An Inquiry: Is there a way to beat anxiety without counseling so I can join the Air Force? I struggle with severe anxiety, and I’d like to get help for it. However… if I get counseling and take medication, I will have to report it to them, and it would ultimately disqualify me from being in the Air Force… Is there a way I can beat severe anxiety without any kind of help?
How We Would Respond: Your anxiety is caused by an internal response — your thinking. Given that your anxiety comes from you, you do not need assistance from any external source except to educate you about where your anxiety actually comes from and what you can do to resolve it. But you are the one who must do the resolving, because it’s within you: no one can access your internal being and alter your thinking.
Your language is telling. You talk about beating anxiety and also struggling with it. You seem to accept anxiety as a formidable attack that you must somehow beat back. You have granted anxiety the enormous power of your belief, and it is now a genuine adversary for you because you believe that it is.
Here is what causes anxiety: accepting a fearful judgment as the truth. If you do not accept fearful judgments as true — if you observe these judgments impartially but do not accept them as true (do not embrace them or buy into them) — you will not have an anxious response.
Familiarize yourself with the following formula: A judgment accepted as true equals an emotional response. The formula outcome (an emotional response) cannot happen if the formula set-up (judgment accepted as true) does not occur.
