Managing Anxiety – Getting Your Head Around it!
Using internal powers of thought and reasoning to fight
anxiety gives the anxious person the strength to be in charge of their own
recovery. Gordon Young outlines how it’s possible to control anxiety from
within if you’re
willing and able to use the mental tools you already possess.
Regaining Control over Catastrophes
A common issue for those who suffer anxiety is
differentiating between what they can and can’t control.
The truth is, we can control very little outside ourselves.
At best, we can influence others, or the course of events we are directly
involved in (in a small way). The world
is far too big and unpredictable for a single human to have power over it.
Many parents understand this when they realise they don’t even have control of the small human
they created, and yet some tie themselves in knots trying to control every
experience and situation their child is placed into. Sadly, this behaviour often has the effect of
making the child anxious too.
Learning that you don’t have control of external events is a
tough lesson. But there is good news. And it’s this:
Anything inside us IS within our
control.
We may not control our every random thought, but we do
control what we focus on, listen to and engage with internally. This is an immense power we should embrace.
·
We
choose which thoughts, feelings and voices we give attention to.
·
We
choose our actions and our inactions.
·
We
choose what we focus on and what we ignore in the world around us. And nobody
and nothing controls us without our compliance.
·
We
choose the risk assessment and decide whether we're comfortable with the
uncertainty in the situation.
·
We
choose whether or not we listen to our fears.
A Convenient Truth
Anxiety is generated from within. It is not an external force. It is important to help sufferers recognise they are creating their own anxiety.
Anxiety is generated from within. It is not an external force. It is important to help sufferers recognise they are creating their own anxiety.
Recognition and acknowledgement that we can choose what we
worry about and decide what concerns we are going to take seriously can change
the way we think.
Teaching an anxious person they are in fact, able to
control their internal reactions to the events life throws at them can be a
reliable antidote to anxiety.
Uncertainty
isn’t always bad
The anxious person sees
a lack of clarity for the future as a bad thing. They wish to know everything that will follow
so they are never caught off guard.
But in reality, a life of complete certainty would be
boring. It is the uncertain spaces where
novelty and surprise exist. A certain life would be devoid of newness and
variety. It is also the uncertain spaces that harbour all of our
potentials.
It may be hard to convince an anxious person that there is
good in uncertainty. But it’s an important step to take.
People who are not anxious accept it is virtually
impossible to create a life where there is no uncertainty. In contrast, an anxious person has a tendency
to catastrophise the future. That is,
everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
In reality, the future the anxious person is so very
worried about will be both good and bad but it will mostly be neutral. Just life, normal and boring. To predict and
fear only negative experiences is a distortion.
A negative future is usually no more likely than a positive
future, and ultimately, neither has happened yet. It is unwritten.
A way to manage this fear is to plan for the worst. Ask yourself, if the situation I’m worried about does go badly, what
will I do? Formulating a plan to deal
with the worst-case scenario takes away the fear and the feeling of
helplessness.
Making a plan answers the ‘what if’ question anxious people constantly
ask themselves diminishes the unknowns and they lose there poignancy if there
is a plan to combat it.
Useful
thinking versus over analysis
Being able to clearly think
though a problem is a very valuable skill.
In contrast, stewing for hours on a problem and overanalysing every
potential outcome is not a good habit to form.
It’s hard to tell how much analysis of a problem is good, and when does it
become over analysis? Dr Michael
Yapko suggests that useful
analysis leads you to a decision or an action. Over-analysis or excessive
rumination tends to loop you back in to the problem.
Overthinking a problem is also a concern because it can
blur the assessment of risk and blow it out of proportion to the problem.
Of course, telling an anxiety sufferer they think too much
is not helpful. Instead, be constructive
by assisting them to come to a conclusion or an action and (this is the hard
part) to move on once this is done.
Returning to the problem will result in more over analysis.
One thing you can do is cover off all the factors that you
can have some reasonable certainty about.
There are usually very predictable outcomes for particular actions, and
only a limited range of likely responses in a given situation.
By considering these options, we may not cover of all the
uncertainties but we can minimise much of the ambiguity around a future
event. Knowing these likely outcomes can
help the anxious person feel more comfortable about the future and break the
cycle of overthinking.
Learn to compartmentalise
This is simply when you recognise there is a time and place
for everything.
It is the ability to let go, to park events and thoughts that are not going to serve you in the situation that you’re currently in (eg. a meeting, trying to sleep) and be able to pick them up again if necessary.
It is the ability to let go, to park events and thoughts that are not going to serve you in the situation that you’re currently in (eg. a meeting, trying to sleep) and be able to pick them up again if necessary.
Before a line of thinking takes you too far from where it
started, stop and decide whether it’s appropriate or timely, considering your location and
companions. If not, stop. Put it aside for later. And when you come back to it, you may find it’s not such a problem after all.
The way forward? Recognition,
acknowledgement and gentle guidance.
Recognising the entrenched habits and thought processes of
someone with anxiety is a much more productive way of helping them deal with
their struggle. An anxious person thinks
very differently to a non-anxious one.
Their priorities and concerns stem from different places.
Acknowledgment of this will allow the family and friends of
the anxious person to validate their loved ones concerns and then, to begin to
help by re directing or rechanneling the anxious thoughts in a more
constructive direction.
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