Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Understanding Anxiety
If stress burns calories, I'd be a super model.
— Unknown
Scott's Story
Scott was anxious — really anxious. He hadn't slept a wink in three nights and somehow still had the energy to pace about the room and plan his own funeral. He wasn't suicidal; he was just imagining the various methods his father might use to arrange a meeting between Scott and his maker as soon as Dad heard the news.
You see, Scott was the first person in the history of his family to attend college and yet, here he was three years later awaiting possible expulsion for an embarrassing infraction.
He hadn't eaten since the incident. He was not allowed access to the cafeteria for a full week after the spectacle last Thursday. Besides, with all the anxiety, he just wasn't hungry. He looked awful: bloodshot eyes, preternatural wrinkles across his brow, and a look that conveyed an emotion somewhere between torture and terror.
It began innocently enough: Henry, Gary, and Scott enjoying another leisurely lunch together in the school cafeteria. Scott called Henry a "pea brain" after fielding a playful insult from his good buddy. "A pea brain," Henry laughed mockingly, and calmly loaded his spoon with a bunch of peas from his plate. Waiting until the perfect moment, Henry fired his peas across the table and into Scott's face. His aim was perfect, peas bouncing off Scott's head in all directions. One rogue pea, evidently laced with mashed potatoes, stuck to Scott's glasses directly in front of his right pupil. Everyone laughed, of course, and Henry, feeling victorious after his successful launch, could only ask, "So who's the pea brain, Scott?"
Scott felt emasculated, needless to say. He should have laughed along with the others and left it at that. But 21-year-old wisdom is often contaminated by testosterone, which cries out for vengeance. Not to be defeated, he loaded up his spoon — his mashed potatoes were soaked with gravy — and fired them as hard as he could at Henry's smirk. But Henry predictably ducked, and the starch-packed missile sailed to the next table and thumped Betty Evans, dean of students, directly in the back of her perfectly coiffed beehive. Scott's jaw dropped as his blood pressure skyrocketed — this could not be good!
If Scott was embarrassed by his errant toss, Dean Evans was humiliated by the laughter and attention from the carboload in her hair and gravy on her neck. And whatever possessed Gary, the third musketeer, to eat potatoes off the Dean's pink cashmere sweater, remains a mystery. The boys were to meet at her office the following morning at "O nine hundred hours! And no cafeteria privileges for a week!" She stomped out of a now quiet, stunned cafeteria, leaving the young men to ponder what was left of their future at this conservative institution.
It's never good to assault a Dean. It's arguably worse to publicly humiliate her. But when she resorted to yelling about private meetings on military time schedules in a non-military school, well, the boys knew their geese were cooked. But the following morning produced three anguished young men and no Dean Evans. The note on her door only stated, "Gentleman. There has been a death in my family. Meet here 6 p.m. Wed. Do not be late!"
On Wednesday night, it was Dean Evans who was late, 17 minutes, to be exact. She maintained her stern look, nary a smile, and said only, "Follow me." The boys trailed her single file, like ducklings behind their fast-paced momma, out a side door and into the dark, cool November evening. At 6:30 they arrived at a nearby house, Dean Evans's home, for the biggest surprise of their lives. A small banquet was prepared for them, including roast beef, biscuits, and of course, peas, but with baked potatoes! "You might not want to launch these, Scott, they're loaded with sour cream and butter, not instant, like that cafeteria crap!" The widowed Dean Evans admitted, "Every night I feel guilty about you three idiots starving to death — this was the least I could do to make it up to you. Now eat up and learn a life lesson!"
To hear Scott tell it years later, there were numerous life lessons to be gathered and shared for the rest of his life: "First, there must be a force who saved people from the consequences of stupid decisions. Secondly, forgiveness is alive and well and more powerful than anything in the universe, except for love. Finally, worry, dread, and anxiety are self-created wastes of emotional energy. I've learned to replace them with hope, faith, and positive thinking."
He then added one more pearl of wisdom: always choose baked over instant.
* * *
Ever wonder what really goes on behind the closed doors of a psychologist's office? Ever think you could relate to the issues patients are sharing?
Lest you should still be holding on to the antiquated belief that mental health professionals treat "crazy" people, let me share the highlights of a clinical psychologist's typical day.
* A 60-year-old woman has been married to an excessively controlling professional man for the past 32 years. She becomes anxious when her husband calls her into the den to "discuss" last month's credit card statement. She would like to change all that control, but is petrified to stir up the waters.
* An 80-year-old woman, a mother of four sons, makes her initial visit with the following complaint: "My son, Greg, committed suicide two years ago. I thought I was going to be alright ... truth be told, I can't stop obsessing about it and can't sleep worth a damn ..."
* An 8-year-old boy hears noises outside his bedroom window so he is afraid to sleep alone. During the day, he readily admits he knows the sounds come from the tree branches scratching against the window pane. Nevertheless, he still panics every night.
* A 47-year-old man, referred by his physician after noting a spike in blood pressure, complains that his life as a financial planner has become overwhelming with the economic downturn. He lives in fear of disappointing and losing his clients ... and his job.
* A 14-year-old boy refuses to return to school. Long a favorite target of two of the high school's most notorious bullies, he feels ridiculed and ashamed and vows never to "show his face in that class again."
* A 30-year-old professional athlete avoids flying because he is afraid the plane will crash. Instead, he takes a bus or a train to his game and is embarrassed when his teammates razz him.
* A 13-year-old girl panics at the thought of getting back into her mom's SUV after the vehicle was hit on her side of the car a week prior.
* A 41-year-old man, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, drinks himself to sleep each night in an effort to shut off the intrusive flashbacks of his victimization. He'd like to quit drinking if he could just get "those memories to go away."
This is one clinical day among many throughout the year. And what do these patients have in common? Each one of them is manifesting symptoms of an anxiety disorder, conditions that mental health professionals are diagnosing and treating with more and more frequency. In fact, anxiety disorders are now considered to be the common cold of mental disorders, replacing mood disorders (depression) as the most prevalent.
So how do people succumb to an anxiety disorder? Are they born with it? Is it the result of poor upbringing? A traumatic experience? Is an anxiety disorder a life sentence or is it treatable? Does it necessitate treatment with tranquilizers or other medications? I will stop bombarding you with questions and promise to address them in the pages ahead. But for now ... let's turn our attention to understanding anxiety.
What Is Anxiety?
The root meaning of the word anxiety is "to vex or trouble." Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state (mind and body) associated with feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness, dread, or nervousness. Although a certain degree of anxiety is a normal part of life, when it occurs too often, too severely, or is unmanageable, anxiety can be classified as a disorder.
Investment + Threat = Anxiety
Anxiety begins in your brain when you perceive a threat to your world. The threat can be to your life, such as a hurricane, rape, or mugging, but most often, anxiety is spawned by threats of a non-fatal nature, such as the imminent threat of job termination, relationship breakup, or court date. Any of these situations, if perceived to be a threat, has the power to create symptoms of anxiety just as intense as if they were life-threatening. Sometimes, as you will see in Chapter 3, anxiety is nothing more than a vague sense of dread regarding the unknown aspects of the road ahead. Anxiety is always about the future and, again, always sends a message of threat.
There is a second component to the creation of the feelings of anxiety: investment. Anxiety never occurs without investment, that is, caring about someone or something. If the job means nothing because there are other options, expect little or no anxiety about losing it. If, however, school represents the world to you, then each and every exam may have the power to create a maelstrom of nerves and apprehension. As I wrote in the first chapter of Your Mind: An Owner's Manual for a Better Life, Investment + Threat = Anxiety.
No situation or person causes stress or anxiety. What is stressful to you may not create stress in someone else. Your emotion of anxiety is a statement about you, for example, losing a job may be devastating to one individual but freeing to another.
To wit, I never cared about the local Babe Ruth baseball team until my nephew played for them. The stock market didn't even exist for me until I invested my first $1,000 after college. The cost of preschool was completely irrelevant and non-consequential before I had my first toddler. Grecian Formula commercials were of little interest, until gray hairs invaded my temples. Without investment there will be no anxiety, and without the perception of threat to that investment, there will be no anxiety. Think about it. Every anxiety-inducing situation in your life — the boss's perception of your project, your granddaughter's piano recital, your wife's biopsy — all produce anxiety in you only because you are invested in the outcome.
Why is that so important to understand? If anxiety can be traced back to your investments and threats, you can learn to think and respond differently to every anxiety-inducing situation and relationship in your life. The potential for situations that evoke anxiety are endless: cheerleading try-outs, a physician with a blood pressure cuff, a late-night visit from a cockroach in the kitchen, flashing police lights in your rearview mirror, news of breast cancer, an ominous storm report from the Weather Channel, and so on. What do these situations have in common? Each may represent a potential threat to some aspect of your life, and if the situation is important to you (investment) and you perceive an imminent danger (threat), you will experience symptoms of anxiety.
But, change either part of the equation, the investment or the threat, and the entire picture changes immediately. Let's reexamine the previous examples, but this time we will alter one aspect of each situation. Your best friend tells you she is certain the coach likes you and you are "sure to make the squad." The doctor tells you your blood pressure was perfect for your age so there's no concern. Your husband says, "Go back to the bedroom. That roach is mine!" As you pull over, the police cruiser continues his hot pursuit of some other driver. You learn that the breast cancer survival rate is high and that your prognosis is much better than you had anticipated. Your wife reminds you that in a storm your family is invited to stay with friends who live in a safer location and the rest of it is just "stuff" anyway.
If you check the examples one more time, note that anxiety was reduced by removing or reducing the perception of threat in every situation but the last one. In the final scenario, the perception of threat remained the same — the weather was still ominous — but the investment changed when it was decided that the house and the contents therein amounted only to "stuff," and was, therefore, replaceable.
Understanding the formula of investment + threat is essential for the chronically anxious person to completely reconstruct the thinking patterns that tend routinely to create anxiety. In fact, this formula affords the individual at least two places to intervene; by changing either the perception of threat ("What's the worst that could happen if I don't make the cheerleading squad?") or shrinking the subjective value of the investment. ("Hey, it's only money, and we all know it comes and goes.") Once again, to change either of these is to change the very experience of anxiety.
You get the idea. An immediate change in your perception can bring about an immediate change in your feelings. How many times have you been frightened by noises in your house that you were certain were created by a blood-thirsty intruder only to learn it was the cat knocking over a lamp? In a split second the mind recalculates the situation — the dangerous becomes benign — and the symptoms of anxiety screech to an immediate halt. There never was a real danger or threat, but that didn't matter. You perceived a threat (intruder) to an investment (your life), and anxiety was the response; isn't this almost always the case with anxiety? Remember: anxiety is never reality, but it is created by your perception of reality. Dr. Richard Carlson, psychologist and author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, offers two basic rules to manage stress (anxiety): 1) Don't sweat the small stuff. 2) It's all small stuff.
The Dummy Lights
Let me make an important point very early in this book. Anxiety, like all emotions/feelings, begins as our friend. Whether you believe in a divine order, evolution from primordial ooze, or a combination thereof, anxiety is designed to alert us to the potential dangers in our environment. The following comparison will illustrate this point. Your car's dashboard probably comes complete with an array of "dummy lights," indicating emerging problems with fuel, oil, tire pressure, windshield wiper fluid, and so on. These lights are so named presumably because smart people keep a careful watch over these important functions of their automobile. When your car's dummy light reads oil, for instance, you are alerted to the potential danger of your engine malfunctioning somewhere down the road. The message is this: dude, your car is low on oil; please respond appropriately.
So how do you respond? Do you ignore it and keep driving? Do you pull a hammer from the glove compartment and smash the light to pieces? Probably not, because you are smart enough to realize that the dummy light is your friend. It can help save your car's life, provided you respond appropriately.
Back to anxiety. Your body's dummy light is going on and conveying a message: Your investment is being threatened; please respond appropriately. Scott's dummy light was ignited by the threat of college expulsion. So what do you do when your anxiety light is illuminated? Do you ignore the message and keep going? Do you smash the dummy light by drinking alcohol or taking a tranquilizer? Or do you pay attention to the anxiety and figure out what the investment is in your life and what represents the threat?
This is the approach we'll take in the pages ahead: learn to understand your anxiety so you can respond most appropriately to your internal dummy light. For now, let's look at what happens in the brain to signal your anxiety dummy light.
Your Brain
Understanding the exact workings of the brain when processing anxiety — or any emotion — requires the specific and advanced training of a neuroscientist. Even then, there would still be questions that have to be answered. But this is a self-help book, so I want to make concepts simple, if not simplistic, and immediately user-friendly and helpful.
Let's borrow an explanation from the National Institute of Mental Health on how anxiety works in the brain. When you perceive a danger in your environment (the threat), there are two "sets of signals" immediately launched to different parts of the brain. The first set of signals conveys information to the cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain. Here the situation is analyzed and explained to the self as being dangerous, threatening, or even catastrophic.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Take Control of Your Anxiety"
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Copyright © 2015 Chris Cortman, Harold Shinitzky, and Laurie-Ann O'Connor.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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