Anxiety and you

Have you felt anxious at some point in your life?

Frequent worrier?

Have illness, being fired, feeling discriminated, unemployment, job searching, new job, moving to a new city— made you feel stressed and overloaded?

Have you had full blown panic attacks – chest pain, palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath and dizziness?

Is your anxiety becoming part of a cycle of doubt, worry, fear, inaction, paralysis, depression?

“You need some anxiety in your life and it’s there for a reason. It’s what motivates us to work and keeps us out of trouble,” says Dr. Tom Rebori, medical director of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Center at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in Illinois.

If anxiety is interfering with your daily life – disrupting sleep or concentration – it could mean that you have an anxiety disorder. New treatments and research offer good news: anxiety disorders are highly treatable.

Here are the four main anxiety disorders, plus tips and techniques to cope with them and learn to deal with them.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

In the last six months, have you spent half of the days worrying?

Excessive worrying — which interferes with daily life — also causes physical symptoms like low energy, sleep disturbances, muscle tension, sweating, nausea and difficulty concentrating.

Here are two ways of coping.

Keep a worry log so you see patterns and learn to replace negative thinking with another thought until you gradually change your inner dialogue.

Set up “worry periods.” Dr. Dave Carbonell at Anxiety Treatment Center in New York tells patients to set up two 10-minute worry periods every day where they can isolate themselves. By giving their full attention to the worry, it becomes boring because there’s not that much content to it.

Panic Disorder

Scared of losing control, that you’re dying or fearful that you’re going crazy?

Panic attacks occur in certain settings—a crowded mall, elevators. You can associate a situation with that reaction and start avoiding certain situations. Just because you’ve had a panic attack doesn’t mean you have panic disorder, though, unless you’ve had at least two unexpected panic attacks, followed by at least one month of concern about experiencing another attack.

Getting to understand what’s happening is key to treating the disorder: facing (not avoiding certain situations), accepting (not fighting the panic attack, but welcoming it), floating (relaxing through the anxiety without resistance, like floating through water) and letting time pass (knowing that the attack will pass).

Phobia

Social phobias involve an intense fear of situations – usually social or performance-related settings – for fear of having a panic attack.

Specific phobias involve an excessive fear of an object or situation that causes anxious symptoms similar to a panic attack.

Social phobias are treated the same as panic disorders. For specific phobias, the common treatment is gradual exposure.

The first step is to talk about the fear to begin to understand that you won’t die or go crazy when in contact with object or situation.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Whereas GAD patients worry about the future, PTSD involves worrying about something that happened.

PTSD is a condition where sufferers have been through some kind of traumatic experience. The symptoms are a heightened degree of arousal, nightmares or recurring thoughts, feelings of detachment, sleep problems, high startle response or jumpiness, flashbacks and depression.

Treatment is learning how to live in the present through relaxation.

Anxiety disorder symptoms can come and go. Yet it makes common sense to ease stress, eat healthier and exercise – lifetime habits that will help in the long run.

Set aside time every day for relaxing – use aPrayer, meditate, go for a mindful walk, enjoy a hot or naked yoga session, listen to music, soak in a hot bath – anything where you’re just being you.

For more information:

Edmund J. Bourne, The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, New Harbinger Publications: 2000.

Anxiety Disorders Association of America
http://www.adaa.org

National Institute of Mental Health
http://www.nimh.nih.gov

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408133020.htm

Act today and look toward tomorrow

Tolerance may be a good thing. Complacency may deter you from your goals.

Tolerating something – an aggressive coworker, a runny toilet or a squeaky wheel – continually drains your energy, like filing a cup upon which someone has made little holes.

Does continuous tolerance or complacency keep you from being yourself and evolving quickly as a human being?

How often do you distinguish between your activities that are incomplete, unresolved and require resolution or those that are unfinished, still needing work and require action?

In your life, how many things are unresolved or infinished?

Here are two simple exercises to help you break those negative reinforcing loops of tolerance and complacency.

List five unresolved issues or situations (large or small) that are draining your energy. Circle one that you can complete today.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

List five things (small or large) you’re putting up with or tolerating. Circle the one that you can eliminate TODAY.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

What’s the one big change that would make the most difference in your life?

What’s the first step you will take in the direction of that change?

When will you do this?

Are you aware of the environment?

The environment is all around you.

How aware are you of its beauty?

How do you acknowledge and affirm your duty for stewardship?

Do you have affection for the sun – when it rises it benefits all?

Are you tempted to be a socially conscious consumer advocating for fair trade, organic production and local markets rather than just consuming less?

Here are some simple steps to discern and guide your actions.

Become aware.

Pray and reflect on the duty to care for the environment and protect the poor and vulnerable.

Learn about and educate others on the causes and moral dimensions of climate change.

Understand how you, your families and friends, communities of belonging and other affiliations contribute to climate change by our own energy use, consumption and waste.

Act to change your choices and behaviors to reduce the ways you contribute to climate change.

Advocate for integrity and compassion and wholistic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially those which have an effect on the most vulnerable.

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun and I say
It’s all right.
George Harrison

A prayer, an affirmation or a take-out order from the Restaurant of the Universe

I want to attract influential, educated, professional men who are ready to step into their personal power with integrity, compassion, dignity and grace in service to an interconnected and peaceful world.

Men who have a firm grasp on their mission and purpose.

Men who want the support of a life coach to take their next step.

Let it be a personal prayer, a daily affirmation or a special order from the Restaurant of the Universe.

Is it time to think about your life?

A few questions to ponder…

Do you have a strong self-concept, a powerful sense of your own worth and potential?

How are you dealing with and solving problems in your life?

How can you improve the quality of your relationships with family, friends, fiduciaries and co-workers?

Do you present your opinions and views and speak assertively or aggressively?

Do you have the information, knowledge, and understanding of larger issues that affect you?

Do you and make healthy lifestyle and life choices?

What’s your ability to respond?

Are you setting and achieving goals?

Do you know and understand that you can have an impact on the world?

Do you create projects that improve the lives others and strengthen communities?

Power shift: spirituality

Spirituality beyond established religions is giving men new views of themselves.

Men live in the universe and the universe lives in men.

Service and prayer strengthen our bonds and spirits.

We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
Carl Sagan

Try a little self-help

Sixty percent of DC-area residents believe psychologists can help them cope with mental health issues.

Here’s a self-help method to complement therapies!

Using your journal as binoculars to shorten the distance

Use your journal like a pair of binoculars to make what appears distant, appear closer. From your daily experience:

Are you able to identify any underlying or overarching issues or recurrent themes?

What could be done to change the situation?

How will this alter your future behaviors, attitudes or career?

Have you thought about tomorrow?

What does the future hold?

Photo courtesy of Mike Dozer.

How do you write a journal?

As with any tool, journaling takes practice. You must commit yourself to just start writing. You should write an entry for each day.

Commit yourself for 21 to 30 days and see how quickly it becomes a habit.

Balance immediacy and spontaneity.

A journal is not a diary.

Although based on the activities of your day, your entries are not merely recounting your day’s events. They are detailed descriptions as if to an outsider.

When you journal, you will not have a clear idea of what you will make of these details, but you will sense that they might be important later. These descriptions should sound as if you were describing them to someone who was never there.

Journals allow you to sound naïve.

For more, Mark Cooper, Reflection: Getting Learning Out of Serving, Florida International University

Journaling as part of your meditation and prayer

Journaling can also be meditative writing where the writing itself is a prayer.

It is useful for those who find it difficult to focus in prayer. It is like writing a letter to someone you love (Bergan and Schwan, Birth: A Guide for Prayer):

+ Writing a letter to God
+ Writing an imagined conversation between you and God
+ Writing your answers to questions like “what do you want me to do for you?”

Use the journaling feature in the aPrayer app to capture your imagined conversations or your answers.