is? The bloody thing wasn't even happening in real life. The thing I'm thinking about now, I was in another bloody country.

To the thing I was worried about. Yet, the feelings were, they were shit. And they were continuous.

That wasn't good. And why? Why did it feel that way? Because I was fully associated into that issue. It wasn't happening.

It wasn't going to happen, even if it was going to happen. It was going to happen for a few weeks, because I was out of the country for a few weeks. But I was still fully associated into that issue.

And that's a little bit of the problem. But we'll go into that deeper. So, let's think.

What else? What else do we get? Because we've got the feelings. What else do we get? For me, and see if this resonates with you. Because it might resonate, because it's a sound.

A bloody never-ending conversation. It was if. Everything just got round and round and round.

Never bloody stopped. And the conversations got worse. And it didn't help the feelings, by the way.

But just when I concentrated, and I'm trying to concentrate now on how those words went around. They were getting, I wouldn't call it sinister. But there was things I would never ever do or never ever say.

But in my head, that's what I was doing. And the thing about it is, that's where they are. You weren't having a conversation, or I'm not.

I wasn't having a conversation with anybody. No one there. It was just me.

It's in my head. And the thing about being in your head, do you know what? That's it. It's just you in your head.

Guess what? You are producing it. Because it's just internal. And again, what's happening? Because that wasn't happening.

But it sounds like it's happening because you are fully associated into that dialogue. Fully associated into the feeling. Can you get where I'm going here? Fully associated.

What else? What else can happen? And again, this is my experience. Maybe you see it all happening. Like a loop.

And what tends to happen is, you get the video. The movie in your mind. And it sets off and triggers off.

Obviously, the sounds. But then, the feelings. Because you're in the video.

You're in the movie. You're making up a bloody memory, which hasn't even started. And it just gets worse.

And the more it goes... I found... Well, I did stop it. I did stop it because I had the ways of stopping it. And then I'm going to go through them.

And the thing is, without that, it would have got worse and worse and worse. All in my head. All in my head.

And I was choosing to do it. And that's the thing that's hard to accept. Choosing to do it.

Because people say, well, I didn't choose to do it. It just happens. No.

Could you choose to do something different? Well, you could if you did. But let's think about this. You see, I tend to find that you get one of these things and it triggers the feeling.

Maybe trigger off the movie. Or the movie then triggers off the voice. Or the voice triggers off the feeling in the movie.

They're just all going on at the same time. So we tend to get all three at once. So, what is the alternative? What is the alternative to this? And you're not going to believe it, but it's pretty, pretty simple.

Pretty simple. Here's what we're going to do. We need to dissociate.

What does that mean? It means get a distance. Get a distance from things. I'll give you a little example.

And the little example is this. Imagine that you are, imagine you're on a roller coaster. And you're on the roller coaster now.

And what happens is you're going up that slope and you know you're in there. And as you look over the hill, as you go down, whoa! You feel it all again, don't you? But imagine it, the same scene. And you're watching yourself.

Over there, you're going up, up, up. And you're watching yourself. Yeah, you watch yourself being frightened.

But as you watch yourself, I'm not frightened watching myself. Because I can see it, but I'm dissociated. And when I'm dissociated, I don't get the feelings.

And if I do, I can do something about that too. It's called double dissociation. We might even do that.

We'll go through it anyway. But we're going to do this. Because when you dissociate from those type of emotional events that are in your head, then we can start to work with them.

And change them. That's it. Because they're not happening, therefore you're in control.

And all we need is a little bit of distance. So, are you ready to play? Will you play with me? Because if you play with me, we can do something. I've got to do that.

There we go. So, what are we going to do? I'm going to do these one at a time. One at a time, and then we'll just go on.

Because then we're going to put them all together. So, let's do them individually. Let's take that feeling.

Now, think of that feeling. You see, what we do is we always set an intention. Always set an intention by acknowledging the feeling.

It's here. We're not accepting it. I keep talking about this over and over again.

We're not accepting it as being okay. We're just acknowledging. Yeah, I've got this feeling.

Because it's true. It's happening in my body. I'm choosing to let it happen.

And my intention is to find a better way. Because we know the positive intention of having this worry, having this anxiety, is to prepare us for a particular event. That's all it is.

But it's overwhelming. Because when I get worried and anxiety, I cannot prepare. And because I'm not preparing, because I can't prepare, because I'm getting overwhelmed, that's why it does it even more intensely.

Because it says, you're not preparing. Look, look how bad it could be. And I'm still not.

I'm overwhelmed. Look, oh no, no, you've got to do it even worse. Make it even worse.

To make you get off your ass, get on and do something. But let's just rewind that for a minute. I acknowledge the feeling.

My intention is, I just say to myself, do you know what? I just want to understand and find a better way. I understand the intention to protect me, to get me to do stuff. But it's not working.

I wonder if there's a better way. And with that, I put my hand on that feeling, where it is in my body, roughly. Put my mind into it.

And we've talked about this before in noticing various things about it. Maybe the colour, the weight, the shape. It was all in the last longer podcast.

But as you put your hand on it, physically, draw it out. Imagine you get hold of it in your hand and pull it out. And as it's out there in your hand, just pull it outside.

Even just doing that to dissociate yourself from it. The feeling will subside. Because it's over here.

You've got it in your hand. Now, you could throw it away. But if you did, it would probably come back.

Because you haven't done anything with it. But when we pull it outside, we can go, okay, I could push it further away to give me a bit more space. I'm now more dissociated.

But with this space, what I'm going to do with this space, well, I'm going to think, what would be a better emotion to have? Now, some may say, well, I want total confidence. Well, no, that's a bloody great big jump from feeling shit scared to I want super confidence. It's too big a jump.

You can't do that. Well, maybe you could. That's too general.

But generally, it's too big a jump. So you think of, well, if I could just make it a little bit better, I would make it a neutral feeling. Just neutral.

So it's not positive. It's not negative. It's neutral.

So what would a neutral feeling? And just think back to a time in your life when you just had a neutral feeling. Oh, I can think about it now. What does neutral feel like? Well, it feels just like this.

And feel it. Because when you feel it, you've got it. You've chosen to feel this.

And then you feel, well, now I'm neutral. I can move it a little bit more. Because I think neutral is okay.

But maybe I just want a calm experience. A calm feeling. So I can deal.

So then when I'm calm, I can see options. When I'm calm, I can see what I need to do. When I'm calm, I can prepare.

Oh, isn't that what my unconscious mind was trying to make me do? Prepare? Yeah. So imagine now, from neutral, holding it in your hand. Neutral.

Now change it to think of a time when you've been calm. And this is where we really think about it. Think of a time when you've been calm.

Or you fill in the blank what you believe would be the most appropriate motion to have for your issue, your event you're looking at. And if it's calm, I'd go, okay, let me think of a specific time. Not generally, just a specific time when I was just calm.

And go back in my mind. Go back there now to that memory. Go into that memory again.

Go into me in that memory again. I'll see what I saw back then. Hear what I heard back then.

And feel the feelings of calm. Wow. Wow, I can feel calm now.

I can feel where calm is in my body. I can feel what calm does to my breathing. I can feel what calm does to my heart.

I can just feel... And I tend to get a little bit more confident then. Not super confident, not ever so confident, but I just feel a little bit more confident in myself. Because I'm now starting to touch my core.

And when I do that, I've got calm now. And I pull that back into where calm should be. Where it is.

Wow. That would be better, wouldn't it? And you could do this for a couple of times. For a couple of times? You could do it a couple of times.

Just to reinforce it, just to stack it. Think of another time when you were calm. Oh yeah, yeah, pull that one in.

Think of another time. Go there, feel it, see it, hear it. Bring it back in.

And just notice how much better this would be. To have this feeling instead of that old feeling. The one you've left out there, by the way.

Because you brought in calm. You left the other one out there. Now, because this is better.

Your pulse has changed. Your breathing has changed. You can see the world clearer.

Yeah. Just say to your unconscious mind this or something. Better.

It's a lovely little saying. And I believe your unconscious mind has to pick a better way. If you found a better way, and you have now chosen a better way, and you've also said to your unconscious mind, can you find a better way? This or something better? Okay.

Then we go to the voices. Do you remember those voices? Yeah, that, going in your mind. What can you do with that to get a little further distance? Well, to get distance, when voices are at distance, what happens to them? The volumes change.

So reduce the volume. Imagine you've got a volume control, and you just turn down the volume of the voice, so it goes quieter and quieter. Yeah.

So you see, in effect, you're pushing it away. Maybe just change the pitch a little bit. So it goes into a silly little voice, or a sexy little voice.

And I don't know why I think that's sexy, because I know it isn't. But you know what I mean. You can change the speed of it.

You can make it into a stutter. Make it into a cartoon type stutter. And when you've pushed it away, reduced the volume, changed the pitch, give it that jiggity-jaggity, jiggity-jaggity.

It's like having a CD player. Remember the old CDs? If you scratch it enough times, it won't bloody play. And now you're going to associate to that.

But think, what would be a better way? Just think what would be better. Well, I don't want that voice. I want to be able to think clearly, with my own voice.

I don't want to have... So what is my own voice when I'm thinking calmly? Remember that feeling? What is my voice when I'm speaking calmly? Ah. That feels... I can think better when I'm thinking with this voice, and not that other shitty voice over there, that I've now pushed over there. Turn it right down.

Because after a while, you can turn it right down to zero. Now it's quiet. So here's the thing.

Now the video. Now the video. Now, we said we want distance, dissociation.

What about double dissociation? What about double dissociation? Well, you could do this, if you want to. What you do, is imagine, a movie screen. Because you're going to put, that movie, or a movie, of what you're playing.

But imagine it this way. We're going to push the movie screen further away. But imagine seeing, another you in front of yourself, watching that screen.

So you're watching that you, watching the screen. Whoa. Because you see, when you play that old video, it used to trigger the voices, because it had sound.

It used to trigger then, the feelings. But if it's double dissociated, it's like that roller coaster, watching yourself, watching the roller coaster. There is no feelings at all.

And just imagine, just for a moment or two, that you over there, watching that movie, that you've been playing forever, and notice, that it's a load of old bollocks. Or, what it can learn from those. It can learn, get that you out there to learn, that it's not going to happen that way, because you're going to change it.

You don't allow it to happen that way, because it's not constructive. It's not appropriate. So you push that movie screen away.

And you make it smaller. Because what happens when it goes smaller, it goes darker. When we said, when it goes further away, what happens to the sound? It diminishes.

And if you keep pushing it further away, it gets smaller and darker, and quieter. And you keep pushing it away, and pushing it away, and you can push it away, till it disappears. And when it disappears, you've got a fresh start.

Now the fresh start, what do we do with a fresh start? We now have a separate screen, right in front of you. And you are the director of that movie. Yeah, you're the director, because you are now in charge.

You're still dissociated, but you are the director. So imagine this film of yours. It's like the movie of your life.

My son does a lovely process called, you are the movie star, or movie star of your life. Catch it with josephclough.com But now you know what feeling you want. I want you to imagine, how you'd like it to be.

How would you like this event to be, if it ever happens? I'll tell you what happened to mine in a minute. Because I changed the movies, I changed the sound, I did exactly what I'm telling you now. I'm sharing the way I did it, because I know it works.

And it is simple. It just means, just have to do it. So I saw a movie, and you see the movie how you want it to be.

And you see yourself acting in that movie, the way you want to act. You hear your voice, the way you want to speak. You know by just looking at yourself, the way you're feeling.

Because you can tell, you can tell the vibes that come off you. You're in control, you're in charge. Because that's all it is.

And now you're in charge, what you can do, is just go into that movie, just for a moment, into the you. And just feel like, what it would be like, to be this way. You don't have to see all the rest of the movie, you can if you want to.

You can let it play out, by being in that movie, because you know, it's not really happening. It's in your imagination, and you're in control of your imagination, nobody else is. So imagine it the way you want it to be.

Imagine saying the things that you want to say, imagine everything going according to plan. I know in reality it doesn't always work that way, but this is in imagination, and it's not reality. But your unconscious mind doesn't know that.

Can't tell what's real or imagined, when you do it like this. And when you get there, and you understand, you're in there, you understand what type of belief you have about yourself. Because you're okay, I'm in charge.

You understand the emotions, that you're using, the skills that you're using, the behaviors you're using. And when I say emotions, they could be calm, they could be curious, they could be anything, could be confident, could be competent, could be just relaxed, could be whatever. You've got everything, because it's not just one.

You've got a fluidity, going between one and the other, whatever is the most appropriate. And it feels so good. And then you go, this or something better, and just step out of that screen.

And let it go. Let it go. You don't need to think about it again.

You can if you want to, because you're going to think about, this is the right way, this is the most appropriate way. You just ask your unconscious mind, if this is going to happen, this is the way I want it to happen. These are the resources I want.

These are the things that I want to believe in, the way I want to feel, because this is so much better than that shit I had before. So choose this or something better. Here's what generally happens.

For me, this thing I was really worried about, guess what? It never happened at all. Not one bit of it. Not one thing.

The event I was thinking of, didn't happen. It was about a person, and I didn't even see that person. And I haven't seen him since, so I don't care.

End of. If it does happen, it's more likely, and I have to say more likely, I can't guarantee everything, it's more likely to go the way you want, or better than you want. Because your unconscious mind thinks you've already done it before as well, because it didn't, it just can't get, this is the imagination, and you have worked at something, and you feel like you've done it before too.

So if things aren't quite going, the way you imagined it, you will change in the moment, because you'll remember, well I need to be a bit more calmer. I need to be this, I need that. And then at the end of it, you'll review it.

You'll sit back quietly with a cup of coffee, gin and tea, glass of water, tea, whatever, whatever, beer. All quietly by yourself, how did that go? What could I learn from this? Because that's the big thing, because once you've learned from it, even that memory, if there's anything that was negative in it, will not haunt you. Because you've learned from it, and when you've learned from things, you don't need the negative emotions, because you're going to move forward.

Isn't that awesome? So that is, for me, the alternative to anxiety and worry. And I just want you to know, that you're in control. You were in control with this shit, and you're in control with how you want to be.

The before and the after. Because you can choose how you want to be. It's a matter of taking control, and when you do, you become empowered.

And you begin to see opportunities, you begin to see all the things you can do. So you decide. Because when you decide and take ownership, it's yours.

No one else's. Because you can do this. You can.

Sometimes you have to practice. Practice a little bit more one-off. Sometimes it's difficult to do a one-off.

This will work with a one-off, by the way. But the more you practice these things, the more you'll end up doing it without knowing you're doing it, or your unconscious mind will do it for you before anything happens. And you'll be able to prepare properly.

You won't be overwhelmed. So whether it's a meeting at work, maybe it's an intense situation with somebody, or you're just going to meet somebody social, anything that causes you worry or anxiety will get easier. Because you've learned from it.

You'll be in control. There you go. I hope, I really do hope, that I've shared in a way that's understandable.

I'd like to think it's eloquent and elegant, but it probably isn't. I hope it is. But I hope it's in a way that you can use it.

Maybe you had to make some notes. Maybe you have to rewind this. Go to the beginning and take notes.

Or do it with me again. Because we talked through it. Then you go, okay, now I've got the situation.

I'm going to go through that last bit with Paul to do the sounds, the feeling, or the feelings, the sounds, and then all together. But you can, you know, when you're getting this, you can. Things are happening.

I want to push that picture away. Oh, I've got this voice in my head. I'm going to turn it down.

Oh, I've got this feeling. Maybe the voice isn't there yet, or the picture, I'm just going to change it slightly because it's not helpful. So you can do them individually, and you can do them as one.

And I suggest you practice each. Practice it on little things from the past. Because when you need it in the future, boom, you're in control.

Knowing what you do and doing what you know. Mastery. If you could master this little bit here.

Worry. Anxiety. Maybe you don't disappear completely because the world is the world and things come on, sideliners and things like that.

Or blindsiders. Which one is it? I don't know. But at least you've got the tools to deal with it when you need to deal with it.

Or even you'll get into the habit of preparing for things before they become a worry. So they don't become a worry. Now, wouldn't that be good? If, as I said, if I haven't made it clear, please let me know.

Feedback at personaldevelopmentunplugged.com Let me know so I can make it clearer with another episode. If there's a point that you think, well, I still got it all pulled, but I need a bit more, let me know. Same email.

And we'll come up with another process. Do let me know. Because there's so much we can do.

And I got your back. Because when you get like this, your goals, your dreams, just get bigger and better. And you start to have the richness of success or success in richness that you deserve.

That's waiting for you. So just get empowered and take action. There you go.

Please do that. Please share. I always ask to share, but I don't know how many people do, but I just love you to share this for a number of reasons.

One is if you share it, you got benefit, your other people will get the benefit. That's the main thing. If you share it, people will start to listen and make things a bit more visible to other people because the algorithms just work that way.

This is such a small little podcast, but it's got a depth to it. And if we can just affect one more person, we can infect one more person with the confidence and empowerment to create the life they want. Job done.

There you go. And don't miss anything. So subscribe and follow and all that stuff.

Have more fun than you can stand. And I'll see you. You'll hear me.

I'll be in your mind and you can come into mine on the next longer episode or just muse for a five-minute quickie. Till the next time, my friend. Go fly.

Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough. It's time to fly now.

Be brave, my friend. Personal Development Unplugged.

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Personal development [self improvement] [self development] [NLP] [Hypnosis]