Overcoming Anxiety

These problems all involve heightened anxiety. In overcoming them, the goal
is not to get rid of anxiety, for it is normal - it is part of being human.
Anxiety helps ready us for action and is there for our survival. The aim is to
understand why it has become so strong, change what it means to us
and know how to reduce it and prevent it spiralling out of control.
It is possible to experience anxiety without it leading to panic, obsessions,
compulsions or despair - to experience it and yet still be calm. In fact many
people do experience anxiety like this frequently (job interviews / dating /
performance situations - sports, social).
They feel shakey on the inside but relatively calm on the outside, this is
normal, this is part of anxiety, this is how it feels.

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled and would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old.
One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.The eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked. "That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbour. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth - we're chickens." So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.

... AWARENESS ... Anthony de Mello

To change beliefs, we have to understand how and why they developed. We have
to understand our experiences, the people involved and more importantly, the
conclusions we drew about our role in them, for it's not the experiences themselves
that do the lasting damage, it's what we make of them. We have to understand how
we learnt to think and behave because of our experiences.

Various anxiety / panic 'disorders' exist (personal make-up and experiences probably determine individual forms). However, a number of factors exist which are common to them all.
Feelings of self-doubt, no control (and its related feelings of not being there) and self-imposed high, inflexible standards are just some of the things which need to be understood before we can loosen the grip of anxiety problems.

Ranging from shyness and low self-esteem to anxiety disorders and depression, each
anxiety problem is unique to the individual. Expressions of social phobia vary from
person to person just as those of agoraphobia vary from panic disorder and GAD vary
from OCD. However, as unique to the individual these problems are and as different
to each other they are, these problems develop for similar reasons and strengthen in
a similar way, a manner which reflects the way our mind and body works.

Our individual personalities probably develop from a mixture of genetic make up,
experiences and learning.As such, how we behave depends on the knowledge that
we gain from past experience (derived from situational clues, knowledge at that time,
assumptions and reasoning) and how and why we apply this to present situations.
Differences in, and complex interactions between, the above factors give rise to our
individuality. We are all different, and yet, in one sense we are all the same.
We all have similar body structures, we all have similar mind structures, we all have
the same five senses and we all receive and process information through these
senses and structures in asimilar manner.
Therefore, it is not surprising that we all tend to deal with certain situations in
roughly the same way.

Problems involving anxiety and panic, obsessions, compulsions and despair work in
basically the same way and reflect the ways that our mind and body have evolved
to deal with 'bad' experiences. Given your genetic make up, your past experiences,
the knowledge you had in the past and the knowledge you have now ... your mind and
body are working PERFECTLY. However they are not working APPROPRIATELY.

Our mind and body are so interlinked that in some ways it is difficult to distinguish
between them; thoughts generate feelings and feelings generate thoughts. Anxiety
leads to tension but also tension leads to anxiety.
Many people with long-term anxiety and depression problems exist in a higher than
average state of tension and a tense body is already making associations with
anxiety, 'prepared' to spark off a worrying thought or image and start the ball rolling
towards the panic, phobia, OCD, despair.

The upper chest and shoulders are one area where many people with anxiety-related problems maintain tension in their body. They constantly have raised upper chest and shoulders. For two reasons - first, this is a defensive posture (I would raise my shoulders if somebody went to strike me) - second, it stems from conditioning associated with the body's attempt to relieve tension naturally - sighing (letting out a deep breath) is a natural way to relieve tension.

Many people with these problems hold their breath a lot (especially before going to sleep) in order to sigh.
This can lead to conditioning the body to have the chest and shoulders raised and also the development of breathing from the chest rather than the diaphragm.

Try this:- throughout the day notice how high your shoulders are and drop them down (as in Yoga - 'roll them over and back').
When your shoulders are lowered - do you feel ever so slightly more relaxed?
Do this a number of times throughout the day (4 or 5 times) and when you are in bed before you go to sleep.

Insight and understanding are essential to overcoming anxiety problems. However,
from shyness to depression, something else is equally important ... changing
behaviour. We can't just think our way out of these problems - to change behaviour
we have to do the behaviour (it isn't possible to learn to ride a bike just by thinking
about it!)

Changing behaviour alone will not help if we still feel bad about ourselves or still
have unanswered questions about the problem. Any force over which we have little
understanding and even less control will always hold power over us, for it is
unpredictable and could harm us and as such remains frightening.

Therefore:-

Successfully overcoming anxiety disorders requires BOTH insight and
behaviour change.

We need to:-

Understand the problem (how it developed and it's effects) to such an extent
that the search for reasons and answers can be given up
Reduce the automatic negative thoughts, images and behaviours
Develop more positive beliefs and behaviours

COURAGE is not the absence of fear. It is feeling afraid but keeping those feelings
sufficiently under control to be able to act appropriately.
Once we begin to understand how anxiety disorders work - much of the fear of
them is removed. When we understand what is happening and why we take away much of our anxiety.

"Fear cannot be banished; but it can be calm and without panic, andit can be mitigated by reason and evaluation" - Vannevar Bush

Low self-esteem, anxiety and panic, obsessions and compulsions and depression are
very powerful. They can make us feel as though there is no way of overcoming them
- but there is.