The second step is to move from your mind to your heart. The heart responds to imagery. Replace the negative imagery that's causing you anxiety and try to brainstorm solutions. Be creative and try new things. Talk to people who you have never consulted with before. See yourself attaining achievement and connection. Tell yourself, "This may be something I have to go through in life but I'm not alone." At that point your anxiety should begin to dissipate.
Then you have to bring it to your gut and ask yourself, "What will I do concretely? How will I maintain my joy and bitachon. Will it be through saying Tehilim, through a friend, through going for a bracha?"
The head, heart, and action are attributed to three organs. The moach is the repository of the brain. Lev, the heart, is the seat of emotion. Kaved, the liver, purifies the blood. Its function is to reject and accept. The concrete part of you has to be involved in making decisions. It has to firmly say, "I'll do what's right and not what's wrong. I'll act with faith rather than with panic." The first letters of these three organs spell melech. A person who has achieved sovereignty over himself is unencumbered by circumstances or by other people's opinions. He can turn it all over to Hashem and say, "I've thought this through. These are the steps I will try to take. It's now up to you take me where You want me to go."
For the most part there's no suffering without sin. Pain comes to fix that which was broken. In a sense, we're not afraid of Hashem, we're afraid of ourselves. Guilt can and should cause anxiety.
In the book of Daniel, the prophet Daniel says, "I saw the vision, but the men with me didn't see it. Yet they had terrible fear and ran away and hid." The realization that something big was going to happen made them inwardly focus on the fact that there was something broken inside of them.
Many times fear, anxiety, or depression will stem from a deep place in the subconscious. Chazal say that when a person loses a loved one he should be aware that he is vicariously experiencing his own death. We become suddenly aware of our mortality and it's overpoweringly frightening and hard to face.
Anxiety that stems from sin is purposeful. Worrying about leaving this world without achieving the level of completion and connection you wanted, is good. Chazal teach that a tzaddik is always afraid. He looks at himself critically and is consciously aware. He's not neurotic or sad, but proactive. He will ask himself, "How can I grow and what is holding me back? How can I bring more spirituality into my life, my world, and the people I come in contact with? What do I have to be careful about so that the opposite doesn't happen?"
It's easy to lose awareness. This is why the Baal Hatanya says that it's an obligation to say Pesukei D'zimra and Shema. These prayers awaken within a person the enormity of Hashem's love for us, the incredible intricacy of His world, and the wondrous way in which He governs it.
Greek philosophy espouses the stoic's theory - being a real man, not flinching at anything, and never being afraid. Risking one's life for the thrill of it is not the kind of courage we admire or value. While the physical world is vanity, it is a vehicle for revealing Hashem and therefore it is very precious. A tzaddik understand that there's nothing enduring about this world except serving the Creator. He will view every minute in this world, even the gashmiut part, as priceless because it is a means to a greater end.
