Mastering Anxiety

"But what if the elevator does get stuck?"

My psychotherapy client sits opposite me frozen in terror. We live in a world of "what ifs." Life is unpredictable and it can be dangerous. But most citizen wouldn't give a view to going in an elevator. The likelihood of anything bad happening is so low that it approaches the impossible. Sadly, for my client, the fear feels so real that she cannot walk straight through the elevator doors. What she doesn't perceive is that the danger she faces isn't a stuck elevator; it is anxiety.

Mental Illness Statistics

It's silly to give statistics on how many of us touch anxiety. Is there anything who doesn't? Anxiety comes in many forms. Some citizen wake in the middle of the night with their heart pounding. We say these citizen suffer from panic. Others get crazy thoughts stuck in their head. One client of mine believed he was going to die from a haircut. We say these citizen have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Others spend an inordinate whole of time worrying about everything. These people, we say, have generalized anxiety. Others, like my client, are afraid of one, or a bunch of, things. We say these citizen have a phobia. But even without the names, we all know what it means to be anxious.

Mastering Anxiety

The Prevalence of Psychiatric Morbidity Among Adults Living in Private Households (OPCS Surveys of Psychiatric Morbidity in Great Britain) Best

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The qoute with anxiety is that when we are feeling it, we often focus on the wrong thing. What we commonly do is focus on the view or the situation that we believe is perilous to us. The man who is afraid of airplanes focuses on what could wrong in the airplane, and does all they can to avoid flying. The man who is afraid of collective situations tells themselves that they will make an idiot out of themselves at the party. Then they drink too much, and make an idiot out of themselves at the party. The man who thinks they are contaminated spends hours washing their hands. What they don't perceive is that they are focusing on the wrong thing. What they need to be focusing on is not the airplane, the party, or the germs. What they need to focus on is their anxiety.

Anxiety is something that happens in your body. It is the corollary of chemical reactions that involve all your body systems, along with your nervous system, brain, muscles and organs. The clarification is not to avoid the party. The clarification is to work with your body to lower your anxiety level.

The crazy thoughts, weird body feelings, and strange compulsions are all signals that we are feeling anxiety. When we are anxious, what is basically happening is that our body is misreading what is happening in the world. Our body believes we are about to get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger, while all that is happening is that we are chatting with an moving guy.

When the body believes that it is in danger, and does not believe that we have the ability to cope with that danger, it turns on a system in the body called the sympathetic nervous system. This is the celebrated fight, flight, ice system. When we live with that system turned on all, most, or some of the time, we feel anxious. We have an phenomenal urge to run away, we start yelling, or we become caught like a deer in headlights. But since we are not beyond doubt facing an animal that would eat us, these are rarely the acceptable responses, especially if we are talking to an moving person.

The reply is to turn off that part of the brain that tells us we are in mortal danger, and turn on the part of our nervous system that makes us feel safe and secure, and lets us get on with the happy business of life.

The good news is that it is possible, with practice, to turn off the crisis system, which is regulated by a part of the brain the size of a walnut. We can turn on the part of the brain that is reasonable, can speak English and knows how to be charming.

The body has a hard time believing it is safe when it is imagining that it is about to get eaten. That is why it is important to institution the technique to turn off the crisis system over and over again. Eventually, if you institution enough, you can learn how to turn off your inner panic button, and become yourself again.

Mastering AnxietyKRON 4's Vicki Liviakis Presents "Hearing Voices" Part 1 Video Clips. Duration : 8.47 Mins.

KRON 4's Vicki Liviakis sits down with Peter Mantas, the father of a boy whose mental illness may have led to the murder of the child's mother.

Tags: mental, health, psychosis, family, law, mistakes, murder, dimitra, andrew, peter, mantas, vicki, liviakis, daniel, horowitz, berkow