Posts Tagged ‘worry’

Is Your Teen a Worrier?

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Teens have been described as tightly wound springs, kept at constant tension by their phase of life and physical development. Navigating adolescence is challenging, but some teens have a way of piling on additional pressures. On the one hand is the overachieving teenager who is determined to grab as much of life as possible in as short a time as possible. These teens have incredibly high expectations for themselves; they are perfectionists. Failure is not an option, and when failure happens, as it inevitably does, it is greeted as a catastrophe.

These teens have the type of schedule it takes a computer to calculate, plotted out to the minute, in order to shove in as many activities as possible. They gobble up responsibilities, tasks, and duties with abandon today, heedless to the overindulging consequences tomorrow. They cheat sleep, nutrition, relationships, peace and quiet, and a chance to recharge and reset. They are adolescent Energizer Bunnies; and, as long as they get juiced with whatever they can find or devise, they’ll just keep going and going, doing and doing, until something breaks.

That’s the worker teen. On the other side is the worrier teen. These are the teenagers who can’t seem to finish anything. They worry about everything — whether it will be good enough, whether they should have tried it in the first place, what it will mean if they can’t get it done. They constantly worry about girlfriends, boyfriends, the lack thereof, tests, how they look, what they wear, what other people think. They hesitate starting things or taking risks because they’re worried about how it will turn out. You can’t get them to make a decision to save their life. Even after a decision is made, it’s constantly reevaluated and second-guessed.

The overriding theme for both of these types of teens is anxiety. The worker teen creates a life of anxiety by demanding an extraordinarily high level of personal achievement and perfect outcomes. This state of anxiety, whether manifested in the compulsion to go-go-go or in the hesitation to wait-wait-wait, can result in an anxiety disorder. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and is a state of being anxious all the time about nothing in particular. GAD is living life tightly wound. this isn’t being worried about the test on Tuesday or what to where to the dance on Saturday. Instead, this is waking up day after day with a sense of impending disaster, without really knowing why. It’s just a sure feeling that something terribly wrong is going to happen and being worried about it, tense and alert. The symptoms of GAD include:

  • Living in a state of constant worry, jumping from little thing to little thing, without any relief
  • Trying to stop worrying but unable to
  • Difficulty falling or staying asleep
  • Feeling fatigued, sweaty, light headed, irritable, nauseated, out of breath, shaky, having trouble swallowing, getting headaches or bodyaches

GAD is a diagnosable and treatable disorder, determined by severity and duration of symptoms as well as impact on daily functioning. Overly anxious teens can be taught skills to combat persistent negative thoughts and coping strategies for mitigating worry and fear. This is a pattern of thinking or behaving that neither you nor your teen wants perpetuated into adulthood.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 6 of my new book, The Stranger in Your House. I’ll be posting more excerpts from it here in the weeks to come, but you can receive a FREE copy of the book itself between now and December 15, 2011. To participate in this book giveaway, simply share some of your own thoughts or experiences about raising teenagers – in the comments section of this or future blog posts, or on the Facebook or Twitter pages linked to below.

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Self-Medicating Anxiety 101: Illicit Drugs

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Reilly shut his eyes and desperately tried to tune out his mother’s rants. Why couldn’t she just shut up and leave him alone? He had enough to deal with without all her complaining. It seems complaining was all she did anymore – complain and nag – all in a strident, high-pitched voice that reverberated in the hallway outside his locked door. She wanted to know when he was coming out, when he was going to get serious about going back to school, when he was going to get a job and start contributing to the family. He had no answers to any of those questions. That was the problem; that was the reason he stayed locked in his room as much as he could, smoking pot and trying to forget his lack of answers.

It seemed like the weight of the world was unceremoniously dropped on his shoulders as soon as the high school graduation ceremony ended. He was required to live up to everyone’s expectations of what he should do and who he should be. But Reilly had no answers. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do – let alone what he should do – or even who he was. High school had given him the identity of student. That identity was no longer attractive. He had put up with twelve years of school, and thinking about going to a college environment gave him the sweats.

High school was free; college cost money. His parents would expect a return on that investment. His parents would expect him to help pay. That meant a job. That meant working for other people. That meant doing what other people told him to do. That meant other people telling his he wasn’t good enough. The thought of it sent his stomach into a tailspin. Wiping the sweat off his face, he took in a deep drag, willing the weed to block out this latest round of maternal venting, which appeared to be winding down. Reilly recognized the tone of futility replacing rage in his mother’s voice.

Go away, he said to himself. Why can’t you just leave me alone? With a sense of despair, he realized he wasn’t saying that only to his mother; he was saying it to himself. He was just so tired of living like this, afraid to move in any direction for fear it would turn out badly. Pot was the only thing that kept the shakes at bay. He couldn’t come up with any other way. Reilly’s locked door was turning into less an act of defiance and more a signal of surrender.

According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States. It’s relatively easy to obtain, relatively cheap to purchase, and has a certain social cachet. Its reputation as harmful is hotly debated, usually by those who use it consistently.

The active chemical in marijuana is abbreviated THC. When smoked, THC travels from the lungs into the bloodstream and from there to all the body’s major organs. When THC hits the brain, it produces a high, affecting the pleasure centers. The other brain functions influenced by the THC are memory, thought processes, concentration, sensory perceptions, time sense, and bodily coordination. For something called relatively harmless, it has an extremely powerful effect.

It is possible to become physically dependent on THC just like alcohol. And just like alcohol, when you begin to wean yourself off pot, the withdrawal symptoms can include heightened anxiety, along with irritability, decreased appetite, sleep pattern disturbances, and depression. A little pot has a way of metastasizing into more, sometimes much  more.

Marijuana, of course, isn’t the only illicit drug available; new varieties find their way to market on a regular basis. There is, however, a common thread throughout the currently available crop of illicit drugs, such as cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamines, heroin, ecstasy, crack, and crank. The common thread is increased anxiety associated with using the drug.

These drugs do not decrease activity; they increase it. Using drugs can produce physical symptoms that mimic a panic attack, such as rapid heart rate, insomnia, increased blood pressure, and feelings of paranoia. This is a drug-induced panic attack that sends your body into overdrive. A body in drug-induced overdrive does not have the ability to slow down on its own.

If you use illicit drugs to self-medicate your anxiety, explore your options for getting help today.

SOURCE: Chapter 4 in Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace

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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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Overcoming Anxiety, Worry, and Fear [BOOK GIVEAWAY]

Friday, June 17th, 2011
Overcoming Anxiety, Worry & Fear

Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace by Dr. Gregory Jantz

Through July 31, I’m giving away free copies of my new book, Overcoming Anxiety, Worry, and Fear: Practical Ways to Find Peace. If you’d like a copy, simply comment on this or any other blog post between now and then. I’ll contact you via email for your mailing address. You can also enter to win by commenting on my Facebook page or mentioning the book on Twitter.

For some idea of what to expect, here’s an excerpt from the Introduction….

Do you ever find yourself fearful without really knowing why?

Do you worry about a thousand little things during the day?

Do certain situations cause your heart to race and your palms to sweat?

Do you sometimes feel like you’re smothering, like you can’t get enough air?

Do you all of a sudden feel light-headed, disconnected, and on edge?

Do you wake up in the morning tired and irritable?

Do you have trouble going to sleep or staying asleep?

Does the fear sometimes become so overwhelming that you’re afraid you’re going to die?

Do you avoid certain people, places, and situations because of how fearful they make you feel?

Do you find yourself thinking about all the things that could go wrong?

Anxiety is defined as “a painful or apprehensive uneasiness of the mind, usually over an impending or anticipated ill; a fearful concern or interest; an abnormal or overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physiological signs (as sweating, tension, and increased pulse), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it. Too many of us live out this definition in our lives. The opposite of worry and anxiety – assurance, calm, composure, confidence, contentment, ease, happiness, peace, security, tranquility – is foreign. We’d love to go there; we just don’t know the way.

Over my years in the counseling business, I’ve seen the toll anxiety takes on lives and health. I’ve seen anxiety partner with many other mental health, medical, and chemical dependency concerns, complicating recovery. I’ve seen fear of the future outweigh the horror of the present, resulting in paralysis and an inability to move forward.

I’ve also seen people meet their worries, fears, and anxieties head-on, helping them break through to recovery. I’ve seen the amazing courage of those who refused to cower any longer in a corner of their lives and reached out and up to personal victory. I’ve seen hope win out over despair, trust win out over fear, faith triumph over adversity. I’ve seen people win and gain back their lives.

Would you like to experience peace in your life – a peace you could count on?

Would you like to be able to face your fears and come out the winner?

Would you like to understand what all this fear and worry you feel is about?

Would you like to know how to overcome the panic and really enjoy life again?

Would you like to look forward to the future instead of creeping up on it with dread?

You weren’t created to live a life of worry, with fears and anxieties constantly hedging you in and draining you of happiness, joy, and peace. It’s time to step back from the edge and overcome your anxiety, worry, and fear.

For your free copy of Overcoming Anxiety, Worry, and Fear, comment on this blog post or via the Facebook or Twitter links below.

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Praying for Peace Over Anxiety

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Anxiety is fear, worry and apprehension all rolled into one. It is an overwhelming belief that the worst is coming and that you absolutely are not prepared to handle it. Anxiety produces panic and dread.

The feelings of doom and disaster are so real, it can prompt you to run toward destructive behaviors as the lesser of two evils. In this case, the excessity functions not so much to produce pleasure as to throw up a buffer against those feelings of anxiety. As such, the excessity is given carte blanche; it is ceded a great deal of latitude and power because of the desperation and fear of the anxiety.

When you experience anxiety, God does not want you running to an excessity; He wants you running to Him. The verse that started this chapter says that you and I are not to be anxious about anything but that in everything, by prayer and petition, we are to tell God what we need to deal with our anxiety. This verse is amazing in its all-encompassing nature with its use of the words anything and everything.

God knows that only He is able to counter the power that anxiety can exert over our lives.

If you are anxious, you are to give it over to God completely, totally, without reserve. You are also to adjust your thinking from being anxious to being grateful, which is quite a shift! Being grateful, however, is a very useful tool because it forces you to concentrate on the good things instead of the bad.

Anxiety scoops up any possible bad thing, with the cyclonic power of an emotional whirlwind, and sends you spinning wildly out of control. Gratitude, however, is an anchor, tethering you to God through a remembrance and acknowledgement of the good things. Gratitude also redirects your thinking away from all the thing you can’t control, toward all of the things God can.

Anxiety, in my experience, is like a runaway train. The longer it goes uncontrolled, the more speed it picks up…until it is screaming down the track of your thoughts, pushing anything and everything else out of its way. Only God, through the divine communion found in prayer, through His Spirit, is able to slow that train down and put your thoughts back on proper track.

Prayer allows your mind to rest, to surrender over to God instead of surrendering to the panic. When you do this, God promises that He will give you His peace. Peace and panic cannot exist in the same space. They are mutually exclusive.

Peace is the true antidote for anxiety, not a cover-it-over, just make-it-all-go-away Gotta Have It! excessity.

Source: Chapter 4, “Our Need for Reassurance” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc
 
30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY
If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

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Is Worry Your Default Position?

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

For some people, worry itself can almost be classified as an excessity — as a Gotta Have It! behavior — because of how quickly they default to a worry position. For them, a state of worry is a state of familiarity. Perhaps for you, worry allows you to prepare for any possible eventuality — and because there’s no real need to prepare for something positive, the eventualities you prepare for always range from bad to worse.

Because you are so familiar with and so good at the worry game, your range is broad and all encompassing:

A negative comment from your boss today means you’re going to be fired tomorrow. A stomachache today means an ulcer tomorrow. A headache is a brain aneurysm. A gained pound is obesity. And on and on it goes.  When anything’s possible, there’s no limit to the possible calamity. In some ways, worry is like watching a movie — except it’s your own private disaster film. That internal viewing can be so compelling, you’re blinded to the reality. The what-ifs crowd out the what-is.  Worry is a real scene-stealer, and the scenes being stolen are bits of your life.

When worry is your default setting, you will often turn to excessities in order to provide just a little white noise to drown out worry’s drumbeat. Often, the excessity is food. I have known people who could eat to their feelings of worry the same as someone mindlessly munches popcorn at the movie theater or a bag of chips while watching television. Eating and worry go hand in hand, like drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.

Worry, with its constant “on” switch, negatively impacts health. Every week it seems, we are inundated by another study showing the deleterious effects of worry and stress on our lives. Generally, these are followed up by advertisements touting the latest thing to magically ease our worries and make all that stress melt away. But if any of these things actually worked in the long term, our collective worry would be decreasing, not increasing, along with our need for the latest deworrier.

One of the reasons Jesus came to earth was to help explain to us the way things really are. Remember what Jesus said about worry:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink: or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the bids of the air; they do not sow or reap or stow away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are y0u not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splender was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you? O you of little faith. So do not worry saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. ~Matt. 6:25-34

Every time I read this passage, I am struck by the types of things Jesus says not to wory about. He says not to worry about what you’ll eat, what you’ll drink, or what you’ll wear. These are definite needs; they are even identified as such. Yet Jesus says you’re not to worry about them. That would seem like a flippant, “just don’t'” kind of response to a very real concern if it weren’t for the reason Jesus gives. He says you’re not to worry about them because God already knows you need them. Worry, it appears, takes far too much time and energy away from more important things, like seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness.

Worry is like an illustration I remember seeing of the levee system in New Orleans during Hurrican Katrina.

On the top of the water, the concrete walls of the levee looked so massive and strong. However, under the water the relentless wave action of the water was gradually eating away at the earthen berm upon which the concrete wall stood. Wave by wave, a little more of the earth was gouged out and exposed to the corrosive power of the water. Eventually, the foundation upon which the levee wall stood was completely undermined — and it failed, allowing the water to rush in and flood the area.

I think worry is like that. Wave by wave, gradually over time, worry eats away at the foundation of our lives, at our emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual foundations. Jesus says the answer to worry is to choose not to and instead put your efforts and time into concentrating on the things of God. This activity, by its very nature, will shore up and strengthen your foundations.

Source: Chapter 4, “Our Need for Reassurance” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc
 
30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY
If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

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