Artane
By J. Kafa. Sarah Lawrence College. 2018.
The benefit of identifying the source of your anxiety lies in helping you real- ize anxiety isn’t something you brought on yourself 2mg artane with visa pain medication for dogs metacam. Anxiety develops for a number of good discount 2 mg artane amex spine diagnostic pain treatment center, solid reasons, which we elaborate on in the following sec- tions. They drain resources and keep your focus away from the effort required for challenging anxiety. By contrast, self-forgiveness and self-acceptance energize and even motivate your efforts (we cover these ideas later in the chapter). If you suffer from excessive worries and tension, look at the rest of your family. Of those who have an anxiety disorder, typically about a quarter of their relatives suffer along with them. So your Uncle Ralph may not struggle with anxiety, but Aunt Melinda or your sister Charlene just might. Chapter 4: Clearing the Roadblocks to Change 49 Maybe you’re able to make the argument that Uncle Ralph, Aunt Melinda, and your sister Charlene all had to live with Grandma, who’d make anyone anx- ious. Various researchers have studied siblings and twins who live together to verify that genes do play an important role as to how people experience and cope with anxiety. As predicted, identical twins were far more similar to each other in terms of anxiety than fraternal twins or other siblings. But even if you’re born with a genetic predisposition toward anxiety, other factors — such as environment, peers, and how your parents raised you — enter into the mix. However, they do hold responsibility for the way that you were brought up to the extent that it may have contributed to your woes. Three parenting styles appear to foster anxiety in children: ✓ Over-protectors: These parents shield their kids from every imaginable stress or harm. Not surprisingly, their kids fail to find out how to tolerate fear, anxiety, or frustration. They direct every detail from how they should play to what they should wear to how they solve arithmetic problems. One day, they respond with understanding when their kids have trouble with their homework; the next day, they explode when their kids ask for help. These kids fail to discover the con- nection between their own efforts and a predictable outcome. If you recognize your own parenting style in any of these descriptions and worry that your behavior may be affecting your child, flip to Chapter 20 to see how you can help your child overcome her anxiety. The world today moves at a faster pace than ever, and the workweek has gradually inched upward rather than the other way around. Perhaps that’s why mental-health workers see more people with anxiety-related problems than ever before. Four specific types of events can trigger a problem with anxiety, even in someone who has never suffered from it much before: ✓ Unanticipated threats: Predictability and stability counteract anxiety; uncertainty and chaos fuel it. A freak slip on an icy patch of sidewalk dis- ables him for six weeks, and he has insufficient sick leave to cover his absence. Even when he returns to work, he worries more than ever about the next financial booby trap that awaits him. Jake initially thinks that nothing is better than a promotion when his supervisor hands him a once-in-a-lifetime oppor- tunity to direct the new high-risk research and development division at work. Jake never expected such a lofty position or the doubling of his salary this early in his career. Of course, new duties, expectations, and responsibilities come along for the ride. Now, she worries incessantly that something is wrong with her; perhaps she’ll never have the life she envisioned for herself. Horrific accidents, acts of terrorism, pandemics, natural disasters, battlefield injuries, and violence have occurred for centuries, and we suspect they always will. Chapter 4: Clearing the Roadblocks to Change 51 Finding Self-Acceptance Time and again, we see our worried, tense clients suffer from another need- less source of pain. Their anxiety is bad enough, but they also pound on themselves because they have anxiety.
But if you feel like King Kong is knocking on your door on a regular basis and he’s not even in the neighborhood discount artane 2 mg otc a better life pain treatment center, your anxious feelings cause you more harm than good artane 2mg kneecap pain treatment. Whether or not King Kong is knocking at your door, identifying anxious, fear- ful, or worried feelings can help you deal with them far more effectively than avoiding them. When you know what’s going on, you can focus on what to do about your predicament more easily than you can when you’re sitting in the dark. Getting in touch with your thoughts Just as some people don’t have much idea about what they’re feeling, others have trouble knowing what they’re thinking when they’re anxious, worried, or stressed. Because thoughts have a powerful influence on feelings, psy- chologists like to ask their clients what they were thinking when they started to feel upset. As this example illustrates, people don’t always know what’s going on in their heads when they feel anxious. Sometimes you may not have clear, identifi- able thoughts when you feel worried or stressed. Susan may have felt panicked because she feared losing her job, or she may have thought the supervisor’s criticism meant that she was incompetent. Tapping your triggers You may not always know what’s going on in your mind when you feel anx- ious. To figure it out, you need to first identify the situation that preceded your upset. Perhaps you ✓ Opened your mail and found that your credit card balance had skyrocketed ✓ Heard someone say something that bothered you ✓ Read the deficiency notice from your child’s school ✓ Wondered why your partner was so late coming home ✓ Got on the scales and saw a number you didn’t like ✓ Noticed that your chest felt tight and your heart was racing for no clear reason On the other hand, sometimes the anxiety-triggering event hasn’t even hap- pened yet. You may be just sitting around and wham — an avalanche of anxi- ety crashes through. See the following examples of anxiety- triggering thoughts and images: ✓ I’ll never have enough money for retirement. Ask yourself what event just occurred or what thoughts or images floated into your mind just before you noticed the anxiety. After you see how to snare your anxious thoughts in the next section, we show you how to put thoughts and feelings all together. Snaring your anxious thoughts If you know your feelings and the triggers for those feelings, you’re ready to become a thought detective. An event may serve as the trigger, but it isn’t what directly leads to your anxiety. It’s the meaning that the event holds for you, and your thoughts reflect that meaning. Or you may have different thoughts that don’t cause so much anxiety: ✓ I love having time alone with the kids. Some thoughts create anxiety; others feel good; and still others don’t stir up much feeling at all. Capturing your thoughts and seeing how they trigger anxi- ety and connect to your feelings is important. If you’re not sure what thoughts are in your head when you’re anxious, you can do something to find them. First, focus on the anxiety trigger — the event or image that seemed to set things off. Andrew’s story illustrates how the questions about a triggering event can help clarify the nature of how one’s thoughts influence feelings. He manages computer systems and designs Web pages for small businesses in his community. Andrew believes in hands- on service and often visits his clients just to see whether things are run- ning smoothly. One Friday, Andrew pulls up to one of the law firm offices he’s working for and sees three police cars parked by the front door. In order to capture what’s going on in his head, he answers a few of the minding-your-mind questions: ✓ Specifically, what about this event do I find upsetting?
