Anxiety! How To Deal With It And Use It For Good - Self-development

Human life, between the pain of birth and the fear of dying, is filled with anxiety and gastronomic delights that seize anxiety. Because of the eternal anxiety, the majority do not live as they would like, but exist in the hope of a bright future

1. What is anxiety?

What can you do about this feeling? Can I turn it off altogether? Or use it for good?

Anxiety is excitement with which you don't know what to do. It seems that you feel something latent, but you cannot differentiate it, realize it and cope with it

Anxiety often covers the good, patient, who are constantly loaded and loaded by others, and the “loaded” cannot, due to their decency, emotionally and timely express everything that they have accumulated. Unfulfilled needs accumulate dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction is transformed into anxiety.

2. How is fear different from anxiety?

Anxiety is a more vague concept than fear. Fear is a more concrete, concentrated, keen feeling. If you ask a person what he is afraid of, he will usually answer you; and if you ask why he is anxious, he will freeze for a while.

Background anxiety is often a sign of unfulfilled / unfulfilled exaggerated demands on oneself and the world. The slogan “I deserve better” worsened the lives of many people. Dissatisfaction very often transforms into fear, and fear transforms into anxiety. For example, dissatisfaction with one's income is transformed into fear for the future, and fear is transformed into anxiety.

Where much is not clear, much is not defined (and now this is the situation), anxiety arises there. Instead of honestly admitting such uncertainty and its limitations in it, one of the psychological defenses for complementing and harmonizing the picture of the world is to create a Super-friend, Super-Being, Super-Hero, whom you can ask for, and He will come to the rescue, reduce uncertainty and give confidence. That is why Superheroes are so popular among infantile personalities. Many teen films have been made about this in Hollywood.

Uncertainty always plays into the hands of the sellers of fear. They are trying in every possible way to increase it by painting a frightening picture of the world in which a person feels powerless. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, and anxiety breeds fear. This is a favorite way to manipulate.

Whenever you feel anxious, notice that someone may have scared you and benefited from it

3. What happens if you ignore anxiety for a long time?

To stifle anxiety, some pretend that they live with all their last strength. Worry is not something bad, it is often a pointer to an unmet need. We must try to make a choice. Choice is an attempt to manage uncertainty and anxiety. Once you make a choice, uncertainty and anxiety subside as a result of the choice you make.

Anxiety leads to procrastination. The primitive part of the brain tells us not to do anything until we are absolutely sure that it is safe, until we stop being afraid. It spins over and over in our head, and it starts to feel like we really don't need to act until we're ready. And we postpone actions until later if they cause us anxiety - be it paying taxes, working on a new project, a difficult conversation, or even going to the dentist. At the heart of all this is the belief that the painful consequences of decisive behavior can be worse than the consequences of doing nothing - and this course is “safest” until the anxiety subside.

Robert Leahy

If you push out the alarm all the time, you can get a panic attack, and you won't be able to kill all the attackers.

If we avoid anxious situations, then this "solves" the problem only in the moment, interfering with its awareness, driving it even deeper and allowing it to control us. A lot of psychic energy is spent on suppression of this corral. Avoidance strategies don't help. The command “don't think about it” means only the transfer of power from consciousness to the unconscious.

4. Methods of dealing with anxiety

To soothe anxiety, you first need to understand what fears are associated with it, and not run away from them, but even go to meet them, live these fears. Going towards your fears of uncertainty, you go into the zone of your potential development. Divide fears into rational and irrational. Anxiety can only be "lived" through your body. For example, to understand where it is located in the body, in the form of what muscle clamps, what thoughts and images, what feelings are associated with anxiety.

What helps with anxiety?

The most effective strategy is the collaboration of a psychotherapist, psychiatrist (if indicated) and a fitness trainer.

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Psychotherapist Ilya Shabshin believes: “… often the experience is caused not so much by the situation itself as by how a person thinks about it. For example, there are two hundred passengers on an airplane, they are in the same external conditions, but their emotions are different: one is scared, another is happy, the third is calm. In the process of cognitive therapy, thoughts, beliefs, rules are “pulled out” of the client's mind, which in fact cause negative experiences. After that, they are questioned, checked and most often replaced with more realistic, rational ones. And this, in turn, reduces anxiety or eliminates it altogether.
• Body-oriented psychotherapy (more about the method).
• Physical exercise, movement, walking at a fast pace of at least 10, and preferably 20 thousand steps; you can beat a punching bag or an imaginary sparring partner, shout in the open air. Well, if the adrenaline goes off scale, and anxiety develops into rage, then strength exercises. Massage from muscle clamps due to constant tension due to being in anxiety also helps. It must be remembered that all physical exercise is often only a relief of symptoms, and not a solution to deep problems.
• Breathing exercises, breathe out your anxiety.
• With the testimony of a doctor, you can resort to medications. It is, of course, possible to extinguish your anxiety only with drugs, without understanding its root causes, but this is not a solution to the problem. On the other hand, there is no need to give up medications prescribed by a doctor.
• Psychotherapy, existential psychotherapy,revising your values, transforming your own views on anxiety not as a problem, but as a light bulb signaling that you need to solve the problem; disidentification with the problem, an attempt to look at it from the side, from a different angle, from another dimension. Before you boldly look your fears in the eye, you need to carefully, respectfully, take turns getting them out of the unconscious, preferably with the help of a specialist. If you get them all at once, then it can end in retraumatization. Anxiety must be correlated with specific fears, and then the fear must be translated into desire. Often, "I'm afraid" means "I want to unconsciously." For example, I am afraid of death - I unconsciously want to "die" and therefore I live on adrenaline, to the fullest, exposing myself to unjustified risks. For example, in psychological gestalt groups there is an exercise to identify the main fear. The participant is asked what he is most afraid of. Very often they say that they are afraid of losing their child. Then it is proposed to replace the word "I'm afraid" with the word "I want". For the majority, this formulation of the question is a strong shock. This shows the dark side of love, the dual structure of our fears and desires. And, ultimately, a better understanding of oneself and awareness of the new reality.

Expert commentary

Irina Solovieva, psychologist, certified specialist in body-oriented psychotherapy, biosynthesis, bodynamics, psychosynthesis, work with addiction, art therapist, certified hakomi therapist

The state of anxiety always finds reflection in the body, leads to tension, to difficulty with relaxation. If the state of anxiety continues for a long time, the tension becomes chronic, somatic symptoms, sleep problems and psychosomatic disorders can occur.

The topic of anxiety is especially relevant in our time of pandemic, it becomes a problem for many. Uncertainty is now a given. How do you deal with anxiety? How to support yourself and loved ones? A combination of psychological support and bodily support is important. As the author of the article writes, with the problem of anxiety, it is important to get psychological help, if necessary - psychiatric. This help will be more effective if supplemented with body work.

Complex impact is an important principle of helping, because a person is whole, mental, emotional and bodily spheres are connected and united. It is important to get both outside support and to develop an internal self-support system, to establish an optimal self-regulation scheme.

We cannot always change external circumstances, but we can regulate our state.

Expert commentary

Ilya Shabshin, a practicing psychologist, specialist in the field of individual counseling and conducting psychological and business trainings

A very accurate, in my opinion, idea - that anxiety is a signal light, therefore it is wrong to treat it unambiguously negatively.

I fully agree that avoiding anxious situations does not solve the problem. Quite the opposite: the relief that a person feels “in the moment” can interfere with understanding the causes of anxiety and getting rid of it.

Based on my counseling experience, I might add that CBT methods work effectively with anxiety. The fact is that often the experience is caused not so much by the situation itself as by how a person thinks about it. For example, there are two hundred passengers on an airplane, they are in the same external conditions, but their emotions are different: one is scared, another is happy, the third is calm. In the process of cognitive therapy, thoughts, beliefs, rules are “pulled out” of the client's mind, which in fact cause negative experiences. After that, they are questioned, checked and most often replaced with more realistic, rational ones. This, in turn, reduces anxiety or eliminates it altogether.

Anxiety is often caused by exaggerated demands on oneself, to which a person is afraid not to comply, and also "what will Princess Marya Aleksevna say?" - evaluative dependence, concern about the opinions of other people. When a person realizes these moments, he has the opportunity to rethink them, find a different point of view, take a new position. A new perception of a difficult situation, a different attitude towards it inevitably leads to a change in the emotional reaction, namely, to the extinction of anxiety, to a calmer state.