Your Anxiety: Friend or Foe?
What exactly is anxiety? Is it something to be dreaded or avoided? Is there anything useful or important about anxiety? Is anxiety a friend or a foe? Technically anxiety is a form of fear. Fear is a universal emotion, experienced in all cultures and across time throughout human history (all animals experience it too). Like all emotions, fear and anxiety serve useful functions even if the experience is not comfortable. Positive emotions like love and joy create pleasurable, engaging feelings that we typically want to hold onto. Difficult emotions like anger and fear typically create uncomfortable, distressing experiences that we want to get out of. But if you fearfully avoid situations habitually or too frequently, then you end up making fear your foe—and it can become a relentless one until you learn to face it (fortunately effective therapy for fear, anxiety, and stress is available). First let’s look at how fear, at its very core, when functioning naturally and effectively, is actually your friend.
While at times very uncomfortable, fear and anxiety is not usually your enemy. Fear and its related emotional states are responsible for the survival of the species because they warn you to avoid danger. If you did not have this evolutionary warning system, then when something truly dangerous presented itself, you would be at increased risk of getting harmed, injured, or even killed. This is because fear jolts the nervous system, kind of juices it up, to make your mind and body quickly take emergency measures to avoid getting harmed. So in this sense fear is a true ally, a true friend. Fear also has other positive values. It not only alerts to the presence of danger out in the world, but a bit of anxiety can accompany bodily responses as well. When you get anxious about various unexpected aches, pains, tingles in your body, then fear is alerting you to the possibility of disease or physical injury to possibly get needed medical treatment. Fear also can accompany your thinking, and manifests as worry or apprehension. In this case it causes an intense inner focus on thoughts and ideas: You may feel vague apprehensions and worries because you have forgotten something important, and your anxiety is pulling you inward to try and remember it. You may feel the tug of anxiety as you turn over thoughts about an important project, an issue in a love relationship, or are inwardly reflecting about a difficult dilemma. The fear is helping you to probe, think, and ponder all the different dimensions of the inner problem you are trying to solve.
Fear can also be your friend when it causes you to look at your life in a broader way, taking on an existential quality—am I leading the right kind of life? This can happen when one day you wake up and really take stock of your life direction. What am I moving towards in my life that is meaningful, important, and makes life worthwhile? If in fact you haven’t really examined your life and are on “autopilot”, your fears, worries, and apprehensions about your life direction can cause you to reflect deeply on what makes life worth living. In essence, you become concerned and worried about habitual, deadening modes of existence that rob you of a sense of purpose and meaning in life (e.g. too much TV, video, media, food, alcohol, and other distractions). Such reflection can then lead to taking meaningful action to attain a life worth living.
Our fear is a tricky critter though and has another, all too familiar side. Normal, helpful or friendly fear can appear to turn on you, causing torment and despair. When this occurs fear has you in its grip and is no longer helpful or “friendly”. The turning of fear upon the self happens when you lose track of the helpful and positive messages in fear and start viewing situations, thoughts, inner feelings, and outer circumstances in an overly threatening, scary manner. You actually contribute to this process through habitual avoidance of situation and activities that are not truly dangerous, which heightens your fear response, and leads to more avoidance. This progression is helped along by failing to understand the positive function of “friendly fear or anxiety”. Life inevitably has ups and downs. The downs inevitably cause some pain and are distressing. When you seek to avoid life’s inevitable pains, then the pain becomes more than just pain—you begin to fear it, start avoiding it, and never learn to accept and confront it. Life is bearable when you accept its inevitable ups and downs, but becomes truly unbearable, when you fear and automatically seek to avoid.
Here fear is no longer your friend, and is now becoming your foe or enemy. Essentially you are now overreacting to life’s expected flow of difficulties and you have given your power away to your fears. Because fear now involves intense suffering and does not easily go away when outer and inner circumstances are actually safe, it seems intolerable, insurmountable, and you want to escape this horrible situation at all costs. Fear or anxiety then inflects or turns upon itself and you may develop fear of having fear itself. When you are afraid of your natural fear response, a vicious cycle of fear and avoidance can develop: since you do not want to feel fear, you avoid it at all costs, but when you avoid something that is not truly warranted by the circumstances, you never learn to figure out that there is nothing to be afraid of. Unfortunately irrational, unwanted fear can attach to just about anything: specific situations (driving, heights, bridges, enclosures, etc), social situations (ranging from small talk to speaking up in a group), being out in public, and you may even fear your own emotions (e.g. rather than accept emotions like occasionally getting angry or frustrated, you fear your own emotions—you may be afraid to show or even feel anger; some people are even afraid of positive feelings like love, because they fear getting hurt),
Fear can now become quite irrational and persistent. The end result is getting locked in a vicious cycle of fear and avoidance. If fear were compared to a dog, it is chasing its own tail. At this point your exaggerated fear response may become a full blown Anxiety Disorder. However, thankfully there is actually a very effective and direct method to overcome your irrational fears: you can slowly learn to confront them (yes, they will actually go away the more you do so) and accept, without avoiding, life’s inevitable ups and downs. Actively seek to learn from your fear. Clarify if there is anything important it is trying to tell you (fear as friend) or does it have you in its grip, coloring and twisting your thoughts and perceptions (fear as foe). To confront ones fear by not avoiding the feared situation, you take your power back and return it to its natural state as just one emotion among many that are there to serve you.
If you are struggling with anxiety, fear, stress or other important unresolved issues, you deserve to get the help you need to lead a better, more fulfilling life. Feel free to call me anytime. It can be a great relief to open up about your concerns to a trained professional.
Thank you for reading this article and I hope it was helpful. Good luck! Please post your comments or reactions on my website. To get more information on important wellness and mental health issues please go to The Ryan Review.
PTSD, Traumatic Stress, and You!
What is trauma, how does it affect you, and what can you do to overcome it? If you or a loved one has experienced a recent or past trauma, been abused as a child or in a current relationship, you may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or a related trauma based response. Trauma causes reactions like PTSD but also depression and other anxiety disorders like panic, phobia’s, chronic worry or Generalized Anxiety Disorder, hypervigilance, numbing of normal responding, mistrust of others, social anxiety disorder, and many other concerns, especially substance abuse. Generally speaking if you successfully resolve the trauma, it will also help to reduce or eliminate other related symptoms!
Approximately 15 to 25% of any traumatic event leads to the development of PTSD and especially severe traumas called “high magnitude trauma” may double this rate! Interpersonal violence, such as torture and assault, and prolonged and/or repeated events such as childhood sexual or physical abuse, are more likely than natural events (like earthquakes or natural disasters) to results in a traumatic response. PTSD involves a cluster of three key symptoms:
- re-experiencing (nightmares, flashbacks, or intrusive thoughts/images)
- increased arousal (feeling on edge, easily startled, chronic tension or worry)
- avoidance or numbing of responsiveness (avoiding situations related to the trauma, like where it happened, or learning to numb out your normal responsiveness to life)
The type, amount or duration, and age at exposure to trauma all play a role in its development. While psychological trauma can occur at any point in the lifespan, trauma has its most profound impact when it occurs during early childhood or adolescence and becomes less pervasively damaging with later onset. Trauma that occurs during these developmentally vulnerable times can lead to PTSD, and/or an array of other difficult conditions and symptoms.
The term “complex PTSD” was coined by Dr. Judith Herman in 1992 to describe the effects of early trauma. “Complex” traumas often involve parents, siblings or caretakers as perpetrators, and tend to occur multiple times while the emerging self is forming. These types of traumas cause disruptions in fundamental relationships. When trauma occurs during childhood, is frequent or prolonged, and/or involves interpersonal abuse (such as childhood sexual or physical abuse), other distressing symptoms in addition to PTSD may develop. These symptoms include: disturbances in emotional development, problems with clear thinking, physical illnesses, and potentially serious disruptions in your relationships or ability to connect with others.
Successful Treatment of Trauma and PTSD: There are effective, therapeutic approaches to address past trauma based on rigorous scientific research: Prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive processing therapy, and EMDR. All of these therapies are helpful in that they allow you to process traumatic material in various ways. For any therapy to be truly effective you need to develop a solid, trusting relationship with your therapist and be ready to work on these issues. Since trauma, especially when encountered in childhood, can affect your connection with others, the link formed between your therapist and you is very important. The degree you feel connected to your therapist will help you gradually confront what happened to you. Disclosing and processing traumatic material (memories, images, related thoughts and feelings) is the primary way of recovering from Trauma and PTSD. The goal is to confront rather than avoid traumatic material and also to create a coherent life history that contains both the trauma story as well as your personal successes. Successful treatment would gently encourage you to feel and engage the emotions associated with the trauma as you progress in therapy. By doing so you can move beyond your trauma and into a life worth living!
If you are struggling with trauma, PTSD, anxiety and depression or other important unresolved issues, you deserve to get the help you need to lead a better, more fulfilling life. Feel free to call me anytime. It can be a great relief to open up about your concerns to a trained professional.
Please post your comments or reactions on my website. Thank you for reading this article and I hope it was helpful. Good luck! To get more information on important wellness and mental health issues please go to The Ryan Review.
Moving Through Depression, Anxiety, & Stagnation by Finding a Path With Heart
Are you on a path with heart—one with meaning and purpose? Are you struggling with difficult emotions like depression and anxiety? Are you numb and tuned out? Some emotional pain is unavoidable as you travel through life’s many directions and try to figure out your unique way. Sometimes it is painful when you are doing the right thing. Other times you may encounter anxiety and depression because you are off track. A more basic question is: are you even trying to find a path with heart, one that leads to your full potential as a unique human being, or have you given up on yourself or lost touch? The great Mahatma Ghandi once said: “He who loses his individuality loses all”. Frequently people settle thereby diminishing themselves and what they have to offer to others. They end up doing what was expected of them by their family, friends, or community—or they take the easy way out, resulting in suffering and diminishment of the human spirit.
A path with heart is living in harmony with your unique inner spirit. It is that sense of aliveness that gives your life purpose, meaning, and direction. Hence, it is a deeper, more encompassing process related to being alive in all the different aspects of living: work, relationships, family, hobbies, interests, drives, etc. It is both the deepest sense of you as an individual as well as your distinct way of connecting with others. Some people describe the process of finding a path with heart as “the individuation process”. Dr. James Hillman, well known Jungian Analyst, writes about individuation using the metaphor of the acorn. The mighty Oak Tree originates from the tiny acorn—the full potential of that tree is contained in its seed, the acorn, which can grow into a unique tree (no two oak trees are exactly the same). If the acorn is not planted in the right place, attended to properly, given enough sun and water, it will never grow. The same is true for you—there is an inner kernel or acorn that is unique to your own spirit, your own self, your own identity, that needs caring and nurturing to develop. That kernel is in a way like a blue print for your life, except it is not totally fixed or fully determined, and develops with proper care—but if you do not follow it, your life will not develop as it should—you become out of balance and do not become true to your distinct inner nature.
Tuning into the unique rhythms of your inner self is the task of a lifetime—it is never too late (or early) to start and it never truly ends. Sometimes emotions like depression and anxiety are clues that you are missing this path, out of sync, as if a part of you knows you are off course and objects, sending neurotic waves of anxiety and depression. Other times you may feel numb and detached. Are you “checking out” with substances, like alcohol or drugs, or through other numbing pursuits like excessive TV viewing, gaming, overeating or other soul killing activities? Sometimes being true to yourself can feel like you are betraying others, thus bringing up guilt and more anxiety. Never forget the famous words: “to thine own self, be true!” If you are not true to yourself, who else is going to do this for you? Being true to yourself is not always easy.
Finding a path with heart or consciously following the individuation process can be facilitated by making a deliberate decision to do so. To better help you tune into your inner process, here are a few suggestions. First, value yourself enough to put a priority on YOU. Joseph Campbell used the phrase: “Follow your bliss!” In other words, find out what moves you, look inside at what is important to you and START doing those things immediately. This is your one and only life. Do not cheat yourself or sell yourself short.
Second, and related to above, ultimately you must realize that a path with heart is specific to you and no one else—you must find your own way. Do not let other people define this path for you—if you listen closely, attending carefully to your own experience, eventually you will connect with an “inner voice”, an inner sense of your own conscience, apart from what “society dictates”.
Third, start writing down your dreams. Keep a dream journal. Your dreams are more important then you may realize and represent parts of you that emerges when your defenses are down, expressed in their own symbolic language. By writing down dreams, you connect with your deepest inner self. Just making this connection is important, regardless of whether you understand your dreams or not. Eventually they will begin to make sense to you as you develop a kind of dialogue with your unconscious psyche. Fourth, in order to tune into a path with heart, you must understand the life that you have lived, what it is, as well as the major influences that formed who you are—this will allow you to make better choices about where your life is going and how you would like it to form. One technique for facilitating this process involves writing out a detailed Timeline or Lifeline to help you get started (click here for instructions). In a previous article, The False Self Depression Syndrome”, I have made other suggestions that are useful here as well—be honest in your interactions, meditate, and engage in some creative endeavor.
Finding and then living a path with heart can involve making difficult choices and requires carefully turning inward to really look at your life. Sometimes painful feelings are encountered during this process. In this capacity as a depth oriented psychologist, having integrated a variety of healing techniques into my therapeutic approach, I may be of assistance. Please feel free to call if you or someone you know could benefit from my help. Thank you for reading this article and I hope it was helpful!
To get more information on important wellness and mental health issues please go to The Ryan Review.
