I’ve written in these past weeks about depression, about the body-mind connection and the power of our thoughts as shapers of our reality. This is one other thing that is often times incorrectly regarded as a disease. But what is anxiety and how does it manifest itself? And most important of all, how do we get over it and release ourselves from its chains? Let’s dive in and see.
What Is Anxiety?
According to Psiychiatry.org, Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. Mild levels of anxiety can be beneficial in some situations. It can alert us to dangers and help us prepare and pay attention. Anxiety disorders differ from normal feelings of nervousness or anxiousness and involve excessive fear or anxiety. Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders. They affect nearly 30% of adults at some point in their lives. However, anxiety disorders are treatable with a number of psychotherapeutic treatments. Treatment helps most people lead normal productive lives.
Anxiety refers to anticipation of a future concern and is more associated with muscle tension and avoidance behavior.
Fear is an emotional response to an immediate threat and is more associated with a fight or flight reaction – either staying to fight or leaving to escape danger.
Anxiety disorders can cause people to try to avoid situations that trigger or worsen their symptoms. Job performance, schoolwork and personal relationships can be affected.
Researchers differentiate between anxiety and fear, placing fear in your immediate future and anxiety further away. To me, the term anxiety is ambiguous, which makes it even more dangerous to people’s wellbeing. When you have anxiety, you have a plethora of things potentially affecting you. When you realize that your anxiety is comprised of one or more fears you have, you have the power to take them and tackle them one at a time.
Comparing it to depression, anxiety is somehow the opposite from a time perspective. Depression means choosing to suffer about a past event that is not repeating itself. Anxiety means choosing to suffer about a potential event, from your eventual future. In the case of depression, we talk about an actual event. In the case of anxiety, we talk about something that has not even happened yet and it is possible to never happen. But the fear about how something might turn out is rather paralyzing and it will disable you and take a toll on your mental and physical wellbeing.
So anxiety is really a fear. An inexplicable fear that can otherwise be taken on fully and dealt with rather effectively.
How Does Anxiety Affect You?
Anxiety affects you in different ways, depending on what type of anxiety you get labelled with. It might be social anxiety, general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobia or one of the other labels people tend to get from the so-called specialists. Now, they all manifest themselves differently, but they would take the same toll on you in the long run.
Anxiety, being actually a fear of something, will affect your self-confidence and ability to act. It will affect your ability to look upon your future with certainty that things will work out well and that you will be able to make it. Ultimately, it has the power to destroy you, to turn you into a helpless human being. But this would be learned helplessness, not an actual one. After all, all helplessness is learned. And we know this because people that others gave no chance to, were able to turn themselves around and make it big, against all odds. These are the people who had actual things to be depressed or anxious about. See the story of Siri Lindley, W. Mitchell, Malala and many others who could have been doomed, had they allowed themselves to get buried under the horrendous events that took place in their lives. What made the difference? Their mindset and a relentless hunger for a beautiful life that gave them courage to break through fear.
Life Past Anxiety
You might think to yourself: “Ok, anxiety is some sort of imagined fear. But my fear is really real to me. And there were people who still made it and what not, but that doesn’t really help me. And I can’t live my life like this… What can I do? How do I get out of this?” – I mentioned something about courage. And here is how you can make it work for you.
The first thing you need to understand is that courage does not mean the absence of fear. Courage means that you are fearful, but you still do it. You pull through, no matter what.
Imagine you went skydiving. You might think that you wouldn’t react to it in any negative way and that you will just be able to jump, have a great experience, land and have something cool to talk about. Would it be cool? Would it really be an experience if you didn’t have any fear prior to that? I would tend to say no. The way things are more likely to go is: you’d probably have some sort of excitement leading up to that moment. As the plane goes up and up, you feel that excitement going through the roof and eventually turning into a little fear. You see how high up you are and you realize that a lot of things could go wrong. The door opens and there’s a lot of wind coming in. You look out the door and your pulse starts to increase more and more. Then you are just in the door, ready to jump and you have you are stuck to your instructor. The countdown goes from 3 to 2 and before it even gets to 1, you are out of the plane and in free fall. Your heart is racing, but there is no turning back. You are falling from the sky, towards the Earth. Rapidly! But at the same time, it is amazing. Parachute opens. You are now slowly diving. You see everything from up there and you think that life is so beautiful. You think about all the great moments you’ve had so far and start to feel thankful to God, the Universe or whatever you want to call it that you’ve been able to experience so much beauty in your life.
Did you fear that the parachute might fail? Probably. Did you fear that you might die? Very likely. Did you push through it still? Maybe you had your mind made up or maybe your instructor was the one who made the decision. Regardless of how it was, you conquered a fear. By talking about it? Not really… But by taking action.
A lot of the times, you won’t have an instructor behind you, really stuck to you, who could act when you wouldn’t. But you can always muster the courage to do that. To take life by the horns and go through that fear.
Fear is like a wall. If you have the courage, the wall doesn’t disappear all of a sudden. It still exists. But once you break through it, behind that wall is pure and absolute bliss. The power you get from conquering something that seemed impossible and rather paralyzing at first, suddenly becomes your ally. Take fear and dance with it.
As Tony Robbins would say: “Life is a dance between what we fear most and what we want most.” Once you take fear and dance with it, it will become a great partner!
The Next Level: Get An Instructor
If you got as far as this last paragraph, I want to tell you this: all the resources that you need are within you. All the power lies within you. You are able to do so much more than you ever thought possible and be among the best of the best. But even the best of the best need support sometimes. A sounding board that will be there to tell you how to tune yourself to get back on track and stay there, on your way to your goals. That is what I am here for! Reach out and don’t hesitate to ask for your free coaching session. It will be a privilege to serve you and be there to help you strategize your best life and start living it today! support@danielccoaching.com.
Daniel C Coaching 