Anxiety Free by L. Leahy Robert

Author:L. Leahy, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

What are the consequences of continuing to worry all the time? There are, of course, plenty: chronic anxiety and depression, a lack of joy, reduced effectiveness at work, a restricted social life, more difficult relationships, poor sleep, and any number of stress-related physical ailments. Instead of the death one hopes to avoid by worrying, one dies thousands of small deaths daily. In return for one’s supposed safety from catastrophe (a dubious safety at best), one misses out on the opportunity to live one’s life to the fullest. Worriers have a hard time just staying in the present moment—they are living in a future world that actually seldom turns out as bad as they think it will. And, in fact, worriers worry that they worry too much. They think that they need to worry to avoid surprise, but they think they need to stop worrying because it’s driving them mad.

There’s also an interesting relationship between worry and your emotions. Notice that when you worry it’s almost always in the form of language. You make some kind of statement to yourself about the future: I could lose my job, or I’m sure that lump will turn out to be malignant. When you make such statements you are thinking in abstract terms—language is essentially an abstraction of reality. You seldom worry in visual images—which tend to be more emotionally evocative for you. And when you think in abstract terms you are temporarily departing from your emotions; you’re focusing on thoughts rather than feelings. In short, worry, in addition to being a strategy to fend off disaster, is also a way of blocking your emotions. In physiological terms, it activates the cortical part of your brain (the “rational” part), and blocks the amygdala (the “emotional” part). When your emotions are causing you discomfort, the rational activity of worrying is a sure-fire way to shut them out. You are essentially anesthetizing your unpleasant feelings.

The anesthetic, of course, is only temporary. Researchers have found that when people worry, their physical and emotional responses are suspended for a short time—but then bounce back as free-floating anxiety. In a sense, your anxious arousal incubates—it goes underground—for a short period of time. The original stimulus to anxiety is lost, while the anxiety itself continues, producing restlessness, tension, arousal—and the urge to seek out yet more “dangers” to worry about. Underneath it all is the assumption that you can’t stand ever being unhappy, anxious, scared, or uncomfortable, that those feelings must be avoided at all costs. By succeeding (temporarily) in banishing them, you reinforce two very powerful beliefs: 1) that you can get rid of discomfort by worrying, and 2) that negative emotions cannot be tolerated. In fact your relationship to worry is similar to that of an alcoholic to drink: you need it to dull the pain. Only here the drug is thinking itself: you try to think your way out of your discomfort. You are thinking, not feeling. You think you need to think—but, we will see, you really need to feel—and to come to terms with your emotions.

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