Month: February 2020

This is part 2 of this 3 part series of posts on anxiety.

In part 1, I…

• noted that anxiety was a tool
• discussed the concept of toxic anxiety
• introduced the ideas of what-if questions and catastrophising

In this post, I will discuss the three “secrets” that enable you to turn your anxiety, as a “doom sayer” which can sap your energy into a “motivator” which can propel you forward.

Secret #1:  There is no “You verses your anxiety”.

Fact #1: You create your anxiety. It is a part of you.

While our emotions, including anxiety, are often experienced as happening to us because of the emotional process which gives rise to them, the fact is that we, through our perceptions and our thoughts, actually create and give meaning to our feelings (feelings and emotions are, for our purposes, the same).

In brief, the emotional process involves our subconscious scanning of our surroundings for possible threat and the subconscious reaction to the situation which prepares our bodies to “deal with” the perceived threat.  This “reaction” is the “feeling” we experience.  The second part of the emotional process involves,  our conscious efforts to give a label to and make sense of the feeling and choose how to respond to the situation in which we find ourselves.

When you choose to view your feelings as either happening to you or as beyond your “control”, you disempower yourself. To do this is to view yourself as powerless and as controlled by your anxiety.

While this may be a common way to view feelings, it is, nonetheless, incorrect.

Secret #2: Anxiety, as are all feelings, is just a tool.

Fact#2: Emotions evolved as tools which early (and modern) man could use to help him (or her) “survive”.

For our cave dwelling ancestors, survival involved living long enough to reproduce.

For us, survival means getting through the day, dealing with modern stressors such as work, commuting, dealing with others, and coping with social media. These are all psychological threats which are different from survival threats.  While they might feel as though they were the same, they are not.

When you view your anxiety as a tool, your attention will shift from a sense of being controlled by the tool to figuring out how to make get the most out of what the tool can do.

As an example, you may not be very good at getting the most out of your cell phone or computer.  And, you may even get annoyed at it.  As an author, I tend to get annoyed with the automatic spell checker in Microsoft Word. The spell checker is useful when it corrects a mistake I might have made but it is a nuisance when it corrects a sentence I have written that I know is correct.

Anyway, you do not see the computer, your phone, or the spell checker as an autonomous entity.  It is just a tool, doing what it is programmed to do and well within your ability to understand and effectively use.

Secret #3:You can learn to “master” your anxiety as a tool and utilize it to improve your life. 

Fact #3: The function of anxiety as a tool is to alert you to some future event that might need your attention.

It probably would not surprise you to know that the US is surrounded by an electronic perimeter the purpose of which is to give an alert that an incoming missile, or plane, is approaching the country so that appropriate action can, if warranted, be taken.

If an alert is sounded, an attempt is made to identify the perceived threat before an errant passenger jet or flock of geese is blown out of the sky.  If the threat is genuine, then appropriate defensive actions are initiated.

Your anxiety, as an early warning alert tool, functions in a similar manner.

Depending on how you define a particular threat, you may perceive the action of another person or an upcoming event as a threat and your anxiety level will send you an alert when a threat is perceived.

The problem is that your sensitivity to a perceived threat can lead you to misrepresent what is actually occurring and to inappropriately react.

As an example, you are scheduled to attend a meeting when you get to the office in the morning with the head of the company for which you work.  You believe you deserve a raise and are thinking about asking for that raise during your upcoming meeting. In the middle of the night, you wake up and are very anxious about your morning meeting.

You find yourself in a whirpool of negative what-ifs…

• What if the boss is critical of you?
• What-if she thinks you are being too aggressive and your request changes how she views you and the work you do?
• And so forth.

Your anxiety has done its job..

• There is some uncertainty surrounding the morning meeting
• The meeting does represent a potential risk
• There is a potential threat.

You have gone “beyond” the facts and are catastrophising.  You have turned the anxiety toxic.

You can, however, choose a different path in dealing with the alert your anxiety has given you.  Just like the professionals do with the radar alert, you can check out your alert before going off the deep end.

I will give you four steps to help you do this in the next, and final, post in this series.

 

 

This is the first of a three part series of posts focussing on the emotion of anxiety.  I will discuss what anxiety is and how it is different from other feelings, how to understand it as a tool and how to master and strategically employ it in your life.

I hope you find it helpful.

Have you ever worried about something that might happen in the future?

The “focus” of your worrying might be…

• an upcoming exam, interview, or presentation
• what might happen if you ask someone out on a date or ask for a raise
• what could go wrong if you aren’t perfect (however you define this)
• something you did in the past that might “go bad” at some future date
• and so forth.

For nearly everyone, the answer is “yes”.  

The reason for this is that worry (also known as anxiety) is a normal emotion.

Every emotion communicates to you how you are perceiving the situation in which you find yourself. This is the “message” of that emotion.  When you recognize and utilize the message of an emotion, you are beginning to strategically deploy that emotion as a tool in your life.

The message of anxiety is that there MAY be a threat in our future.

Every emotion can be viewed as a tool that has a specific application or purpose.  Examples of common tools include your cell phone, your TV remote, the hammer in your tool drawer and so forth.

The “purpose” of anxiety, as a tool, is to alert you to an event so that you can prepare yourself to deal with it.

But, sometimes, the emotion of anxiety can become “toxic”.

Something is toxic when it can seriously hurt you. Other words for “toxic” include poisonous and dangerous.

A substance, action or even a person can become toxic even though it may not always be this way.

Think about water….

• You need it for survival
• It’s really great when you are thirsty.
• But…

Did you know that if you drink too much water in too short a time that you can experience what is called water toxicity.  While you can google it, you are not very likely to experience it.  My point is that water is an essential element that if consumed in too great an amount becomes toxic or harmful.

Similarly, anxiety, as I will discuss below, is a very useful emotion which, if experienced at too high an arousal level can become toxic or debilitating.

So, at a high level of worry, you might find yourself…

• paralyzed and unable to take any action.
• losing sleep
• unable to think about anything else

And, it seems that…

• there is no way to break free of your anxiety and
• your anxiety has become an inner “doom forecaster” that seems to be controlling you
• you are caught up in a whirlpool  of “what-ifs” as in “What if (this or that) happens?”
• you are also, probably, catastrophising.

This is toxic anxiety.

Regarding “what-ifs” and “catastrophising”…..

• A major problem with “what-ifs” and toxic anxiety is that they involve catastrophising.  When you catastrophize..
  • you focus on the worst possible outcome that could occur
  • you tend to react as-if the “worst possible outcome” is a certainty
  • you do not think about other, less disastrous possible outcomes
• The result of catastrophising is..
  • that you do not have any answers to your hypothetical “what-ifs” (because there are no factual answers) and
  • your lack of an answer is viewed as another issue about which you need to worry.
  • you’ve gone deeper into the whirlpool.
• As I will discuss below, using anxiety as a strategic tool involves using what-ifs to focus your attention on constructive solutions.

So, what is anxiety? 

Anxety is a future based emotion the message of which is that there MAY be a threat out there that may hurt me.

Anxiety differs from..

• fear, its present-based cousin.  The message of fear is that there is a threat that will injure me,
• depression, its pathological cousin. The message of depression is that my situation is hopeless, I’m helpless to do anything about it and I am, therefore, worthless, and
• anger, its warrior cousin.  The message of anger is that there is a threat out there and I am prepared to go to war to eliminate it.

The two “faces” of anxiety..

Anxiety that has become toxic is called distress. This is anxiety as a “doom sayer”

The other face of anxiety is called eustress.  This is anxiety as a “motivator”.  When you view anxiety as eustress, you are using this emotion as a strategic tool.

Think about an upcoming interview for a job or a test in a course you are taking.  You get nervous, anxious, or stressed about it and use that nervous energy as a motivator to prepare for the interview or exam.

When you approach your anxiety as eustress and use the energy it provides, you are strategically deploying this emotion as a useful tool.

In part 2 of this series of posts, I will talk about how to turn anxiety from a “doom sayer into a “motivator”.

• There are 3 secrets and 4 steps.

See you in the next post.