In my last post I mentioned that the best way to overcome anxiety is not to face it head-on, but to undermine it — to subvert it.  This is just a way of saying that the old advice, “Try not to worry,” could not be more useless than it is.  When we try not to fall, we pay more attention to our balance, and thus we are less likely to slip up.  When we try not to look stupid, we pay more attention to our behavior and may be less likely to do something socially unacceptable.  But when we try not to worry, we pay more attention to what we are thinking, and this is the last thing we should be doing.

The kinds of things that work best for anxiety are things that keep you in the present moment.  Anxiety is nearly always about the future, so the more focused you can stay in the present moment, the better.  The follow four techniques came from my good friend Tim McVay, a practicing psychologist, who specializes in treating people with anxiety.  Tim shared these techniques with me when I called him in desperation a while back, and they are effective. Continue Reading…

Anxiety, by Stathis Stavrianos

Comedian Steven Wright describes chronic anxiety better than anyone else I’ve ever known.  I will paraphrase him loosely here:

You know that feeling when you’re sitting in a chair and you rock back on two legs and you go back too far and you start to fall, then at the last minute you catch yourself?  I feel like that all the time.

That’s it.  That’s what it feels like to live with anxiety.  It’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone I deem to be a basically valuable person my worst enemy.

I have worried for most of my life.  And I don’t mean worrying about normal stuff, like sliding into a ditch during a snowstorm, or about one of my kids when they are sick.  I mean making up stuff to worry about.  I mean watching the news (which, if you haven’t noticed, is always bad — and if it’s not, it’ll be spun that way anyway) and then taking it even further in my mind, spinning it into nightmares more horrible than any that would be spun on the AGBATT (All Glenn Beck All The Time) Channel.  Incidentally, this is how you get to have your own show on CNN — take a headline, run the story out to its ultimate dreadful conclusion, speak loudly and urgently, have experts on your show to agree with you or, hopefully, tell you that it’s probably much worse than you think, and combine it with flashy graphics and other high intensity entertainment pieces.  (If you’re unsure how to do any of this, from the fear-mongering to the flashy and entertaining graphics, simply visit most contemporary churches to learn how).

What was I talking about?  Oh yes, anxiety.  It’s amazing how our minds can take us from one thread to another to another, until eventually the stream of thoughts take on a life of their own and carry with them all the force of reality.  I am an expert at this.  I have seen things that would scare most people half to death.  I mean I’ve SEEN them.  In living color.  Playing on the screen of my mind.  Engulfing my emotions in wild flurries of helpless panic.  I have lived in this state for hours, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, at a time.  It doesn’t matter that they weren’t “real.”  My brain obviously didn’t know the difference, and generated the adrenalin and dread anyway.

Tons of people live with chronic anxiety and panic.  Some are reading this post, and I have a message for you.  You don’t have to live that way.  Continue Reading…