Category Archives: anxiety

Sweating the Small Stuff

 

Okay, sweating is technically something the body does. Although your mind does not perspire, I’ll bet it feels like it does sometimes. First the big stuff. At its extreme, worry takes the form of a psychological disorder such as generalized anxiety disorder where your life is filled with anxiety about everything.

Another is obsessive-compulsive disorder which is based on fear that you have done or might do something wrong. You feel overcome by worry about what you did and what you are about to do. You keep doing the same things over and over hoping to get it right this time. Being consumed by this disorder allows little time for anything else and leaves you constantly exhausted.

Fortunately most people do not worry to this extent. Even if small matters look large at the moment, in the long run they turn out not to matter very much at all. For those with either of the disorders I just mentioned, self doubt comes close to paralyzing them and makes it difficult for them to quickly decide what to do in almost any situation.

Where does this feeling come from? For many people, it dates back to early childhood when they were given the impression that they were not competent to do much of anything. True, most people are not born prodigies but gradually learn survival skills and go on to develop special talents. Encouragement along the way helps them take their first faltering steps.

Have you ever watched babies learning to walk? The first awkward attempts lead nowhere except landing back on their seats. But with encouragement and support, babies are off and running before you know it.

Some parents are critical of everything their children do. Children naturally want to please their parents. But if nothing they do is acceptable, over a period of time they tend to start worrying about whether they are worthwhile or just give up trying to please their parents.

Such children grow into adults with no confidence in themselves and can start second guessing everything they do. They are not likely to take very many chances. They don’t trust themselves and seldom try to develop new skills. They might also go to the other extreme and strive for perfection in everything they do. In case you haven’t discovered this yet, perfection is an impossible goal to reach.

So what’s the alternative? Having given up on perfection, what’s left? You can do your best. Your best depends on your energy, health, mood and skills at any given time. All of these might well vary from day to day. You might not be satisfied with your best, but you can’t do any better at the moment. You have given it all you’ve got. Perhaps you can do better at another time. But that doesn’t matter. You did your best right now.

Doing your best also means being kind and gentle with yourself and being comfortable with your best efforts. It doesn’t matter what others think about you. You know you did your best. Also, learn to accept others as doing their best under their current circumstances. This approach will save you the trouble of worrying or fretting about things over which you have no control.

(Excerpt from my book, Release Your Stress and Reclaim Your Life)

Stress, Violence and Peace

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What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others.

~ Pericles~

The pace of life has become faster and more frantic in recent years. Many people leave little time for thoughtful reflection or just sitting still. If you are older, you might remember when life was simpler and less hectic. If you are younger, you might have heard about more peaceful times from your relatives. How did we get from living our lives in relative peace to being obsessed with anger and its expression in violence?

Many people lately have become alarmed by “senseless” violence around the world. Have you wondered whether there is a connection between the spate of suicide bombings in Europe and the mass shootings around the world, including those in this country? I have long considered a possible connection between these events and their relationship to fear and violence. Let’s take a closer look.

If you have ever studied psychology or even read about it casually, you are most likely familiar with the fight or flight response to fear. Depending on your circumstances, when faced with something fearful to you, you react by attacking the source of your fear (fight) if you think you can overcome it or avoiding it (flight) if it seems more powerful than you are. Immediate fear and these responses to it follow a direct and immediate threat of attack such as by a wild animal or person. You don’t have time to think about it but automatically react almost immediately.

Anxiety is related to fear. The feared object might not be immediately present, but you can worry about what might happen or not happen in the future. You become anxious about your own welfare or that of your family. You might also fret about the possible behavior of other people or the course taken by the society in which you live.

If you are unable to find a way to relieve this anxiety, it builds and eventually leads to a sense of desperation or hopelessness. This can take place inside you and possibly remain unknown to others. You might find someone whom you trust with your concerns and share them or act on your anxiety by lashing out. Based on my experience and reading, it seems clear that everyone has a breaking point at which they feel forced to act in ways not typical of them. Perhaps some people will turn to violence as a way to be taken seriously for once. Some commit suicide when they feel their life challenges are more than they can bear.

The result can be a lashing out toward other individuals or society in general if we see others as responsible for our predicament. If we could understand the workings of others’ minds, much of the violence in our world might not seem quite so senseless. The violence makes sense to people feeling overwhelmed by life burdens. Most people tend to react emotionally to such situations without giving their response much thought.

If you could step back from your emotions, you might see more constructive possibilities and be able to choose one of them. Once you are overwhelmed, it might be too late to step back. You could make a practice of learning to step back from your daily routine even when you are not under pressure. Then you will have a better idea how to handle stressful life events when they arise.

Life Lab Lessons  

  • Practice setting aside peaceful moments or longer periods of time.
  • Without blaming anyone, consider how you arrived in this situation.
  • If you have been here before, what worked to get you back on track?
  • If you have no idea what to do, find someone you can trust with your challenge.
  • Once the crisis is resolved, write about what you did to handle it.

After living through the Brexit vote, Trump’s election is a familiar indictment of humanity

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The night the UK voted to leave the European Union, those of us Brits who opposed the idea started out watching with a sick mixture of hope and fear. As results began to come in, there was the sinking sensation that something we wholeheartedly believed was wrong and damaging could come to pass. We asked ourselves: How could our fellow humans—people we live side-by-side with, people we respect—want this?

 The night America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president felt like it had some parallels: a
desperate hope that a country wouldn’t be swayed by fear, isolationism, and the rhetoric of “them
against us.” The nagging terror that it would.
The next morning, these are some of the people who are looking at America’s choice, aghast:
people who have experienced misogyny, racism, discrimination, harassment or bullying of any
kind. People who have witnessed it. People who think one of the roles of government is to protect
us from those things. Excerpt from Cassie Werber’s article in Quartz- Read more.

How Fear and Anxiety Cause Violence

How Fear and Anxiety Cause Violence

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
We know more about war than we do about peace,
more about killing than we know about living.

~Omar Bradley~

Many people lately have become alarmed by “senseless” violence around the world. Have you wondered whether there is a connection between the spate of suicide bombings in Europe and the mass shootings around the world, including those in this country? Not too long ago I suggested a possible connection between fear and violence. Let’s look at this closer.

If you have ever studied psychology or even read about it casually, you are most likely familiar with the fight or flight response to fear. Depending on your circumstances, when faced with something fearful to you, you react by attacking the source of your fear (fight) or avoiding it if it seems more powerful than you are. This kind of fear and response to it follow a direct and immediate threat of an attack such as by a wild animal or a wild person. You don’t have time to think about it but react almost automatically.

Related to fear is anxiety. The feared object might not be immediately present, but we can worry about what might happen or not happen in the future. We become anxious about our own welfare or that of our families, the possible behavior of other people or the course of the society in which we live.

If we are unable to find any way to relieve this anxiety, it builds and eventually leads to a sense of desperation or hopelessness. This can take place inside us and remain unknown to others unless we find someone whom we trust with our concerns or act on our anxiety. Based on my experience and reading, it seems clear that we all have a breaking point where we feel forced to act in ways not typical of us.

Perhaps some people seek violence as a way to be taken seriously for once. Some commit suicide when they feel their life challenges are more than they can bear. The result can be a lashing out toward other individuals or society in general if we see it as responsible for our predicament. If we could understand the workings of others’ minds, much of the violence in our world would not seem quite so senseless.

But what can we do about it? Perhaps the best place to start is to realize that our technology has resulted in amazing inventions allowing us to contact others around the world in a matter of seconds. Yet overload of immediate communication has resulted in separating us rather than bringing us closer together.

In the process of becoming immediately connected we seem to have forgotten what communication is for. Its purpose is to help us understand each other and learn to work together to find harmonious ways for us to exist together. Instead, we use our channels of communication to try to persuade others to think as we do. We use them for entertainment and for advertising and of course to get as many electronic “likes” as possible.

Although our technology to a small extent helps us understand each other, we need to do much more to appreciate each other in our search for meaningful lives. People who tend toward violence may not have had goals much different from our own, but might have had their dreams crushed along the way. They no longer see any path toward a fulfilling life.

Life Lab Lessons

  • Use the media at your disposal to understand the history of the society you live in.
  • Learn about other societies through the same methods.
  • Meet others with backgrounds different from yours.
  • Find out what you and they have in common.
  • Think of ways to bridge cultures at least on an individual level.

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