Anxiety Toolbox: Your Roadmap to Inner Peace | Personal Development Unplugged

Hey there, brave souls. Let’s talk about something we all experience but rarely discuss openly: anxiety.

I know what it feels like to be stopped in your tracks by worry, panic, and those overwhelming moments that make you feel like you can’t breathe. That’s why today’s episode is all about building your personal “Anxiety Toolbox”—real strategies that actually work.

This isn’t about quick band-aid solutions. We’re diving deep into:

• The crucial difference between temporary relief and genuine healing
• Practical techniques you can use RIGHT NOW to shift your mental state
• How to create healthy distance from anxious thoughts
• Breathing exercises that rewire your nervous system
• Transforming your internal dialogue from fear to empowerment

These aren’t just theories. These are proven strategies I’ve used myself and seen work for countless individuals struggling with anxiety.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a toolkit that gives you back control—not just coping, but truly thriving.

If this resonates, please share it. Someone in your circle might desperately need these tools. And subscribe so you never miss an episode that could be a lifeline.

https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/438-anxiety-tool-box-quick-fixes-that-work

Your journey to inner peace starts here. Are you ready?

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 feedback@personaldevelopmentunplugged.com.

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Remember: I’m a therapist, but I’m not your therapist. This podcast and any of my online resources are for educational purposes only. Never use the hypnosis tracks or exercises if you’re operating machinery, driving, or if you have epilepsy or psychiatric conditions. Always consult a healthcare provider if you’re unsure.

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Stay tuned, and keep shining brightly. ✨

Music Credits

Music by Wataboi, DreamHeaven, ccjmusic, and others from Pixabay.

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

Paul Clough: Sometimes we need a quick fix to deal with anxiety

Hey, how you doing? Anxiety toolbox. And that’s  bit flash, isn’t it? Bit posh having your toolbox for anxiety. We don’t really want anxiety, but. And the term quick fixes, that’s a little bit grating for me. But it’s something we might need. I think we do need because you see there’s quick fixes and the real fixes for anxiety, the fear, the panic, for overwhelm, for frustration, basically for any negative emotion. But let’s talk about anxiety because that seems to be one of the causes of so many other negative emotions and limiting beliefs and all that stuff. You see, real fixes, the real fix is to let it go. To be able to deal with situations, issues easily. Eff. Effort. I can’t even say the word effortlessly but that’s what the real fix is. Just to be able to live your life. There’s always going toa be a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of stress that sometimes makes us more resilient because we’re stretching ourselves. But we need to let go the debilitating anxiety, fear, panic. And when we let it go, we do that by I think, understanding why it’s here, why it’s here in your life. Why is anxiety, fear, panic, gu every other negative emotion in your life? If you have any of those, why is it here and what is it trying to do for us? That’s a real fix. Understanding. Also the real fix is to learn from it. Because when you understand, you learn from it. And the reason why it’s still here is because you haven’t learned from it. So when we learn from it, those negative emotions, especially anxiety, fear, panic, will disappear. And another way is knowing better ways. You see, your unconscious mind is trying to protect you. But if we can find a better way than anxiety, fear, panic, then that’s got to be better, isn’t it? And we do that by learning and understanding. So that’s the real fix. And I’m going to talk about that in a lot deeper depth because that’s where you go in another podcast, it’s probably maybe even the next one following this, where we ren to look at dealing with things like not necessari trauma, but really, anxiety. That’s really causing an issue in our life. And I’ve got a process to help you with that. But. And there is a but. Before all of that, sometimes we do need a quick fix, a quick fix to deal with it in the moment, deal with anxiety, fear, panic, all those other stuff that you might be feeling. Because we need to deal them, in the moment. Because sometimes they can be, as I say, so deliberate. I can’t say they keep stopping us whatver we’re doing. And we need something. You see, I don’t believe in medication for things like anxiety, fear, panic, depression, any negative emotion in the long run, in the long term. We don’t need. I believe, and I’m not a doctor, but I think there’s better ways because I feel they’re like a plaster. They’re plaster over the cut. They don’t heal. You heal. Sometimes we need that plaster, that little bit of ointment, that little thing just to help us just in the moment. Because when we get that, then we can start looking at the real fixes, the real cause. Because sticking a plaster, over a wound isn’t caus, it isn’t dealing with the cause, it’s dealing with the effect. And that’s what so many other people do. They just deal with effects. And, when you deal with effects, what happens is you get more. They never go away until you deal with the root cause. But sometimes, as I say, you need this quick fix, this thing in the moment. Because we all need some respite from this bloody stuff, don’t we? Or maybe something just to get us into a different state. Because I think we need to be in that different state to be able to deal with the real fix. You know, if you’re in the bottle, it’s bloody difficult to read, you know, the label on that bottle in the jar. If you’re in the jar, can’t read the label. So sometimes I think we do need those plasters in the short term. Yeah, I think that’s all we need to say about thatuse.

There are a few things that we can do in the moment to relieve anxiety

This is going to be a pretty short, short, longer podcast. But here’s a few things, a few things that we can do in the moment that will help you, relieve you of what you’re going through. It will ease how you feel and it will put you in a different state because you can’t solve the problem. When you’re in the problem, you can’t solve the problem in or the state of a problem. So you can’t deal with anxiety if you’re still anxious, you can’t deal with fear if you’re fearful, you can’t deal with panic if you’re panicking, can’t feel guilt. You can’t deal guilt. you can’t deal with any negative emotion if you’re still feeling it. That’s what good therapists do. They take you out of that into a more resourceful state. So what can we do in the moment? Well, here’s what we can do. Because what we get is, I’m m sure like me, when you’re feeling a little bit anxious, a little bit fearful, a little bit panicky, we get those bloody pictures in our mind, don’t we? There’s a video, there’s a bloody movie going on in our head, isn’t it? And, in that movie in our mind, it’s exaggerating everything. It exaggerates what we did in the past. If we’re getting anxious about things happening in the past happening again and we replay that movie worse than it ever could be in multi-dimensional, five, one surround sounds, everything. Or if we’re thinking about the future, we play a video, we make it up with our wonderful gift of imagination, we make it up into the worst possible case. And what does that do? Damn, that gets that anxiety going and it’s there. I know it’s to protect us, to stop us doing that thing or prepare. But because of the overwhelm of it, we don’t prepare, we just get more anxious. So there’s your direct conflict trying to protect you, giving you the very thing it’s trying to protect you from. So what we’got toa do? Well, in the moment, catch yourself. And that can be quite difficult because when we’re in it, we are in it. But as soon as you realize, as soon as you realize you’re in this state and the pictures and the movies you’re making in your mind, you catch yourself and you stop. What? Yeah, just stop for a moment. Break state, do something. Jump up and down, sing at the top of your voice, but stop and pause. And when you pause, you breathe and you breathe deeply. Because when we’re in picture mode, we are breathing at the top of our chest. We’re breathing fast because that’s where visualization comes from. generally at the top of your chest are we’re going toa breathe deeply and slowly just for a minute. So you just, focus your attention on your breath. And as you breathe, things begin to change. But this isn’t the end of that. It’s a great thing to do. But with that change of state, now we’re breathing, we’re breathing slowly and deeply. We take that picture in our mind, that movie and you begin to push it away in your mind. Imagine taking hold of that picture and physically pushing it, away with the power of your mind. Further away. So the further away it goes, the smaller it gets. And the smaller it gets. And the further away it goes, the darker it gets because the smaller it is, you can’t see so much. Everything begins to blur together. And the further away it gets, the smaller it has to go because it’s in the distance. And if you’re in a room, you can imagine pushing it through the wall. And we’re looking through our own eyes now, looking at that movie screen, pushing it away. Because you’ll notice when you’re dissociated from this distance now, the emotion will begin to disappear. It reduces it. And, yeah, occasionally that bloody thing will spring back and what do you do? Stop, breathe, pause, Pause and breathe and push it away again. And the more you keep doing it, your unconscious mind will notice. We’ve got a bit of space. You’re getting space now between the issue that’s causing you to be anxious, fearful or panicky or whatever other negative, emotion you’re experiencing. And you’re getting distance from it. You’re dissociating. And when you’re dissociated, you cannot feel the emotion. Which means now we’ve got space. I mean, you can take it so far away that becomes no bigger than a postage stamp a mile away. So small, like a pinhead, so small, still there. It might just suddenly disappear when you do that, but it’s still there. But it’s way, way over there. Which means we’ve now got distance and we can now start planning a better response. Look for a solution and put it into action. And you keep doing that with that. so if you get another picture, another video, push it away, keep pushing away. Because it might take one or two times, but generally on the third time you’ve got it hammered. Sometimes it’s just the ones. And you go, I can hold you over there, you bloody old picture, you, you movie. I can hold you over there and see what I want to do now I’ve got some space. Because as long as you then take action, action with intention and ask your unconscious mind, what would be a better way, what would be a better way to approach this so I can be safe and comfortable. You ask questions like that and you’ll start to get intuitions of how to deal with that issue. Now, isn’t that simple? It’s simple, it’s easy, but it takes effort. But it just Bloody works. So that’s the pictures, the movies, the videos you’re making in your mind. Here’s another one. You know, we have that internal dialogue where we’re talking to ourselves how bad things are going to be. oh, what happens if this happens? That happens. This happens. O there’s so many things and we cannot stop it. It’s in a bloody loop, isn’t it? We cannot stop that bloody dialogue. And sometimes it’s not even our bloody voice, is it? It’s not our voice. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it could be somebody else’s voice getting on our wick and it’s just going on and on. What do you got toa do? Change the voice. Because you can. Because if you think about it, it’s not real, it’s in your head. And if it’s in your head, you’re in control of it. So choose the tone you want. So it’s male, make it female.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try changing your internal dialogue

That’ll change what’s happening just by changing the sex. If it’s loud, turn it down. You can make it stuttery, but boom, all of a sudden, that internal dialogue has no effect on you. And if you want, you know, if you’re berating yourself as stupid you are. Ah. And how could you be so stupid? Change it into a sexy voice. Hey, darling, how stupid are you? Oo, yeah, you’re stupid. Mmm. You should never do things like that, should you? What were we thinking of? M M, M. Now, that wasn’t really sexy. You get my drift? Make it into a cartoon voice. Anything. Just use your imagination and just keep changing it until you go, this really doesn’t make sense. It’s as if you’re getting that recording and imagine it on an old cd. There’s that recording going round and around. It’s on a loop. And what you’re doing is when you keep changing the tone, changing the type of voice, the sex of it, or just, the pitch, you’re scratching it and scratching it and scratching it. And the more you keep scratching it, it makes no bloody sense. And then you ask yourself, what would be a better way? What could I do differently? What do I need to do right now to make this situation different? maybe it’s that stopping, pausing, breathing. Maybe it’s sitting down just for a moment and making a few notes. Maybe it’s asking somebody for help. But now we got that respite, haven’t we? Maybe I can make an appointment. If it’s so bad, this anxiety’so bad, I can make an appointment. Or I’m going to listen to the second part of cluy’s longer podcast and find out what that’s about. So there’s those two. So there’s the picture’s in your mind, the move is in your mind, the internal dialogue. But if it’s just a feeling and you’re not quite sure what’s happening, you’re starting to panic a little bit. Well, you stop, you pause. But this time you breathe in a particular way. And they call it box breathing. And again, so simple. And it will take a little bit of effort to start off with. But basically your box breathing is breathe in for the count of four or five. That’s all which is ever comfortable for you. And then hold it for the same count. So, whether it’four you hold it for four. And at the end of four, you breathe out easily for the same count of four. And then you, at the end of four, you hold your breath again for a count of four. And then you breathe in before. Hold for four, out for four, hold for four. And you do that. If you can do five, it’s nice. But don’t stress. Don’t stress about it. Make it as easy as you can. And just breathe. Box breathe. Count them. Breathing in 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold my breath for 3, 4. Pause and breathe out. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold 4. 1, 2. And just keep doing that. And it’ll relax you, it’ll bring down your heart rate, it’ll bring down everything. And in that moment again, you can begin to work out what you want to do. But you need in the moment to be able to stop that pulsating heart which is going so fast. The breathing which is going so fast, you slow everything down. Now, if you’re into things like overwhelm and you’re getting anxious and overwhelmed, go for a bloody walk. But if you’re going for a walk, do it in a special way. Don’t just walk. Walk by looking up, but be careful. Obviously you need to know where you’re going. So just walk along, but keep looking up above eye level if you can, for as long as you can. But be safe as you walk along. Make sure you don’t trip or anything like that. But if you can, walk gently and slowly, breathing nicely, but keeping your eyes as much as you can above eye level. Two things happen. One is you’ll notice different things. So you’re changing your state by just being curious of all the different things you’ve seenuse. Most of the time you’re not looking up when you’re in that panicky state, that overwhelmed state. You’ve got everything in front of you. You’re looking down, look up. It takes you away from feelings, takes you to your visual cortex or whatever it is. It’s your visual bit anyway, taking you away from feelings and taking you away from that internal voice of yours. Notice what you notice as you do that. If you really want to do it, hit some exercise really quickly. Just do some exercise, get that endorphins and all that stuff going in your muscles. It will change your state. And remember, I’ve got, I’ve just come to mind if you look for, I think it’s called Superman or something like that on an FMQ where we use the Superman music and we pretend we’ve got a cape on, and we will get so confident because we’re going walk with that invisible cape that mustn’t touch the floor and you hear this music, it makes you feel differently. So find, maybe find some wonderful calming music. But walk, walk. And if you want to one more before we go because there’s loads more. But these are wonderful things. Open up your peripheral vision. Because we’re focusing on everything that’s causing us to feel anxiety, anxious, causing us to feel fear, causing the panic, the overwhelm.

All of this stuff includes breathing. So what you might have to do is. Gotta breathe

How do you do that? When you’sitting and you’re breathing. Gotta breathe. All of this stuff includes breathing. And basically you’ve pick a point just out in front of you. Pick a point on a wall above eye level, keeping your head exactly straight. But lift your eyes up, look upwards and really focus on that point. And the weird thing is the more you focus on that point, it’s as if the magic happens and your peripheral vision open up, opens up. So keep focusing on that point. Just keep focusing. And notice how that peripheral vision will just, open up and you can begin to see maybe the corners of the room. And as you keep focusing, you’ll notice that peripher vis starts to be able to see the sides of the room. It’s as if after a while you can see above you, below you and nearly behind you. And as you sit in this peripheral vision, emotions change. it’s called hackalau. Hackalau is a wonderful term and it just, it’s a why pa and it just seems to let all the negative emotions disappear. Gives you that respite. Yeah. So what you might have to do is. And I’ve just stopped for a moment because I bet you’re doing that now. But what you might have to do is just listen to this again, get your paper and pen, get a little notebook, that field book or whatever, and just listen to this again and just make some notes of everyone. And maybe you could just imagine doing it with everyone. We go through moving those pictures, those movies, way, way away, changing that internal dialogue, stopping, pausing, breathing, doing that box breathing, walking by, looking up, going away from those feelings, those emotions, doing some exercise and maybe just opening up your peripheral vision from your fauval vision. I know the words, you know, but go. I, just go back. It’s not the longest podcast in the world. Go back and make some notes and practice each one. Because each one, they may not all work on each one, but one of those will work and give you some respite to start making, making changes, changes to the cause of this anxiety, cause of the fear, the panic, on any other negative emotion. Deal with the cause, the effect will disappear. These are just effects. So don’t worry about it. These are effects and they will go. And do listen out for it might be the next longer podcast or the one after that, but I’ll be dealing with how, or how to deal with really deeper issues.

Take notes, share them with everybody on this podcast

But before we go there, we need this plaster just to take the edge off, allow us to change state, to get out of the old state and into something different, a more resourceful state so we can deal with what we need to deal with. I hope all of that made sense. I really do. Of course I do, because I wouldn’t have said it otherwise, but take notes, share them with everybody. The more you share it verbally, once you’ve made your notes and you share it again, you will learn even more about it. Just work. It gets m deeper in your neurology. Your memory just works that much better. So when you may need these, they’ll come just like that. The most appropriate one will come to your need. Whenever you need the muse, that’s what happens. Your unconscious mind will help you ca because it realizes each one of these is a way of making you feel more comfortable and safe. And that’s its priority, to keep you comfortable, safe and healthy. So we need to guide it sometimes. So do please share everything that you’ve learned here. If you would share the episode, share the podcast if you would. It will make such a difference to the people you’re sharing it to. It makes such a difference to you and it will make a difference to, to the amount of people who get to hear this. Because that’s what we want. We don’t want people being anxious, fearful panicky and anything else. We want people to have joy in their life, love in their life, and find all the things that make them feel so good. We want positive emotions and positive beliefs so we can be successful in life. Successful and rich. Rich in every term. So that’s my little request to you. If you haven’t subscribed, please do subscribe and follow whichever that button is. And if there’s anything that didn’t resonate with you that you want more information on, please email me feedback@personaldevelopmentmentunplugged.com or if there’s a particular issue that you’d like us to go a little bit deeper on, y email me. And I, use my old grey matter to find a process or something that just isn toa work for you so well.

Paul Clough says it’s time to fly on your own

Okay, my friend. That’s it from me, Paul. Enjoy. And enjoy every heartbeat. Wallow in pleasure, because it’s time to fly. Warning. You are now leaving the unplugged mind of Paul Clough. It’s time to fly on your own. Be brave, my friend. Personal development unplugged.