|
Anxiety
To go directly
to the science
of anxiety click here
What is it?
What causes it? What can I do about it?
What is
it?
Anxiety is a
natural response to feeling threatened or unsafe. Consider that
early Human beings date back over 2 million years. According to
historical data it is generally accepted that advanced
civilisation began to flourish around ten to twelve thousand B.C.
The relative safety and security we enjoy today is recent. For our
ancestors dealing with
truly life threatening situations was an everyday occurrence. Historically that might be predatory
animals who see us as a meal, warring tribes, famine, drought,
plague, pestilence, ice age....you name it...as a species we've
endured it! Why is this relevant? Well, it's simple. The human
being has a powerful built in warning system to deal with these
very real threats.
This warning system is primitive in nature since it has been with
us from the very beginning. In many ways one can say it is a part
of the "animal body" and indeed the area of the brain
that is associated with the warning system response is often
referred to as the "mammalian brain". When we feel
threatened in some way, then the warning system is activated and
we experience fear, anger or depression.
Fear/Anxiety - Fear
is the feeling that tells us to either leave a situation or to not
go into that situation in the first place. The assumption by the
animal mind is that we are in danger. By design therefore
fear is necessarily extremely uncomfortable because its purpose is
to get our attention so we take evasive action! This is fine when
the danger is real, but is crippling when the anxiety/fear
mechanism is responding inappropriately to every day situations
and stimuli which really don't require evasive action.
We can experience anxiety in
response to single stimuli (phobia) or we can experience
generalised anxiety too (Generalised Anxiety Disorder). Panic is a
form of extreme fear which is caused by a build up of anxiety over
a period of time which is suddenly released causing a "panic
attack". Panic does not exist in isolation (without anxiety
generally being present). If you are experiencing panic attacks, then
you can take it as a given that your anxiety generally is far too
high.
What causes it?
Excessive stress is the
primary cause of anxiety. We experience stress when we feel
overwhelmed and any number of factors can cause us to experience
stress. Stress is very subjective, and our individual tolerance to
stress also varies greatly. Here are just a few of the most
common forms of stress, but this list is by no means exhaustive.
The first bullet point here is perhaps the most important cause of
stress.
Disempowerment -A lack of power or influence
over one's life.
- Poor sleep (Also a response to
stress as well as a cause).
- Victimisation (Being bullied) See here
for help with work bullying.
- Losing a loved one (Bereavement or
the loss of a relationship)
- Family difficulties (Children, sex,
divorce, lovelessness)
- Boredom/Lack of direction in life.
- A lack of time to do everything that
needs to be done.
- Poor self-image/Lack of self-worth.
- Guilt, Blame and Shame.
- Financial difficulties (Debt!)
- Misuse of drugs/alcohol.
Work pressure.
- Illness
- Loneliness
We might have included past stress and
trauma here too, but I wish to highlight a very important point
here. It is true that past hurt and trauma does affect us in the
present, but the assumption that we feel terrible today because of
something that happened in the past is often misleading. What
happens in fact is that what we think and feel today is based on
what we have learned in life through past experiences. We
experience stress and anxiety when our lives are not working in
the present. If however past experiences have taught us
that we are powerless in certain areas, then this sense is carried
with us into the future. This is known as "learned
helplessness", and it contributes strongly to our sense of
stress on a daily basis because if we feel "powerless"
in any area of life then it means that at a deep level we also
feel vulnerable and if we are feeling vulnerable, then we are
feeling "threatened". Follow the logic and you will
recognise that this is exactly what the "animal mind" is
responding to...feeling threatened. In other words, feeling
vulnerable creates anxiety. Further though, if we are feeling
anxious the unconscious mind seeks to pin this feeling on
something. Since the nature of this mind is to search back through
past experience for something which pattern matches to the feeling
of anxiety (seeking solution!), it invariably comes up with an image
of the last time we experienced a terrible time. Thus, we can
easily then make the erroneous assumption that this memory of a
terrible time is the cause of our problem when in fact the true
cause is that we are lacking control in the present. So it's
really important to recognise that although past experience needs
to be acknowledged (and possibly worked through therapeutically),
it is just as important to make sure that our lives are
functioning well in the present, and what this means in real terms
is making changes which will bring about more control.
What can I do about it?
There are really three options
available.
1) Change your circumstances
- If your circumstances are such that you are practically unable
to manage them (even if you were not stressed), then those
circumstances need to be changed. This might be a tough decision
since your choices might involve loss or sacrifice in order to
gain your peace of mind, but here it is a question of priorities.
Personally I always put my peace of mind at the very top of every
list of priorities. Money is no good to us if we're too anxious to
enjoy spending it. So working a stressful 70 hour week so you can
buy that Audi is a poor trade off if you're too ill to enjoy it!
In most peoples lives the choices may be more practical, and it is
true that many people face extremely difficult practical
situations, but the advice here is to put your mental and
emotional health FIRST, and then to seek practical solutions to
the situation. Pretty much it's always possible to find a solution
when we make a commitment to doing so. Remember the principle of
constructive selfishness. Sometimes the seemingly selfish thing to
do (putting yourself first for once!) is actually the selfless
thing to do, because by making sure your needs are met, you are
ensuring that you remain healthy and available for others in the
future. Often the problem is that
we are soldiering on and kidding ourselves that we can cope with
the situation as it is, when actually we can't. Courage can help
here. It might be uncomfortable to make changes and yes, other
people might not like that you're not willing to be a doormat any
more, but trust me...they'll adjust and you NEED to do this for
yourself! Enlist help if you need to. Delegate tasks. Ask for
support from loved ones, friends, or colleagues. Explain you are
struggling with circumstances as they are. Someone else might be
able to suggest a solution you can't see because you're too
enmeshed. Talk it over with someone. Seek solutions. Practical
solutions. You might be surprised how much support is available
when you ask for it. Don't be too proud to ask for help. Your mental health really is
your wealth in life, and it's too important an issue to feel like
you shouldn't bother anyone with it. If you are struggling with your circumstances, do
something! Even setting the wheels in motion towards a way out
often alleviates a great deal of anxiety. We always feel better
when we are working towards a solution even if that solution will
take time to achieve. The mind can cope with stress when we know
the end of the tunnel is in sight, but what it can't cope with is
no movement towards solution at all. In other words, things don't
have to be perfect for us to be anxiety free, they just need to be
moving in the right direction!
2) Change the way you view/feel
about yourself and/or your circumstances - If you are sure that your
circumstances are practically manageable, but you are just
responding to them poorly, then the problem can be addressed
internally. This basically means that your emotional mind (animal
brain) is overdoing the response. The first thing to do is to
consider ways in which you can practically reduce negative
emotional arousal in your life generally. So even if you
are finding your negative responses are taking place at work, it
can still be due to the fact that there is fundamental stress at
home. In practice it's probably both, but again it is important to
understand that your general levels of emotional arousal
will be feeding directly into whatever difficulty you have. In
practical terms this means being disciplined with yourself with
regards to how much negative thought and introspection you allow
to be present in your awareness on a daily basis. If you were for
instance to spend all day thinking about how so and so wronged you
last week, you are absolutely creating more negative emotional
arousal because the animal brain responds to what is imagined in a
very similar way as it would to what actually is. So if we
repeatedly imagine a confrontation with Mrs S, then the brain
tells the body to get ready for a fight. If you do this thirty
times a day, then your body has created fight mode thirty times,
and all that arousal doesn't just go away...it sits in your
nervous system for the rest of the day (and can overflow into the
next day too if our sleep mechanism can't cope with it all!). What
this means in practical terms is an increase in emotional arousal
which means (when the anger has subsided) .....yes...more anxiety!
Let's be clear. We can choose whether we will go over and over
something or not. So anything you are continually re-running at
the mental level which provokes negative feelings has to go! It
may take time and practice to become proficient in learning to let
things go but it IS the way out of anxiety. If you want out of
your anxiety, this step is CRUCIAL!
Sometimes, we feel genuinely blocked
with regards to how we are seeing a certain situation. Then it is
not only about introspection (the things we are choosing to focus
on) but it is instead being generated from the deeper levels of
awareness - the unconscious mind. Here we have that principle of
past experience impinging on our feelings. The unconscious mind
automatically scans current experience against past. If the
message it holds from past experience is that the current
situation is threatening, then anxiety is produced to create an
avoidance mechanism and we have a sense of disempowerment.
Changing the way we think and feel
about things is really the basis of recovery from anxiety. A very
important area to consider when healing anxiety is developing
kindness and compassion towards ourselves. If we are at war with
ourselves; If we have a fundamental dislike for ourselves, then we
have a problem, because disliking oneself causes terrible grief.
Being unwilling to forgive oneself for something that has happened
or something you have done is a sure fire way of becoming anxious.
Having an internal war going on at any given time also creates a
feeling of being unsafe, and then to top it all off as a result of
all the internal hatred we are experiencing we can have self-punishment thrown in for
good measure! Solutions are discussed in the "help" section of this site.
This is another area where the help of a good therapist can make
all the difference.
3) What we truly cannot change we
must accept- This really needs little explanation as a
principle. We have to take our cue here from inspirational people,
and remember that people are extremely resilient when they choose
to be. There is always a positive perspective available if we
choose to open ourselves to it...even if that perspective is
purely philosophical. It is a difficult fact of life that there
sometimes exist tragic circumstances. We have to find a way
through such things. It is our will to accept what we cannot
change that will dictate the depth of our suffering and our peace.
As difficult as the situation may be we must recognise that
non-acceptance will only add to our suffering. Again, commitment
to healing is what begins the process. Therapy can help here, and
self help is discussed in the "help" section of the
website.
Go
to Anxiety Page 2 - The science of anxiety.
Please check back here periodically
for updates. This website will be continually updated with
practical relevant sections and information.
|
.JPG)
