On Dealing with Anxiety

Anxiety is the most common type of psychiatric disorder. According to WHO, 30% of Americans have it. Most people suffer from anxiety, suffer silently, because their anxieties have not yet turned into a fully blown catastrophe, so they keep it for themselves, instead of asking for help.

In recent years, with all these COVID-19 pandemic spreading, and lockdowns, more and more people may be vulnerable to this disorder. As health and economical concerns place heavy weight on each and every single one of us.

Are you living in a lifestyle that would make you anxious, let’s check:

Are you constantly preparing for an exam?

Are you expected to deliver on a tight deadline?

Are you spending most of your time applying for jobs and attending interviews?

Are you a role model, someone who is expected to hold a higher standard? Like being a father, officer, leader, manager, or teacher?

Do you want to be in full control of every aspect of your life?

Are you constantly surrounded by people? Live or work in a dense population?

Are you sensitive to what other people may think or talk of you?

Do you worry that you may run into health problems that may affect your job?

Do you feel stuck, like there is no way out?

Do you feel that you cannot easily get the help that you need?

Do certain things in your life suddenly go off rail, and spin out of your control?

Are you worrying about your bad performances?

Do you still mind about certain unpleasant things that are just going to happen anyway?

Do you often ask: Am I wrong?

Are you constantly changing from room to room, place to place? and do you have to adapt to new people and new environments over and over?

If you are living with some of the life styles mentioned above, then please also check the following symptoms of anxiety:

Have you ever had any panic attacks?

Has your heart beat gone up so fast recently?

Do you have difficulties in breathing?

Do you often think negatively about the future?

Do you constantly fear that you may underperform?

If you do in fact have anxiety, it is very important to ask for help, because it may lead to even more severe situations such as clinical depression, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, fatigue, and people who have anxiety are overall 6 times more likely to be hospitalized.

Today here, we are going to briefly talk about some of the ways in which you can deal with anxiety.

First, let’s start with some simple and quick solutions:

The very first thing you should do, when you feel anxious, is to stop judging and criticizing yourself. You must learn how to love and accept yourself, so you won’t feel too anxious about being inferior or underperforming.

When you feel anxious, there is often a guy that talks negatively within your head, because when it comes down to shame, we are often the best people at beating ourselves down. In which case, you must ensure that there should be at least the same amount of positive voice presenting in your mind. So you can achieve at least a balance between positive and negative thoughts within you. And you can achieve this by redirecting your focus to the things that will help you, rather than keep hearing the things that will scare you.

You should also be aware of your anxious thoughts as it emerges, and observe your anxious self from a distance. So you can study and work with it, instead of being penetrated and taken over by your anxiety.

You should ask less of “what if”s, which may scare the crap out of you. And you should be living in the now, instead of worrying about what will happen next.

You should focus more on your goal, your job, your task, that really matters. If you are a social worker, then focusing more on helping other people. If you are a factory worker, then focusing on getting the jobs done, etc.

You shouldn't be anxious about anxiety, you simply deal with it.

You also should study deeper into anxiety, so you can deal with it better. As we go later into this text, we will also talk deeper into anxiety.

But before we go even deeper, let’s give ourselves a heads up, on what we should or shouldn’t do, when we are dealing with anxiety:

First, you should not be weak or nice, just to calm yourself down. Instead, you should focus more on developing inner courage and strength, to get through your life challenges, like a dude.

You should not label your anxious emotions simply with one word. As emotions, especially anxious emotions, are often very complex. You should unwrap it, study it, so you can better deal with it.

You should also be aware of that anxiety is a wide spectrum, ranging from mild tension, to fear and terror. And you should not neglect it simply because it has not been fully blown into terror yet. You should catch it and deal with it early, before it turns into a real crisis.

You should not collapse over anxiety, nor run from it. Instead, you should deal and learn from it. You can achieve this and reclaim yourself back, through self acceptance and self compassion, which we will talk more about later.

Now, let's dive even deeper into the topic of anxiety.

From the point of view of evolutionary psychology, our subconscious will simulate the worst possible scenarios with fear and anxiety to amplify the threat of any potential danger, to help us survive in a dark forest.

But sometimes we don’t need all that fear and anxiety, because we don’t always live in such a dangerous and hostile environment. So how do we shut down such fear based threat simulation from our subconscious, in case we just do not need it?

One easy way is to redirect our attention towards something plain and simple, like counting our breath, looking at our shoes, or staring at the vase across the room. By turning our attention away from our fear based mind, we allow room in our heads to think calmly and plan ahead, instead of getting caught by panic and anxiety.

In the field of cognitive therapy, Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis proposed another way of looking at anxiety.

In the point of view of cognitive therapy, people have negative emotions, including anxiety, because they have negative thought patterns.

For example, when you are attending an interview, and you feel anxious, it is because you are afraid that the interviewer will think badly of your behavior. And that is a negative thought pattern, because you expect other people to see the worst from each other. Instead, if you think positively, that the interviewer is trying to help you, and giving you valuable chances to demonstrate your skills to help you get this job that you so dreamed of, then your emotion, your feeling will be much more positive, and much less anxious.

Similarly, if you speak in front of a lot of people, and you feel anxious, it is because you are afraid that these people will think bad of you, if your performance doesn't please them well. And that is negative, because you are accusing your audiences to be tyrants who would slaughter anyone that does not serve them right. Instead, if you think of your audiences as your loyal fans, who admire you as a star, and want to see and share the best of you, then you will feel much more positive and much less anxious.

Finally, we will talk about another tool to deal with anxiety, that some doctors or therapists would use on their patients, and that is self-love, and self-compassion.

When we were still young or like children, when we screwed up, didn’t know what to do, and felt anxious, we often ran into the arms of our caretakers, our parents, and then we immediately found all the comforts that we ever needed. This tells us that caretakers can effectively ease our anxiety.

But as we all grow up, we don’t have caretakers by our side anymore, we can only care-take ourselves. And we are simply not doing a good job at care-taking ourselves, at least not as good as our parents. We are just not good mothers to our own selves.

But according to Cognitive therapist Dr. Dennis Tirch, and mental health professor Dr. Paul Gilbert, we can practice and improve, to be a good caretaker of our own, to better calm down our anxieties.

And the key to achieve that, is to develop our compassion. We need to cultivate our compassion through helping other people whenever we can, and we need to be compassionate about all living things.

The reason for this is simple: as we help others, feel compassionate about others, our inner mother grows stronger and stronger. And one day, when we feel anxious, lost, we simply turn ourselves into our inner mother, and let her calm us down, and sweep away our anxious emotions, and empower us with love, courage and light.

Therefore as we help others, we simply also help ourselves. The compassion that we cultivate toward other people, is the self-compassion that one day we may sink into, when we are over-anxious, and in need of a mother. And that is the art of curing anxiety, through compassion, and through helping other people.

In the end, it is important to point out that there are still many many more ways to deal with anxiety, that when you feel over-anxious, do not be afraid of asking for help. Do not be afraid of the possibilities of taking pills, and do not be afraid of other people talking about your mental conditions. Simply research the available options to cure anxiety, and ask the people who went through it: are the cures effective? Cure your anxiety well, before it grows big, and turns into a total disaster.

Bibliography:

Tirch, D. D. (2012). The compassionate-mind guide to overcoming anxiety: Using compassion-focused therapy to calm worry, panic, and Fear. New Harbinger Publications.