Category: Anxiety

1/25/2017

What is a purposeful life?   If you are not living a purposeful life, what kind of life are you living? Is it accidental, unintentional, or does it seem at times as other forces are influencing what you do on a daily basis? Do you get to decide how you think, feel, and behave every day or do you feel less in control of who you are in the moments that pass throughout the day?    Are you driving the car or are you letting the car take you where it wants to go? Sometimes it can seem that the car takes us away and that we somehow magically arrive at our destination as we seemingly detach from the driving experience as we are in the process of driving. That sounds a bit silly but when you stop to think about this for a second, I bet you can think of several times when maybe you adopted a more passive role in your life and waited for things to happen rather than taking the initiative to make things happen the way you wanted or intended.

Living a purposeful life starts with being in the moment and being mindful of your thoughts and feelings. Being in the moment is simply focusing on the here-and-now. It is sometimes easier to describe mindfulness and being in the moment by first stating what it is not. Mindfulness is not thinking about what will happen later today, tomorrow, or later this week. It is not spending hours of the day trolling through social media, texts, and email on your computer or cell phone. It is not worrying about if something bad will happen, being in a rush to get to school, splitting your attention among multiple projects, or sitting on the couch while you unconsciously eat a pint of Rocky Road ice cream.   There is a growing movement in the field of mindfulness research that shows that being present and in the moment and being intensely focused and mindful of yourself and your immediate surroundings leads to reduced emotional and psychological distress and a greater sense of well-being. (Carmody & Beer, 2008; Lau et al.,2006; )

Being mindful is simply being aware of what is going on in and around you. It's being aware of thoughts and feelings, allowing them to occur, not attaching our judging them, but simply observing and experiencing them, as if you were watching them from the bank of a stream as they float by.    Mindfulness can be a form of meditation. For thousands of years, meditation has been well documented in its effects of increasing a sense of well being and positive health.

Mindfulness has many practical purposes and has been used globally, in meditative circles, for centuries, if not millennia. Professionally, mindfulness has been utilized for decades in the treatment of anxiety, depression, stress management, PTSD, AD/HD, weight management, and chronic pain management.   Take anxiety for example.   When you worry about something, you are thinking about something you anticipate happening in the future. Some have referred to this as praying for what you don’t want.   You hope it doesn’t happen, but you worry that it might. If the unpleasant thing does happen, that is unfortunate. Hopefully you have taken active steps to minimize its effect on you. If you spend hours or days worrying about it, you have essentially doubled your stress about it. If it doesn’t and you continue to worry about it, you still have contributed to the stress in your life. Your thoughts become fixated on the thing you choose to worry about, and you likely miss out on what is happening around you, at that moment With mindfulness, you choose what to do with your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You can continue to fixate and ruminate about these thoughts. You can try to ignore the thoughts. Or, you can be mindful of the thoughts and feelings as they occur. Keep reading for an example of mindfulness meditation.

I believe that to first start living a purposeful life, one needs to truly be aware of what they value the most. Many of my clients have told me that what is important to them, among other things, is their health, their career or academic achievements, family, exercise, leisure and recreational time, safety and security, spirituality, meaningful friendships and relationships, and emotional stability.   It is often what we value the most the guides our behavior. Yet I think many people who aren’t living a purposeful life, often get de-railed or sidetracked from what is important to them. This may be, in part, due to stress, competing demands, or other distractions that lead us in different directions than we intended.

There are so many electronic devices, gadgets, and social media outlets that purport to help you get and stay organized, connect with others, and network with the world at large. I'll be the first to admit that many of these devices and outlets do this very well. Yet I wonder sometimes if the electronic revolution that keeps rolling on at break-neck speeds is truly enhancing our quality of life. After all, we spend so much time planning for the future, connecting with others, organizing our busy schedules, and working harder at being successful, I wonder if we are missing what is happening right now, in the present moment, within ourselves. Are we failing to appreciate the here and now and all the wonderful potential things that happen in the moment. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” .

Example of Mindfulness
I was driving home the other evening after a long day of torrential rain. The clouds in the west were starting to break up just as the sun was setting. It looked like the sky was on fire as the sun reflected beneath the storm clouds. There were wonderful hues of orange, lavender, red, pink, yellow, and orange. I had just finished a very busy and rather hectic day in the office and my mind was still racing with the events of the day. Yet this moment so strongly captured my attention that I had to pull the car over and soak in the moment. In that moment, it felt good to just be.

At that moment I became intensely focused on the beautiful sight in front of me. I started to focus simply on my breathing. I had been listening to some soft music in the car that simply became background noise that I did not let interfere with what quickly evolved into a very mindful experience for me. I continued to simply focus on my breathing and the visual masterpiece in front of me. Thoughts of the day passed through my mind. I did not become disturbed or irritated with this. I simply and casually observed my thoughts and gradually brought my attention back to my breathing and to the visually stunning colors in front of me. I continued to remain in this scene for many minutes. As those minutes passed, I noticed the tension in my body, casually observing and noticing while continuing to breath. I noticed sounds around me. I did not let them distract me and gradually and effortlessly returned my attention on what and where I wanted to focus.   I began to feel more calm and peaceful in the moment and generally felt a sense of general well being begin to grow within me.   As the sun began to diminish and the sight began to fade, I returned to my surroundings in my car and proceeded to continue my journey home.   Yet in doing so, I continued to be very focused on what was around me as I resumed my breathing in an uninterrupted way.

This experience reminded me that often enough, the more things we have in our life that purport to improve the quality of our lives, only distract us from being more centered and focused on what is important, ourselves and our overall well-being. Returning to what is important, and being mindful in the present moment, helped me to reduce background stress, quiet anxiety and stress- filled thinking, and helped me to foster and inner peace that I think is so elusive today in not just my life, but most people’s lives that exist in the very busy and frantic world of today.

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11/9/2015

Anxiety - Acceptance and Management

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Catching it Early
If you suffer from chronic anxiety, or panic attacks, there are two generally broad ways to address it. When you catch it early, there are many ways to manage, it to prevent it from becoming completely overwhelming or exploding into a full blown panic attack. But first, you need to be able to catch it early, which means recognizing the early signs of anxiety that can be unique to the individual.   Some examples of early warning signs that can lead to anxiety include worrying, ruminating thoughts, shallow breathing, light perspiration, lack of sleep, increased stress or unwanted stimulation, poor self-care, dehydration, over-committing yourself, or when your thoughts drift toward the future and are less in the present moment. Strategies that many find effective who can catch anxiety early include deep breathing, imagery, progressive muscle relaxation, and other mindfulness exercises.

More Serious Anxiety Attacks
When anxiety is not caught early, symptoms and warning signs can become more severe, leading to full-blown panic attacks.   Common symptoms of heightened anxiety include a sense of dread or impending fear, tightness in chest, tingling in the head or extremities, rapid and/or shallow breathing, rapid heart beat, racing and ruminating thoughts, a sense of helplessness, dizziness or lightheadedness, and sweating.

When symptoms of anxiety are more severe, or if you are experiencing a full-blown panic attack, the key to managing this is not to struggle or become increasingly alarmed as this can actually exacerbate it and make it worse. The “Oh no, I’m having a panic attack! I can’t take this! I’ve got to make it stop somehow!” is one of the last things you want to think to yourself as you find that your level anxiety can only increase as a result of this line of thinking.

Unfortunately this is the experience for many while in a heightened state of anxiety. While in a full blown panic attack, the event seems to feed on itself, growing in intensity and strength as the sufferer realizes what is happening. There is an intense need or compulsion to fight against the panic, to desperately do or try anything to avoid what they believe is coming. Irrational beliefs of a worst case scenario fill the person’s thoughts and can become completely overwhelming; thus launching them into a panic spiral. The paradoxical thing that happens is that the very struggle to flee anxiety only intensifies the panic, making the symptoms worse, and leaving the person feeling very helpless and powerless to control the anxiety. While the person attempts to control their anxiety, the act of attempting to regain control, telling themselves to “stop” “relax”, “calm down” l can actually feed the anxiety and make the suffering worse. Sometimes a friend or loved one will say these things too, giving the person experiencing the anxiety attack the impression that its is imperative that they calm down.   I once heard someone say, “Telling someone to relax while experiencing a panic attack is like telling a drowning person to swim.”

Acceptance & Management (not control)
What many experts in the field now realize is that once anxiety reaches a certain point, it cannot be controlled, per se, but it can be managed and the duration can be greatly reduced, usually through acceptance, recognizing the short-term duration and eventual cessation of an anxiety attack, and talking yourself through the panic as it happens, recognizing that you are not in imminent harm and that you are not going to die or suffer irreparable injury.   How one manages severe anxiety is important to how effective they can be in doing so. Self-medicating through the use of drugs or alcohol, while offering temporary relief, are ineffective in treating the root of the problem and if fact usually only make it worse. Similarly, avoiding anxiety provoking situations only negatively reinforce the anxiety.   Seeking a qualified clinician that is trained in cognitive behavioral therapy specific to anxiety disorders is a good step. There are also very good self-help books out there to help manage stress and anxiety, including Active Relaxation by Dr. Jennifer Abel, and Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Steven Hayes.

While there are many techniques to help you manage or avoid common anxiety, (too many to list here in fact,) what most have in common is to place one’s efforts in the very place where anxiety starts, irrational thinking. Consider the quote by Irving Berlin, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90 % how you take it.” Being able to challenge or substitute irrational thoughts with accurate but more realistic ways of thinking can minimize the discomfort that anxiety brings to many lives. Anxiety is one of many normal emotions that everyone experiences from time to time. Anxiety can be acknowledged and managed. Frantic efforts to avoid it only exacerbate and enhance its negative effects.

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11/4/2015

The Anxiety Paradox - When Anxiety is a Problem (and when it is not.)

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The Anxiety Paradox
Anxiety is a funny thing. Actually it really isn’t, but it can be very peculiar and confounding. The more you try to avoid it, the worse it becomes. Let that sink in for a minute. The more you work at it and the harder you try to get away from it when you start feeling anxiety coming on, the worse it can become.   The reason why this paradox is so often true is that more often than not, the individual who is experiencing an increasing state of anxiety, or nearing panic proportions, is not aware of the build up to problematic anxiety until it is too late. The point here is that once anxiety becomes so uncomfortable, there can often be a panic response from the person that only serves to make the anxiety state worse. The person then develops a strong urge to do something about it, sort of a fight or flight response, to try to get rid of that seemingly intolerable state of being anxious. Often an internal struggle ensues, one that includes irrational thoughts and beliefs about the awfulness and intolerability of the state they find themselves in. This does nothing to decrease the person’s discomfort, and usually serves to exacerbate the situation. And therein lies the irony of the anxiety paradox. Struggling is not relaxing and fighting is now calming down. These are arousal states of being that will make an already stimulated person more stimulated, and worsen their subjective state. When this happens, some people refer to this as an anxiety attack or panic attack.

What is anxiety?
The anatomy of anxiety is rather complex as it involves the interplay between and among thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, reactive behavior, and reinforcement of irrational thoughts that trigger anxiety. Anxiety really begins with a thought or chain of thoughts, and often these thoughts can be irrational. These thoughts may be based loosely in reality but often times can be unreasonable and not entirely reflective of what is truly happening. They are based on perception. Each person’s perception is their own truth.   The stronger the perception, the stronger the belief behind the perception, and the more difficult it can be to challenge a belief that triggers the anxiety. Once the emotion of anxiety is felt, one usually alters their behavior to decrease the emotional discomfort they experience. Sometimes that is enough to lessen their anxious state. Yet sometimes, it can make it worse and reinforce their anxiety. The important thing to remember is we all have the capacity to change our perceptions by challenging our beliefs and thoughts. By doing so, one can alter their perception and help manage irrational thoughts that can lead to heightened states of anxiety.

Thoughts that lead to worry.
Think about someone who is a frequent worrier. They more often than not tend to imagine a worst case scenario happening to them.   Someone who is very concerned about being on time may experience the thought, “I’m going to be late and it will be horrible.” They may fail to recognize that while they may have been late before, the consequences of those past experiences were not nearly as awful as they anticipate the future consequence will be.   Someone with excellent grades may lose sleep over an important exam. “I can’t sleep because I don’t think I studied enough. I’m going to do terrible on tomorrow’s exam.” Again, this person may have excellent grades and the likelihood of getting a bad grade on the next exam, while possible, is still somewhat remote based on past experiences. Someone who has an interpersonal conflict with one co-worker at work may over-generalize. “I can’t trust anybody anymore. I hate my job. I wish I never applied here.”   This kind of person tends to experience very heightened moments of anxiety, characterized by the recurring belief that the worst will happen, when in fact it rarely if ever does. There may be many aspects of their job they really enjoy but ultimately fail to recognize because they become fixated on one negative experience set apart from many positive experiences they don’t acknowledge. What these individuals have in common is that, while their experiences might be unpleasant, 1) their perception of a worst case scenario, 2) disregarding information that contradicts their beliefs, and 3) overgeneralizing leads to an exaggerated perception of what they are experiencing.

How Anxiety is Reinforced.
Negative ruminating thoughts and worrying can lead to feelings of anxiety, anger, and depression, which then influences behavior, which often results in an attempt to avoid the anxiety provoking situation. When one avoids the object that one associates with anxiety, it may temporarily relieve uncomfortable feelings, but in reality it actually reinforces the anxiety trigger. It actually enhances the fear and strengthens the person’s own belief that those fears are valid and should be avoided in the future. If one has a fear of busy roads and avoids them at all costs because they are SURE that if they drive on the highway, something very bad will happen, they only increase their fear of that situation and enhance their perceived inability to cope. Continued avoidance only makes it that much harder to drive on the highway in the future. This is called negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is simply the removal of a perceived unpleasant object that reinforces a way of thinking and behaving. In this case the avoidance behavior and resulting decrease in emotional discomfort reinforces the irrational belief that the person cannot drive on the highway, which then leads to similar behavior and makes it harder for the person to confront their problematic phobia.

Triggers for Anxiety
The anxiety trigger can be be a worry, something that you find stressful, or a bad memory you once experienced as very unpleasant and not helpful. It really is subjective and unique to the person. It can sometimes be difficult for those that experience anxiety to identify triggers that start the anxiety spiral as the person starting to have worrisome thoughts might not even be aware that this is how their anxiety starts. Sometimes the person is unaware of any thoughts prior to an anxiety attack and perceives that it comes from seemingly out of the blue. While this is rare, what is more likely is that the person is simply unaware of the thoughts that lead to a panic or anxiety attack.

If you are experiencing general anxiety problems or experiencing anxiety or panic attacks,  seeing a professional who is clinically trained to work with anxiety disorders is usually best. When working with a professional, one of the first things that needs to happen is to get a clearer sense of early symptoms, thoughts, or behaviors that can trigger an eruption of anxiety.

Check back soon for a more information on how to start managing anxiety more effectively.

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Forward Thinking

Catagories

Living With Intention

The virtues of being Mindful ​

Anxiety - Acceptance and Management

The Anxiety Paradox - When Anxiety is a Problem﻿ (and when it is not.)

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The virtues of being Mindful

The Anxiety Paradox - When Anxiety is a Problem (and when it is not.)