suffering

How to Soothe Anxiety by Identifying and Releasing Attachments

I was just listening to The New Man Podcast interview with Robert Glover talking about Nice Guy Syndrome, where Dr Glover points out that the underlying cause of the nice guy’s dysfunctional behaviour is anxiety. Anyone familiar with Buddhist philosophy will be aware that attachment causes suffering, but Robert points out that attachment also causes anxiety.

We can’t avoid anxiety altogether, so we need to learn how to soothe it within ourselves. The solution is to identify what particular attachment is causing anxiety when we feel it, and consciously let the attachment go each time in occurs. Whenever we feel anxious ask the question:

What am I attached to right now?

Then take a deep breath, and think “I’m letting go of being attached to X”.

For me, examples are:

  • I’m attached to being well, when I’m feeling ill.
  • I’m attached to her liking me, when I’m talking to a pretty woman.
  • I’m attached to being successful, when I’m working on my business.
  • I’m attached to getting good comments, when I’m writing a new blog post.
  • I’m attached to this being a best-seller, when I’m working on writing a book.
  • I’m attached to getting it right/perfect first time, when I’m trying something new.
… Continue reading…
By Graham Stoney, ago
What you get in the Deep Inner Game package

Deep Inner Game

What you get in the Deep Inner Game packageI’ve been watching David DeAngelo’s Deep Inner Game program with Dr Paul, and it’s really brilliant. The program is about developing the mindset that men need to be successful, particularly focused on women, dating and relationships. This mindset is often referred to as our “inner game”, and it really extends to the bigger picture of being confident and successful in life generally.

Here are some of the key things that I’ve learned:

Boundaries

Many of our problems in relating to other people are caused by having a weak psychological and emotional personal boundary, often viewed as having holes in our boundary.

Saying “No” is how we patch holes in our boundary.

Expressing preferences also helps build our boundary, and demonstrates it to other people. Women find this very attractive, even if their preferences differ from ours. If you’re very bad at expressing preferences, you may feel like you don’t have any; in which case you may need to start with arbitrary preferences. e.g. I love dogs, I hate cats.

Immature boundaries either have holes, or are thick and impermeable. Mature boundaries have doors that allow us to control what gets in and what does not.

Perfectionism is caused by a hole in our boundary, projecting our own faults and internal ideals out onto other people.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago