Free Yourself from Anxiety (20 page)

There are any number of ways of describing what goes on inside a person’s head, i.e. their thoughts, but the concept of three levels of thinking is a useful one when looking at Anxiety.

If the three levels are all negative and Anxiety-focused then they will lock together to form a vicious circle.

All three types of thought can be challenged with counter statements. Your task is to identify your own negative thoughts, then compose a positive, affirming statement which contradicts the thought. The counter statement needs to be repeated over and over again until you find yourself automatically thinking the new positive thought every time the old negative one comes into your mind.

Also you can collect evidence to test the truth or otherwise of your beliefs. Negative beliefs are unlikely to represent the whole truth. Try to
build up a more balanced picture by recording your own achievements and asking those around you for honest feedback.

Now you understand how Anxiety can change your thought processes, and how to start changing them back again. But at some point you will probably ask the question ‘why me?’ You may think something along the lines of ‘look at Mrs Jones down the road, she’s had plenty of stress and she doesn’t panic’. Or you might read in the newspaper about people who come through terrible experiences and appear to be okay.

First of all, of course, you can’t be absolutely sure about Mrs Jones or the people in the news – they may all have Anxiety problems that you don’t know anything about. But quite possibly they don’t, quite possibly they have managed to cope with difficulties without developing Anxiety. Why should this be? It may be that there are things going on in your mind, deeper aspects of your thoughts, that may have provided the foothold for Anxiety.

You already know that Anxiety is guilty, so now we’re asking why you were targeted. It’s like asking why did the burglar pick that house, or the mugger choose that victim?

Another question that is often asked is ‘why has my Anxiety lasted so long?’ Some people seem to have a short sharp experience of Anxiety that they quickly overcome, and yet other people suffer for months and years before they recover. Very often the same things that made you vulnerable to Anxiety are also the ones that keep your Anxiety going. They are known as maintenance factors.

So next we’re going to look deeper into your thought processes, and at the aspects of your make up that might have made you vulnerable to Anxiety.

Your emotions are experienced in your brain, more specifically through a series of structures called the limbic system. This is part of your involuntary nervous system which as we’ve already seen also controls many bodily functions. Your emotions are influenced by your thoughts, and your perceptions, and they are expressed both through thoughts and through your body.

Research suggests that there are six simple emotions that are found in all cultures, all over the world: happiness, anger, grief, sadness, fear, and disgust. Along with other simple emotions such as excitement, curiosity or boredom they are usually spontaneous and short-lived. They are your instant reaction to what is happening at that moment.

Complex emotions are longer lasting and linked with your thought processes. They are also conditioned by your past experiences, especially as you were growing up – your family, your community, your wider culture all have a part to play. Examples of complex emotions are love, guilt, embarrassment and jealousy. You can see at once that they are affected by your experience of the world, so that people in different cultures would feel guilty or embarrassed about different things, and people from different families would show love in different ways.

Emotions are never right or wrong, they are a healthy and natural part of being human. They can be positive or negative, depending on the circumstances.

Your upbringing and early experiences may have caused you to believe that some emotions are not acceptable. If you were discouraged from expressing them you might, over time, reach a point of deliberately
avoiding these feelings. This is repression, where a person has lost touch with some of their emotions.

Young children can be overwhelmed by strong emotions such as fear or anger. If no one reassures them and helps them to cope, then they don’t learn how to move on from these emotions. This problem can carry on into adulthood, and a person can feel quite unable to manage the emotion in question, simply because they didn’t learn to do so as a child.

Another aspect of this is the person who does not learn to contain their emotions and will be unable to tolerate any upset or frustration in their adult life. If hurt or upset they will cry, if angry they will be verbally or physically aggressive, if bored they will give up and walk away from whoever they are with or whatever they are doing. The fear of losing control forms the basis of their Anxiety, and they will avoid people and situations where they may be at risk of this.

There seems to be a connection between repression and Anxiety, and anxious people often say that they find it hard to express their feelings, especially anger, grief and despair. The problem is that these feelings are there, and they are working away inside you like an untreated infection, causing difficulties that sooner or later will come to the surface.

Many anxious people have an underlying fear of losing control, even for a moment (which explains why some people find it so difficult to accept the need for relaxation). The fear is that loss of control will bring all of the withheld feelings bubbling to the surface.

Withheld feelings can be an underlying cause for all forms of Anxiety:

In some people panic attacks are a sign that their suppressed feelings of anger, grief or despair are trying to break through.

Usually with a phobia the feared object is not in itself dangerous. Someone with a phobia of frogs knows full well that they are not dangerous and yet they still feel the fear. For some people the feared object is a symbol – it stands for their own feelings, and they are afraid of them.

It is well known that repressed feelings can contribute to physical problems such as headaches, ulcers and asthma, and in the same way repression can be a part of the free-floating Anxiety that is GAD.

If you monitor the times when your OCD is at its worst you’re likely to find that it’s when you feel frustrated, thwarted or angry with your situation in life.

In fact anger is the most common driver of Anxiety disorders. If someone feels trapped in an unsatisfactory life, or feels that they were cheated in the past (of education, career opportunities or the ability to be themselves for example) then their anger is likely to break out in the form of Anxiety.

If you can learn to release your feelings instead of suppressing them you will find it helps the recovery process, and also helps stop the Anxiety from coming back once you have recovered. If you can deal with your feelings as they arise, you’ll be more able to live in the present, and less bogged down in the past.

Although the process of releasing emotions can be painful at the time, afterwards people generally feel much better. The ancient Greeks knew all about this and they called it catharsis. Greek plays always aimed to send people home feeling better in this way – even a tragic play or film, while sad at the time, produces a feeling of release and catharsis afterwards.

The first step is to learn to recognise the feelings you are holding in. You may already be making progress towards that through the work you’ve already done.

In addition, you can keep a diary noting your emotional responses to events during the course of the day. Refer to the feelings list at the end of this section. Do any of yours seem inappropriate to the events which trigger them – too much or too little? Explore what this might mean. If
there is a serious mismatch, for example, you become excessively angry over minor matters, or you do not react at all to a sad event, you might want to seek help from a counsellor.

The next step is to learn to express your feelings. As usual it’s best to aim to do this gradually, in small manageable steps. You can try:

Choose someone that you trust, who will listen to you without judging, criticising or offering advice. Also it needs to be someone who won’t become upset if you cry or get angry. A professional counsellor, or a telephone helpline volunteer, will be able to do this, and their training will enable them to give you the kind of feedback that helps your journey of discovery. You can also talk to a good friend or family member.

Write your feelings out in a diary. Set aside a period of time each day for this and you’ll gradually build up a picture of what’s going on for you. You can also write a letter, either to yourself or to an imaginary person. If there is one person who is the focus for your feelings you can write it to them, (even if they are dead). Some people find it helps to destroy the letter once it’s written, as a way of moving on from the emotions that fuelled it. Do not show the letter to the person – its function is to help you get your feelings out, and you need to express yourself freely. If you need to communicate your feelings to the person, then see ‘Communicating’, below.

if your negative emotions are focused on someone around you, it is possible to communicate this to them. If you are upset or angry because of something they’ve said or done then the assertiveness techniques described in Chapter 46 will help you do this safely. However, if your
problems go deeper into your relationship with them you’ll have to proceed more carefully – we suggest you take professional advice (see Relate in Appendix 2).

If you find it hard to release your feelings you can unblock them – for instance, watching a sad TV programme or a film can help you to cry. Choose something that you know you’ll enjoy watching despite the sadness, such as your favourite soap, or a film on DVD. Music also has a powerful emotional effect for many of us and will help you to release your feelings.

This is particularly good for releasing anger. Find a way that won’t hurt you, or anyone else, or damage anything. You can thump a cushion, throw a ball hard against a wall, yell and shout, or take vigorous exercise.

Use the checklist below to identify which negative emotions you need to release: