Archive for July, 2011

How To Reduce Anxiety Through Objective Thought

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

What if your thoughts aren’t correct? What if they aren’t really even the truth? Thoughts are not events. They are not objective; they are subjective.

OBJECTIVE VS. SUBJECTIVE THOUGHT

In the world of anxiety, there is a vast difference between the objective and the subjective.

Objective means something most people would agree upon. The dictionary definition of objective is “in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers: having reality independent of the mind.” Objective things have a reality independent of the mind because the mind can, sometimes, really mess things up.

Subjective is the opposite of objective. The word subjective means “characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent mind.”

So there is a reality to what happens that is independent of what you think about it. For many people, this is a foreign concept. Truth, to them, consists of their impressions, thoughts, opinions, biases, feelings, and assumptions.  I think, therefore it is. Subjective thoughts are perfectly suited to feed the monster. The thoughts are yours; the monster is yours. The subjective thoughts you feed your monster are tailor-made to strengthen it.

This is not easy for some people to accept. Their subjective perceptions are so strong that they drown out objective reality. These people live within a world of delusion where what they think will happen will, even if all evidence points to the contrary. It is a world where the subjective crowds out the objective. It is a world of monsters and terrors and things that go bump in the night.

Now, granted, not everyone with anxiety goes to this extreme. There are some people who actually believe false things are true; we call them delusional and obsessive thinkers. There are other people who merely fear that false things are true; we call them anxious, worried, concerned, overwrought, and stressed.

When anxiety and panic set in, it’s helpful to stop and intentionally calculate the odds of what you fear. Fear lends certainty to even the most far-fetched possibility. How many people die every year of snake or spider bites? The number is astronomically small, yet people live daily with a fear of both. Of the many people who fly every year, how many actually die in plane crashes? Again, the number is extremely small, yet a fear of flying affects a large number of people.

In the midst of feeling anxious, it can be difficult to think objectively, but it is extremely important.

HOW TO BE OBJECTIVE ABOUT YOUR FEARS

If you’re fearful of flying or snakes or spiders, you can always look up the statistical odds of injury or death. Depending on what you fear, however, there may not be any statistics. I

If you’re worried about something like losing your job, you’re going to need to think back over the course of your own life to find the data. For example, how many jobs have you had and how many jobs have you lost? If you have lost jobs in the past, are conditions now the same as they were then?

If you’re worried about something like being humiliated in public, consider how many times you’ve been in a public situation versus how many times you’ve actually been humiliated.

Fear establishes a toehold in your mind, then infiltrates your thoughts, establishing a stronghold in your mind, leading to a stranglehold over your life.

ASKING FOR HELP

Depending on your level of anxiety, you may not be able to work through these calculations on your own. You may need to discuss these issues with a professional counselor, someone trained to walk you through the process and help you separate objective knowledge from your subjective perceptions. If that’s the case, don’t feel bad about it. All of us have issues we have difficulty seeing in our lives because we’re so close to them. It’s why talking things over with trusted family members or friends is invaluable.

The important thing, if you aren’t able to work through this on your own, is to ask for help.

Anxieties breed in secret. Hidden fears intensify. Place your fears outside yourself and you’ll be amazed at how quickly they are reduced to actual size.

Share some of your thoughts and/or experience on anxiety and receive a FREE copy of my new book, Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace (from which the information above is excerpted). Comment here, or via the Twitter and Facebook pages linked to below.

Feeling depressed? It could be fueled by anxiety, or vice versa. To consider this, check out our Depression and Anxiety Questionnaire.

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Understanding the Link Between Anxiety and Depression

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

I have seen firsthand the link between anxiety and depression. The possibility for the chronically anxious person to become depressed is real, and the reasons can be compelling.

The anxious state is like living on red alert. The mind and the body are in a heightened condition all the time. However, unlike the temporary thrill of a roller coaster, this ride never ends. Any relatively stable stretch only provides time to ramp up for the next neck-bending climb and heart-pounding fall. The cycle keeps repeating itself over and over.

For some people, there comes a point when it all becomes too much; they just want to shut down. But if you can’t get off and the ride never ends, the only alternative is to stop reacting to the ride. Unfortunately, the ride is their life. By checking out of the anxiety, they are checking out of life. Depression becomes a way to numb themselves, to check out, to experience relief from the chaos.

How Anxiety Leads to Depression

When the body and the mind are overstressed and taxed to the maximum by circumstances, such as ongoing anxiety, depression is a very real possibility. This is not a conditional crisis brought on by a single event or situation but a chronic crisis state brought on by the ongoing demands of anxiety.

In some people, when their coping and caring mechanisms are depleted, they shut down into depression. Depression begins as a coping mechanism for anxiety but becomes intertwined with and strengthened by the anxiety. Both are fueled by feelings of helplessness to overcome and hopelessness of things ever getting better.

One woman I worked with put it this way:

“When I first started feeling depressed, frankly, I was relieved. I just reached a point where, if all I could feel was panic, I would rather not feel anything at all.”

At first, she welcomed the shroud of depression as an acceptable antidote to the hyperstate of her panic. The weight of her depression, however, was not enough to tamp down her feelings of panic and anxiety indefinitely. Those stabs of sheer terror and worry began to find cracks in her numbed facade, only now she felt less able to handle them, struggling as she was with her depression as well.

Even in the panic, she’d been able to experience brief moments of enjoyment and pleasure. With the depression, those were gone. It didn’t take long for the anxiety and panic attacks to become even more pronounced, as her resiliency faded with the depression. Despair was now a constant companion, compounded by the failure of various medications.

“If my family hadn’t intervened and demanded I get help, I could have so easily decided to end things altogether.”

How Depression Leads to Anxiety

I have also seen the reverse, where depression occurs first, followed by anxiety in the form of panic attacks.

It’s as if depression has leached out all hope, joy, and optimism from a person’s life. Denuded of these life-affirming characteristics, the person becomes vulnerable to an anxiety attack. When the assault takes place, the person has no emotional stability to assist in placing the experience in proper perspective.

A single, transitory fear, worry, or concern blossoms into a full-blown panic attack. Once that possibility, that potential, is activated, a new paradigm is created. Panic-once means panic-possible, forever. This kind of helpless feeling is in perfect harmony with the bleak outlook of depression.

Whether anxiety or depression occurs first, when combined, both will tell you things can never get any better, that you are helpless to effect positive change. They can appear like twin juggernauts, barreling down and flattening your life and your ability to experience relief. When these two are joined together, they create an even higher threshold for recovery.

Are you living with depression fueled by anxiety, or vice-versa? Share some of your thoughts and/or experience and receive a FREE copy of my new book, Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace (from which the information above is excerpted). Comment here, or via the Twitter and Facebook pages linked to below.

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How Anxiety Fuels Codependency

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

Anxiety strangles relationships, but the way this is accomplished can look very different, in what is known as relational isolation and relational attachment. Both scenarios take a two-sided relationship and crush it into a self-centered, one-sided reality.

RELATIONAL ISOLATION

For some people living with anxiety, isolation is the only way to cope. Just as migraine sufferers must remove themselves from all outside stimuli, anxiety sufferers must remove themselves from all relational stimuli.

These people draw into self whenever stressed. These people demand that the other person be ready and available to support them without any thought of reciprocity. These people are irritable and moody. These people have multiple reasons and rationales for their behavior, each one emphasizing their need and minimizing their responsibility. These people expect everyone else to make accommodation for them; they live in the altered state of anxiety crisis.

All of their being is focused on what they need to weather the storm, to make it through, to put an end to the panic and pain. On red alert, they promote themselves to captain of the relationship and demote the other person to deckhand, relegated to mopping up after them.

It becomes a lopsided, one-way relationship that breeds resentment and disillusionment.

RELATIONAL ATTACHMENT

With relational attachment, the overwhelming feeling for the other person is one of being suffocated by the anxious person.

The anxious person needs to know where the other person is, what they’re doing, who they’re with. The anxious person bleeds that worry into the relationship, becoming suspicious about the other person, concerned about their fidelity, their commitment to the relationship. The anxious person needs ongoing reassurance that everything is okay. It is crucial for everything to be okay, for the relationship is everything.

The relationship has become a coping mechanism for the anxiety and panic. The relationship allows the anxious person to be diverted from their worries, concerns and panic. This diversion requires fuel. At some point, it is not enough for the relationship to simply be “okay.” Okay only goes so far. Stability is required; you want to know the ride is safe. However, a safe ride doesn’t produce the thrill, the outlet, you’re looking for. It doesn’t provide a diversion from the anxiety.

The stressed person is on guard and alert, watching for any signs of shift in the relationship, which has become so necessary to provide an outlet for anxiety. The other person feels imprisoned in the bonds of the relationship, chafing at the constant scrutiny and irritated by the repeated demands to prove himself or herself.

CODEPENDENCY

These two types of anxious people are opposites in many ways. So what happens when these two opposites attract? It is often called codependency. The avoidant, isolated person will often be drawn to the attachment person, and vice versa.

The attachment person will be drawn to an avoidant person, recognizing the high potential for crisis, for diversion.

The avoidant person will be drawn to an attachment person, recognizing the willingness to subjugate self for the sake of the relationship.

Codependency in anxiety relationships is further complicated by the presence of other self-medicating behaviors. I say other self-medicating behaviors because the attachment person is already using the relationship as a form of self-medicating, of numbing, or diversion. The avoidant person, as a way of isolating, may turn to self-medicating too. The avoidant person doesn’t need the attachment person to self-soothe. Instead, the avoidant person needs the attachment person to facilitate and support the self-soothing, self-medicating behaviors.

Are you in a codependent relationship fueled by anxiety? Share some of your thoughts and/or experience and receive a FREE copy of my new book, Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace (from which the information above is excerpted).

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