NY Times: Taking Anxiety to a New Level

The New York Times has a posting in their Fashion and Style section on anxiety. Who knew that my psychological disorder was either stylish, fashionable, or both?

The author experiences some knee-knocking while looking over a cliff at Big Sur and notices that as she gets older, she’s much less inclined to engage in activities that involve elevation. She claims to never have been afraid of heights before, but now, at 47, altitude causes her anxiousness.

From a clinical perspective, as one gets older, we lose some of our mobility, and our confidence in being able to handle some of the physical demands as well as we did in our youth can wane. But is that anxiety?

From the article:

There is a difference between a fear and a phobia, of course. The people at the Anxiety Disorders Association of America will tell you that we all have things that scare us, after all. It’s when fears start limiting our behavior that they become the kind of full-fledged anxiety-producing phobias that afflict more than 19 million people nationwide. That’s more than 8 percent of the adult population, and the only reason I agreed to hike on the headlands trail in the first place was to keep myself from joining them.

So she takes to nature so she doesn’t have to join our ever-growing group of anxiety sufferers? Really?

I think there’s a big difference between fear and anxiety. Standing on the edge of a craggy cliff that juts out over the ocean is the kind of thing humans learned to stay away from, because experience reminded us of the time when Urg the caveman did that and plunged to his death. Our self-survival mechanisms kicked in, and over time it became ingrained in us to avoid doing silly things like that. It reminds me of a cat that sits on a hot stove. He never sits on a hot stove again – but he never sits on a cold one, either.

I’m guessing that the writer was trying to be cute and draw comparisons between loafing at Big Sur and having a panic attack for no discernible reason, but I’m not buying it. We don’t have the choice to avoid our everyday lives like she can avoid Big Sur, or an expensive dinner at a rotating restaurant at the top of some tall building.

Please don’t use anxiety for alliteration purposes, especially if you don’t understand what it is. A couple of quotes tossed in from authoritative anxiety sources doesn’t help explain how crippling anxiety disorders can be, and equating them to being afraid of falling into the ocean do nothing to educate the general public about a very real, very serious illness.

Image via Wikimedia Commons – Dysepsion

It Is What It Is

This may sound completely idiotic coming from an anxiety sufferer, but Murphy’s Law is generally correct. More often than not, things don’t go exactly as planned.

For the anxious control freaks among us, that’s like crack. What better way to get revved up and knee-deep in the drama surrounding something unanticipated than to slap a label on it? If things didn’t turn out like we thought they should, that’s bad. Right?

Or is it?

One of the big challenges I’ve faced over the years has been the struggle to accept things as they are, without assigning a value or judgment to them. Admittedly, that’s a difficult habit to break after 40 years. My natural response to something like stripping a bolt thread or dropping the eggs on the floor has been, “well, that sucks, dammit.” which obviously removes the need for a mind-reader to ascertain what I’m thinking at that moment.

Similarly, whining about how I wished this hadn’t happened, or feeling put upon (this always happens to me at the worst possible time) did nothing to change my situation or act to prevent something from going wrong in the future. The universe doesn’t work that way!

The world is an imperfect place. Screws fall out all the time. Why are we so surprised by this?

If anything, when something goes awry, I should take comfort in the realization that the universe is working exactly as designed. Things are supposed to break down, not work, or turn out poorly now and then. It’s my unrealistic expectation of perfection that’s the problem, not the egg yolks staining my socks.

When I moved into a new job about 18 months ago, it came with a different level of interaction with senior management, one that didn’t always make it easy to be heard or advocate for my programs. After a couple of frustrating weeks of trying to prepare and anticipate where the obstacles would pop up next, I decided to post a handy reminder on the cork board by my Cisco IP phone.

It is what it is.

Sounding like a phrase oft-uttered at the Bada-Bing club by Tony Soprano, it was the perfect cue to draw my focus away from getting caught up in making judgment calls about what was happening, or more importantly, who was causing it to happen. Rather, I began to deal with just the facts of the situation, without worrying if they were good or bad, happy or sad, positive or negative. It all depended on perspective after all – what seemed good to me was bad for someone else, and when we got caught up in trying to convince someone to change their position or outlook, we were missing the main point. It just was – so what do we do next?

Success has been mixed, but it’s important for me to stay engaged and focused, and when events occur, to not lament or wish things are different. They aren’t different. Everything is as it should be.

Image by KaroliK via flickr

Does Life’s Stress Lead to Weight Gain

We’ve all read that stress and anxiety can lead to a host of health issues, like increased blood pressure, poor sleep habits, headaches, and other maladies. But does it lead to weight gain, and if so, why?

MedicineNet has an article positing that life’s stress can lead to overeating and weight gain, but I’m a bit confused by their explanation – that heavier men and women gain weight when stressed, but their skinnier counterparts do not.

From the article:

A study in the July 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that when heavier men and women are stressed, they gain weight.

And:

Block and colleagues found that men were more likely to gain weight due to job demands, lack of decision-making authority, difficulty paying bills, and lack of skill discretion — the ability to learn new skills and perform interesting new duties.

The researchers use the term “psychological stress” to describe the factors that caused the weight gain; they say study participants were more likely to gain weight if they already had a higher body mass index (BMI).

Couldn’t it be more likely that people with a high BMI tend to overeat as a matter of course, and their lack of control of food has little to do with stress, but rather with their behavioral activity in general?

I’ve struggled with my weight for years, and yes, I occasionally overeat when feeling anxious or stressed. But I also have periods where I don’t overeat when stressed, and I have longer stretches where I am feeling very relaxed and unstressed, yet I eat too much.

I’m not sure that I agree with the study results that stress is the driving factor in weight gain, especially among high-BMI subjects. More likely, a high BMI could be just another symptom of how people deal with life in general, stressed or not.

Image by Christian Cable via flickr

Welcoming and Releasing Emotions

Urban Monk has a powerful piece on the practice of dealing with our emotions rather than living a life of avoidance. As noted in the article, we tend to avoid people and situations that cause us pain and discomfort, because why put yourself in those situations if you don’t have to?

In our internal world, however, that does us more harm than good. It isn’t until we’re willing to face our pain and troubling thoughts that we begin to understand them and work through them to obtain a measure of peace.

The three steps outlined in the posting – awareness, relax into the raw emotion, and bypassing the mind, are pretty familiar to anyone who has ever experienced exposure therapy or engaged in any sort of meditation. From my perspective, it can be boiled down into one word – feel.

When we choose to feel, rather than think, rationalize, intellectualize – insert your favorite -ize here – we’re getting down to our raw base. Some people call it inviting the emotion in, and they facilitate it by naming what they are feeling out loud.

Pain, come in and walk around – I won’t push you away or hide from you. I’ll let myself be awash in you. All creatures feel pain. It’s okay.

Sadness, my old friend, good to see you again. Come sit with me and get soggy from my tears as I allow myself to acknowledge your presence and understand that it’s normal to feel you. You don’t last forever.

Fear, you’re intruding into my life, as you often do, so rather than wrestling with you, fighting and grappling in an intellectual cage match, I’m going to let you swirl around a bit, knowing that you have no stamina, and that you will soon pass and allow me to focus on more meaningful things.

It can be difficult to embrace and understand your emotions if you’ve been avoiding them for a time. In addition to how you react in your brain, what physical symptoms do various emotions cause?

Muscle tension is a good one for fear or panic, along with rapid pulse, increased rate of breathing, perhaps some dizziness or disorientation. Recognizing them, calling them out, is a good way to label them for what they are – physical manifestations of emotional reaction, temporary in nature, and not indicative of anything else. No pending heart attack or stroke, just your body physically reacting to emotions that you haven’t spent much time with lately.

My experience has been that once I welcomed these emotions, embraced them, named them, understood them, and let them flow through me, two distinct patterns emerged. First, the racing mind and physical symptoms tended to be less severe and the amount of time they lasted became less and less. Secondly, I found myself  with less apprehension about them when there was a possibility that they would occur. Since I knew what they are, what they did, and that I was able to acknowledge and embrace them, they lost all mystery and negative connotation. In the words of our friends from The Sopranos, it is what it is.

So I encourage you to stop avoiding your emotional side and send it an invitation to sit down for a chat. Buy it a cup of coffee or an herbal tea. Know that viewing your emotions as a necessary part of yourself that’s needed to make you a whole being should make it easier to make friends with your emotions, and learn to benefit from the lessons they hold.

We don’t always need to think and analyze and dissect. Sometimes, it’s best to just sit back and feel.

Core Practice: Welcoming and Releasing Emotions, via Urban Monk