How To Deal With Anxiety (part 1)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Often people come to therapy with feelings that are difficult to deal with. Dealing with anxiety is one of the most challenging tasks.

What is anxiety? It is a collection of physical sensations and states such as fear, nervousness, and anxiety. In some situations, excitement and anxiety are fully justified - for example, if a person is about to take an exam, have an important job interview, enter into a relationship, change place of residence, etc. However, problems with anxiety can arise when its intensity or duration exceeds acceptable limits.

Anxiety can also be tricky to define, so let's take a closer look at its symptoms.

• Physical symptoms of anxiety: dizziness, nausea, tension in the body, high blood pressure, rapid breathing and palpitations, trouble sleeping, headaches.
• Psychological symptoms of anxiety: excitement, feeling of tension, worries that someone might see your anxiety, obsessive thoughts about the same thing (“mental gum”), difficulty concentrating, feeling numb.

To understand how to deal with anxiety, it is important to consider anxiety in the context of the concepts associated with it.

1. Uncertainty

Anxiety is often described as “fear of the unknown,” but is it really true? Uncertainty is not always a bad thing. For example, we look forward to the development of events in an exciting book or movie - we are waiting with interest to see what will happen next. And if we learn prematurely that the “killer is a gardener”, we will be completely uninteresting, because the element of unpredictability and intrigue will disappear. A predictable world would be too boring. Therefore, anxiety is provoked not by unpredictability, but by a feeling of insecurity. It is very important to separate these concepts, because the unpredictability of the surrounding world is an objective reality, while the feeling of insecurity is exclusively subjective.

What to do about it? Do not indulge in the illusion that the outside world is predictable and that it can be controlled. Focus on your feelings, take action to give yourself a sense of security. Increase your psychological flexibility and learn to adapt to unpredictable external circumstances.

2. Emptiness

Sooner or later, every client who comes to therapy is faced with an exciting feeling of emptiness. Most often, this void is localized in the chest area, however, there are exceptions. The problem is that emptiness is usually opposed to presence. And often it is the presence of something good. It's like “to be or not to be” or the well-known question about a glass that is half empty or full.

It is important to understand that presence and absence, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, are inseparable. We can be present next to other people only when there is space between us, a certain distance. This emptiness is a field for action, self-expression and development. We will not be able to move if there are obstacles in our path, and not free, empty space.

3. Loneliness

Anxiety covers us headlong when we are alone. When there is no one around to support our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. No one to distract us from our problems. We are left alone with an unpredictable, cold world, and do not feel protected (which brings us back to the first point in this article). Social connections are often a small guarantee of predictability, an illusion of stability, control that we are trying to apply to the entire world around us.

The fact is that a person can listen to himself only when he is alone. When he is not trying to escape from his worries and reflections. This is how not only individuality is formed, but also the ability to rely on oneself, to believe in oneself. Then loneliness ceases to be equated with isolation. We become capable of sincere, authentic intimacy when our relationship is based on an interest in another person, rather than a fear of loneliness.

To be continued.