Emotional Recovery from Situational Anxiety: How You Can Feel Safe Again

Author

First Aid

Take care of your physical health

This is the foundation of all health care (emotional or otherwise). Without proper diet, exercise, rest and hydration all other advice becomes irrelevant. Good self-care also helps de-stimulate your body.

Check in with your medical provider

She should understand that anxiety is a real emotional problem with physical manifestations. In addition she will know some untreated medical conditions cause anxiety. And should you need medical treatment or medication doctors are the people to help.

Become an expert in anxiety

If you come to my office regarding anxiety it is a safe bet that I will send you off to investigate the available information on anxiety. Knowledge helps!

Recognize that anxiety is treatable

Most emotional conditions leave us feeling helpless but we are not. There are many effective approaches for managing anxiety.

Flow into your fears

This one is not intuitive for most people who suffer from anxiety. They want to either lash out or run away.

Engage honestly in your emotional experience

In his wonderful book, When Panic Attacks, Dr. David Burns elaborates on the hidden emotion theory. Your engagement with your emotions has implications for your experience of anxiety.

Manage your thinking

The C part of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) says that we cannot control events in our lives but our emotional and behavioral responses are created by our thoughts and interpretations of those events.

Remember that there is a higher purpose for your anxiety

One of the prime directives of our unconscious mind is to protect us. It influences our behaviors and thoughts and wants the best for us. That said, sometimes it gets things wrong and tries to protect us from things that are not dangerous or are only slightly risky.

Throw the kitchen sink at your anxiety

When I see people get better there is usually no one thing they have done. Often they have tried a variety of approaches; some clearly logical and science based, and some not so much.

Be creative and have fun

This again is counterintuitive, especially when I note workplace mobbing, assault and cancer diagnosis among the causes of situational anxiety. Nothing fun about any of those things. And yet we are talking about emotional healing; reclaiming the joy in our lives and that should be fun.

Introduction

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

Ambrose Redmoon

We are hardwired for anxiety. I am surprised that everyone isn’t anxious. It is built into our human ancestry and bodies. Confronted with a fearful situation (or one that our body and mind perceives as fearful) mental flights of fear and physiological systems leap into action. There are more than 300 physical responses associated with anxiety. You know them: rapid heartbeat; shaking; shallow breathing; sweats; weak knees; fluttery stomach; difficulty swallowing; dizziness; I could go on and on.

We don’t completely understand the origins of anxiety. Some feel it more than others. There is often but not always a family connection. Is that genetic or do you feel nervous when you grow up with a nervous parent? And, we may find ourselves in a situation where we experience trauma, fear or threat and find ourselves anxious afterwards. Examples:

Car accident

Assault (sexual, physical, psychological)

Violence associated with war or law enforcement

Witnessing the aftermath of a violent death or accident

Victim of crime (violent or non-violent)

Workplace mobbing

Diagnosis of a serious disease

Cardiac illness

Animal attack

A frightening flight (train ride, boat ride)

A series of unrelated scary events over time

A minor scare

Revelation of a spouse’s affair

Any of the above in someone for whom we care

I know what you might be thinking. Some of those things are horrific. And some of those things less so. And you would be right. The problem is that our unconscious mind may not make the distinction. I have treated people who have become anxious following a relatively minor situation (a sudden encounter with a harmless snake) and people who have had strange anxieties following serious fear (the Afghanistan veteran who survived combat but is now afraid of mice). Anxiety is anxiety and it does not always distinguish between the serious and the not so serious scare.

And let’s not forget anxious children and teens. Could anxious parents, and the fear endemic in society be contributing to the number of frightened young peoplethat clinicians see in their office?

The line between situational anxiety and chronic anxiety is not always clear. Some people are anxious their whole lives and some become anxious under certain circumstances. Some have relatively minor issues with anxiety that only flare into something more serious following a challenging event. Some people, no matter what happens are rarely or never anxious.

I have written this book for the individual who has had an experience or series of experiences that change their relationship with fear and management of emotions. This is for the person who tells me in my office that things have changed for the worse.

Many are anxious and don’t understand or acknowledge it. This can take the form of the controlling or angry person who believes they can externalize their emotions rather than admit: I’m scared. It can also take the form of the withdrawn person who gradually moves away from social involvement and society at large. Many go their entire lives with terrible fear and never show or acknowledge it. Some self-medicate with addictive behaviors.

This is not the way it needs to be. Anxiety is treatable. As I tell my clients: We have the technology. One of the assumptions of this series of books is that emotional recovery is possible and there are many ways to do it. This is not fantasy. Most of my clients finish work with me much better than they started. This is not because I am a clinical genius but because they brought the power of intent into the office. Their calling for help has often coincided with a call to the family doctor, picking up some reading material and development of a personal self-care regimen.

Most of my Emotional Recovery books have some kind of personal link. We are human beings and therefore heir to the incumbent issues and struggles. I have congenital heart disease and experienced a workplace mobbing; two of the most anxiety provoking situations out there. If you have read Emotional Recovery from Workplace Mobbing you will notice some overlap. I manage anxiety with CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), self-hypnosis, exercise and sometimes medication. There are many ways to manage anxiety and these are just approaches that work for me.

There is a psychology and attitude to managing anxiety. It involves flowing into the challenge and, as strange as this sounds, not taking it too seriously. When I tell my clients that they are sometimes a little put off.

Richard doesn’t take my anxiety seriously? It’s destroying my life!

Not to panic (pun intended); as you will see you can mount a vigorous campaign to control and even eliminate anxiety and have some fun along the way. I know that sound contradictory but Mr. Anxiety (more on him later) counts on