Barry McDonagh

Anxiety causes you to become stuck in a stagnant state of fear. Learning how to skillfully move with the anxious discomfort that you feel removes you from that state of fear. Moving with anxiety places you back into a state of flow, which eventually frees you from an anxious state. The DARE Response teaches you that simple movement.
The unusual thing about The DARE Response is that it’s not designed to get rid of your anxiety; it’s designed to get rid of your fear of the anxiety. It’s your resistance to and struggle with anxiety that keeps you trapped. A bit like quicksand, the more you struggle, the deeper you sink. When you employ The DARE Response, your anxious mind is taken out of the way, allowing your nervous system to desensitize.

THE ANXIETY LOOP

It’s at this point in time where people get split into those that develop an anxiety disorder and those that don’t. The real deciding factor is whether a person gets caught in the “anxiety loop” or not. The anxiety loop is a mental trap, a vicious cycle of fearing fear. Instead of ignoring anxious thoughts or bodily sensations, the person becomes acutely aware and paranoid of them.

For this group of people, the catalyst for the anxiety disorder to manifest is usually a trigger like extreme exhaustion (mental/emotional/physical) or sudden upheavals like a bereavement, illness, trauma, or the end of a relationship (separation). Sometimes anxiety doesn’t spring from one particular life event. For these people, it originates because they haven’t been looking after themselves properly (e.g., not eating right, not getting enough sleep, or consuming too much caffeine and alcohol). Poor diet and not getting the right amounts of key nutrients is a real trigger for many.