By Poppy Delbridge

Logically I know my anxious thoughts aren't true, but that doesn't stop me feeling them. Help.

Anxiety isn't a thinking problem

Learning to calm anxious thoughts can feel impossible when your mind is racing, but what if the solution isn’t about thinking harder, but feeling differently? Mindset expert and Rapid Tapping founder Poppy Delbridge explains why anxiety is a whole-body experience, not just a mental one, and shares a powerful yet simple mind-body technique to help regulate your nervous system. Discover how connecting with your body can shift deep-seated patterns and bring a profound sense of calm to your daily life.

I hear you. And I want to start by saying this is so normal, and it is absolutely not your fault.

You can't think your way out of a feeling, because the feeling didn't start in your thinking mind. There are many mind layers - you're probably trying to make change happen with just one.

Logic and alarm live in different places

Your thinking brain can know you are safe while your body is still sounding the alarm. Anxiety is a whole body experience. Like when your stomach that drops when an email pings or you enter a busy room. Telling yourself "it's fine" is like shouting at a smoke alarm to calm down - it's machined in at that point so the mind must go into the body too. You need to reach the deeper invisible system that set it off.

The IMP is fast. Be faster

I call these reactions IMPs, Invisible Mind Patterns®. Picture a little goblin that yanks you back into an old reaction before your logical mind has caught up and says it has a better plan. The Doubter IMP whispering "what if it all goes wrong?" The Prover IMP insisting you have to get everything right, or else. They learnt their job years ago to keep you safe. Nobody has told them the danger has passed.

Talk to your body first

This is where Rapid Tapping® comes in to actually change the anxious thoughts by using it little and often in a specific way that connects the mindset you want to the body alert system you have. It's the energy wellness method I created by bringing ancient techniques together with modern nervous system science and human touch. Try it now. Cross your hands over your chest and tap gently, left, right, left, right, like a butterfly. Breathe in through your nose, then breathe out longer than you breathed in. Say out loud, "I'm safe right now, in this moment." Keep going for a full minute.

You are not arguing with the thought. You are giving your body the evidence it needs. With repetition, your system learns a new response. That is what my book explains as our natural human intelligence of neuroplasticity. Simple, not easy, but so doable.

And please, if anxiety is running your days, you don't have to handle it alone. Speak to your GP, or reach out to Mind where I am a global ambassador. Support is there.

See Poppy walk through the 7D Success System, name your pattern and clear stuck energy live at Unlock Your Power LIVE, Sunday 11 October at the Royal Academy of Music, London, in aid of Mind. Her 7-step Unlock Your Power system will be with musicians on a stage, with live Rapid Tapping®, sound healing and special guest performances and 300 guests for you to meet and mingle with. AllBright readers get £22 off with code UNLOCK22 at the Royal Academy of Music box office for last remaining seats.