Hello All,
Today I would like to chat about
anxiety. In this chat, I would like to address the following questions: What
is anxiety and how does it come to be? And, to begin addressing the
core question in this blog series, ask: What can we do to effectively
reduce anxiety?
Most people who experience
anxiety claim that they feel afraid or fearful of some eventuality. Often
times, they do not even know what this eventuality is, where it came from or
how to describe it. It just 'feels' like something is wrong. In other cases,
people know exactly what is at the root of their anxiety and can articulate the
central issue very well, yet they struggle with how to disengage the thoughts
and feelings. They get 'mindlocked.'
The world of psychiatry and psychology
have compartmentalized and labelled the various types of anxiety (i.e.,
post-traumatic stress, generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
social anxiety, panic disorder) with the objective of helping to reduce it
under a medical paradigm. 'If we can diagnose it, we know how to treat it.'
While this kind of thinking is beneficial to the medical world, its benefit remains
questionable to the anxiety sufferer. I believe that it really does not help to
solve the issue by labelling it. The fact remains - it is all anxiety and
should be thought of as a normal human reaction to various external stimuli.
Furthermore, anxiety is something that every human can experience; it's just
that some people have more or less of it. But I must also be careful and state that the different kinds of anxiety and causes differ and thus require different kinds of thought or cognitive interventions. This is where delineating types or labelling anxiety is useful. It is not useful to 'wear' a diagnosis, but it may be useful to understand the cause or reason for the anxiety so that we can correct it. Therefore, this blog post is intended only to address anxiety as an emotion inherent to all of us and to provide a beginning insight into how to reduce it in a general sense.
What is Anxiety?
To garner a better understanding of
anxiety we must think about why we have anxiety in the first place. In
situations where humans were attacked or threatened by other animals during the
evolutionary process, our bodies responded by creating a nervous system that enabled
us to respond to outside stressors; this
is called 'the fight or flight response' - or by the medical world our 'sympathetic nervous system.' What this system does is interprets our external
situation and decides if it is dangerous or no and when to react. If our central nervous system is
activated, we feel jittery, nervous, scared, and sweaty, our heart rate
increase and we might feel dizzy, amongst other uncomfortable sensations.
In the extreme, we have what are called 'panic attacks,' where these feelings
are extremely intense and incredibly frightening.
While outside stressors are
largely what our fight-flight response was designed for, humans also have the
ability to think and to reason. Sometimes we create stressors in our minds that
can activate this nervous system response; specifically, we 'live in our
heads.' These stressors could be completely different stressors than what our fight-or-flight
response was designed to protect us from (i.e.,
job stress, financial stress, bullying, or marital stress). What often happens is that we ruminate on
these stressors and cause the anxiety response to activate. Oftentimes, it is
also very difficult to 'let go' of these internal stressors. We often feed the stressors causing them to grow within us, resulting
in further and more intense anxiety.
Where Does Anxiety Happen?
What is common to all anxiety is
that it happens in the future; that is, unless you're being attacked by someone
or something or encountering a dangerous situation. The majority of anxiety is
actually conjured by our minds as a reaction to something that may or may not
happen in the future. This is how anxiety differs from fear. With fear, we are
in direct contact with something that is causing us to be fearful, whereas with
anxiety we are fearful of something that we have created in our minds. If you
have anxiety right now as you're reading this post - look around the room - is
there anything in your immediate vicinity that would or should cause anxiety?
- Probably not. Therefore, if you feel anxiety, yet there is nothing in
your immediate situation that is the cause of anxiety. The cause of your anxiety then must reside in your
mind.
STEP I: The First Step to Reduce
Anxiety
To begin to understand how we get
caught up in anxious thought patterns, it helps to see where we're going wrong.
Also, please realize that there is no 'cure' for anxiety and that if someone
tells you there exists a cure, they're not acting in your best interests. If
anxiety could be cured, we wouldn't be able to react to avoiding car accidents,
or protect our children from danger. Anxiety is a normal and necessary human emotion and 'curing' it is not really
what we want to do. What we want to do is to reduce it to proportions that are
manageable and in sync with our daily moment-to-moment situations.
Following is a list of though
distortions thought to feed anxiety. While
you read them, I would like you to reflect and write down examples of where you
are 'guilty' of the distortion and what thought you have that contributes to
this distortion.
Cognitive/thought
distortions that feed anxiety:
- Catastrophizing: taking an
event you are concerned about and blowing it out of proportion to the
point of becoming fearful. Example: Being reprimanded by your boss over a
minor thing and then ruminating afterwards that you will be fired, lose
your home and family.
- Arbitrary
Inference: making a judgment with no supporting information. Example: Coming
to a conclusion that someone dislikes you without any supporting
evidence.
- Personalization: when a person
attributes an external event to himself when there is actually no causal
relationship. Example: A person glares at you on the bus. You decide
that person hates you. I often notice this with people who have 'road rage.'
When someone cuts them off in traffic, they immediately come to the
conclusion that this person did this to spite them instead of considering
the notion that the person likely did this without any motive or intention
to harm you.
- Selective
Abstraction: when a person makes a judgment based on some information but
disregards other information. Example: A person says something negative to
you at a party that is of very little influence or interest to others. You
stay at the party and have hours of fun and laughter, but then after the
party you chose to focus on this minor negative occurrence as the defining
event of the party.
- Overgeneralization: making a
board rule based on a few limited occurrences. Example: That because one
plane crashed, the plane you will be riding on will surely crash.
- Dichotomous
Thinking (black and white thinking): categorizing things into
one of two extremes. Example: This kind of thinking usually begins with
words like, 'every time' or 'always.' For instance, because one person was
rude to me, people will always be rude to me.
- Labelling: attaching a
label to yourself after a negative experience. Example: Because I have an anxiety
disorder, I have a mental illness; Because I felt awkward in a social
situation, I am an awkward person.
(List Extracted from: http://gad.about.com/od/treatment/a/cognitivedist.htm)
So? How did you do? Did you
come up with an example for each type of thought distortion? If not, that's
wonderful. If you did - that's great also! This means you are learning about yourself
and ways to change how you think in order to reduce your anxiety. Remember, if
you know what the problem is and its nature, you will have a good chance at understanding it and defeating it.
This concludes this first post
on a series that I will be writing on anxiety reduction. If you have any
questions or comments, please contact bioethicsconsulting@gmail.com
P. Allen B.A M.A.
Hello All,
Today I would like to chat about anxiety. In this chat I would like to address the following questions: What is anxiety and how does it come to be? And to begin addressing the core question in this blog series: What can we do to effectively reduce anxiety?
Most people who experience anxiety claim that they feel afraid or fearful of some eventuality. Often times, they do not even know what this eventuality is, where it came from or how to describe it. It just 'feels' like something is wrong. In other cases, people know exactly what is at the root of anxiety and can articulate the central issue very well, yet they struggle with how to disengage the thoughts and feelings. They get 'mindlocked'.
The world of psychiatry and psychology have compartmentalized and labelled the various types of anxiety, (i.e. post-traumatic stress, generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder) with the objective of helping to reduce it under a medical paradigm. 'If we can diagnose it, we know how to treat it.' While this kind of thinking is beneficial to the medical world, its benefit is remains questionable to the anxiety sufferer. I believe that it really does not help to solve the issue by labelling it. The fact is, it is all anxiety and should be thought of as a normal human reaction to various external stimuli. Furthermore, anxiety is something that everyone has, its just that some people have more or less of it. But I will be careful in stating that the different types of anxiety that are listed above have different underlying causes that have specific strategies designed to overcome them with respect to cognitive behavioural therapy. This blog post is only intending to give general information about anxiety and to offer a very simple basis to examine how we may become anxious with respect to our thought processes.
What is Anxiety?
To garner a better understanding or anxiety we must think about why we have any anxiety in the first place. In situations where humans were attacked or threatened by other animals during the evolutionary process, our bodies responded by creating a nervous system that enables us to respond to outside stressors, this is called 'the fight or flight response' or by the medical world: our sympathetic nervous system. What this system does is interprets our external situation and decides if it is dangerous or not. If it is activated, we feel jittery, nervous, scared, sweaty, heart rate increase, dizzy amongst other uncomfortable sensations. In the extreme, we have what are called 'panic attacks', where these feelings are extremely intense and super frightening and is a full activation of this side of our nervous system.
While outside stressors are largely what our fight-flight response was designed for, humans also have the ability to think and to reason. Sometimes we create stressors in our minds that can activate this nervous system response, or we 'live in our heads.' These stressors could be completely different stressors than what our fight-or-flight response was designed to protect us from, i.e. job stress, financial stress, bullying, marital stress etc. What often happens is that we ruminate on these stressors and cause the anxiety response to activate. Oftentimes, it is also very difficult to 'let go' of these internal stressors and they can often grow within us and result in further and more intense anxiety.
Where Does Anxiety Happen?
What is common to all anxiety is that it happens in the future, that is unless you're being attacked by someone or something or encountering a dangerous situation. The majority of anxiety is actually conjured by our minds as a reaction to something that may or may not happen in the future. This is how anxiety differs from fear. With fear we are in direct contact with something that is causing us to be fearful, whereas with anxiety we are fearful of something that we have created in our minds. If you have anxiety right now as your read this post - look around the room - is there anything in your immediate vicinity that would or should cause anxiety? Probably not. But if you feel anxiety, yet there is nothing in your immediate situation that is the cause of anxiety, it must reside in your mind.
STEP I: The First Step to Reduce Anxiety
To begin to understand how we get caught up in anxious thought patterns, it helps to see where we're going wrong. Also, please realize that there is no 'cure' for anxiety and that if someone tells you there is a cure, they're not acting in your best interests. If anxiety could be cured, we wouldn't be able to react to avoiding car accidents, or protect our children from danger. Anxiety is a normal and necessary human emotion and 'curing' it is not really what we want to do. What we want to do is to reduce it to proportions that are manageable and in sync with our situation.
While you read these, I would like you to reflect and write down examples of where you are 'guilty' of a distortion and what thought you have that contributes to this distortion.
Here is the list of cognitive/thought distortions that feed anxiety:
- Catastrophizing: taking an event you are concerned about and blowing it out of proportion to the point of becoming fearful. Example: Being reprimanded by your boss over a minor thing and then ruminating afterwards that you will be fired, lose your home and family.
- Arbitrary Inference: making a judgment with no supporting information. Example: Coming to a conclusion that someone dislikes you without any supporting evidence.
- Personalization: when a person attributes an external event to himself when there is actually no causal relationship. Example: A person glares at you on the bus. You decide that person hates you. I often notice this with people who have 'road rage'. When someone cuts them off in traffic, they immediate come to the conclusion that this person did this to spite them instead of considering the notion that the person likely did this without any motive or intention to harm you.
- Selective Abstraction: when a person makes a judgment based on some information but disregards other information. Example: A person says something negative to you at a party that is of very little influence or interest to others. You stay at the party and have hours of fun and laughter, but then after the party you chose to focus on this minor negative occurrence as the defining event of the party.
- Overgeneralization: making a board rule based on a few limited occurrences. Example: That because one plane crashed, the plane you will be riding on will surely crash.
- Dichotomous Thinking (black and white thinking): categorizing things into one of two extremes. Example: This kind of thinking is usually begins with words like 'every time' or 'always'. For instance, because one person was rude to me, people will always be rude to me.
- Labelling: attaching a label to yourself after a negative experience Example: Because I have an anxiety disorder, I have a mental illness. Because I felt awkward in a social situation, I am awkward.
(List Extracted from: http://gad.about.com/od/treatment/a/cognitivedist.htm)
So? How did you do? Did you come up with an example for each type of thought distortion? If not, that's wonderful, if you did - even better. This means you are learning about yourself and ways to change the ways you think and to reduce your anxiety. Remember, if you know what the problem is and its nature, you will have a good chance at defeating it.
This concludes this first post on a series that I will be writing on anxiety reduction. If you have any questions or comments, please contact bioethicsconsulting@gmail.com
P. Allen B.A. M.A.
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