Overcoming Anxiety

The problem with anxiety, as with most mental disorders, is you most likely don't realize when you're suffering from one. And even if you do, you're probably uncertain of how to change the behaviors that make up that disorder. Worse still, it's likely your family and friends don't understand what you're experiencing, offer very poor advice, or blame you for the way you behave and believe it's within your immediate control to change those aspects of your behavior which make them uncomfortable. This is a tragically flawed and very challenging situation to find yourself in.

The thing about mental "disorders," is that they are just that, "disordering." You find yourself suddenly different than you were previously, whether it seemed like it happened over night or over the course of a few years. The way you perceive and experience the world changed, and everyone else around you stayed the same. And they can't understand why you've "chosen" the path you're currently wandering down. This is truly one of the worst aspects of mental problems. The very people you love and hoped would help you, turn out to be totally confused by what's going on in your head, and often reject it and become the complete opposite of helpful in your recovery.

The first step to take in mental illness recovery is realizing you have a legitimate problem that you CAN work on. I won't say you can ever "cure" something that happens in your mind the way you can with a bacterial infection, but I will stand by the premise that you CAN reshape your mind and build up defenses to remedy your woes. The second step is realizing you can't change people easily, and taking the energy you waste on convincing your friends and family how to understand your circumstances, and putting it toward something more beneficial in the short term; your recovery.

The truth is, family and friends are actually fundamental and very important in practically all therapies for mental health concerns. The sad reality is that unless you've experienced one of these concerns for yourself, most people are unfortunately unable to understand them on a level that would allow them to support you appropriately in your recovery. So if you're struggling with a family or group of friends who simply can't understand why you've changed, or perhaps are even blaming you for the way you act, do yourself a favor and put that situation aside for the time being. The old adage of "loving yourself before you can love another" holds true for mental health as well. You cannot practice good mental health habits with family and friends if you do not possess such faculties. Sometimes you have to step outside the comfort zone and fix yourself, before you can rejoin with those you hold dear.

My past paragraph makes me quite sad, because I believe if you have even just one person to help you through your struggles, you will be that much more successful in overcoming them and maintaining your progress. If you have that one person, embrace them and thank them for their understanding and patience. If you don't, get used to it and get excited about healing yourself. There is very little in life that feels better than dragging your own ass out of a debilitating mental disorder and you'll be even stronger than you imagined for it in the end.

So... there are a lot of things that trouble people out there, I'm well aware. Today we're focusing on anxiety, since many of us seem to have trouble with it at some point in our lives. Even people who will never be diagnosed with a mental disorder have most likely experienced semi-debilitating anxiety at some point in their lives. The way we deal with it is the KEY in whether we get better from that point, or sink further into the potential neurosis that anxiety can bring. The important point here is starting as soon as possible, and working as hard as you can without damaging yourself.

The main problem with anxiety is that most of it is completely irrational, yet even the realization of this doesn't fix it and make it go away. When it IS based on a rational concern, it's even worse because you have to change the situation causing the anxiety to rid yourself of it. Either way, you MUST immerse yourself in it if you want it to change. Your brain will repeat its patterns if you don't make a conscious effort to retrain it. This is the key to improving anxiety, retraining and immersion to a point that forces the brain to change the way it responds. This holds true with any type of anxiety.

There is a famous quote by someone I can't remember...but the quote read that "if you are afraid, you must." That is the beginning, middle and end of anxiety therapy. In the clinical world, we tend to try to group things into types of anxiety. But this is a waste of time.....the bottom line is simply if you are afraid, then you MUST. For some types of anxiety that are very debilitating, you may find a therapist is needed to accompany you on this journey of "doing." If that is the case, please seek that help. The bottom line is the doing, however you are able to "do" is the way you must travel.

The more able you are to "do" these anxiety-provoking things on your own, the closer you are to recovery. I myself went to anxiety therapy for years before realizing I needed to engage frequently in the very activities that made me anxious before I would feel comfortable in them. This is not something you should expect to happen in a matter of weeks or even months. It is literally a course of doing things that make you uncomfortable and even "freak out" for years, until you realize one day that you're no longer sure why you were so uncomfortable in those situations. That's when you know you're "cured." When something that used to make you sweat, tense up and feel compelled to flee to the scene, becomes a daily, normal, routine activity.

When this happens, it probably takes awhile to even realize it. You've become so used to feeling upset and nervous about whatever the situation is, that you never expected to become comfortable in it. Perhaps you got to the point where you were able to tolerate it, either on your own or with the help of some benzodiazepine medication. While I highly disregard much of our modern medicine, and also do not condone heavy reliance on benzos, I DO recommend starting your therapy with the help of a mild, short acting tranquilizer like Ativan.

The key with anxiety therapy is to immerse yourself in situations as much as you feel comfortable, without going overboard. The medication helps you start that process. The great thing about something like Ativan, is that it helps you initiate the situation without the panic process, and gradually wears off a few hours later after you're hopefully already semi-comfortable with the situation. Repeated experience like this is crucial for helping rebuild your neural structures and the neurons that fire to tell you whether or not something is scary or mundane.

The problem with benzos is their highly addictive nature. You don't realize you're addicted to it, but your body has already altered the way it produces GABA, a substance responsible for regulating your fight or flight/anxious response. If you take long-acting benzos for an extended period of time, your natural production of GABA will down-regulate naturally. Too much science.....basically the drug is a helpful crutch and if you take it too long your body assumes it to be a regular thing and changes its own production of very vital chemicals accordingly. That is the scary aspect of anxiety medications. The "valium addict" who fulfills all the duties of normal life is a total myth. Anxiety medication should be just that; medication to help you DEAL with your anxiety, not a permanent coping mechanism for it.

As I said earlier, anxiety, depending on the nature and severity, may take you years to overcome. In the meantime, whatever helps you experience the situations that make you feel anxious is beneficial, even if it includes a drug in the benzo classification. The important thing to keep in mind is that the more you experience without the drug, the more you take into your brain and thus help to rewire your anxious circuitry. The stronger the anxiety drug, the less aware you are of what you're going through, and thus the less you take away from the situation in terms of helping you maintain something in the long run.

People who are completely unable to deal with life, take strong, long lasting benzos like Valium. They get through the day, the half life of the drug is longer than most people stay awake, and thus the amount of time they spend dealing with anxiety-provoking situations "uncomfortably" is minimal if not non-existent. This may seem like heaven to someone who is wrapped deeply in the throws of anxiety. But I promise you, this is short term and not the answer. The way to solve the problem is to take the least amount of medication possible, to immerse yourself in the situations that make you anxious, and keep doing that over and over and over and over.....until it starts to feel OK.

I apologize if after reading this far you feel left out in the cold. But the one thing I CAN tell you, is that developing a strong addiction to benzos will only set you back even further than you were when you started. The portion of your brain that wants to deal with anxiety, relies on GABA. Suppressing its production by drugs only delays your progress. If you can experience that which makes you anxious without the aid of any drugs, do so regularly. Eventually you'll find it doesn't bother you nearly as much as it used to. And the more you experience THAT feeling, the closer you come to ridding yourself of it completely.

As for the things you find you simply CANNOT tolerate without the aid of drugs, do those things too, as often as possible. Take the drugs you've been prescribed, again, hopefully the lesser of the benzo class.....short acting and not so sedating. The most useful part of these drugs is to allow oneself to begin the anxiety-provoking situation and endure past it....without numbing oneself to it entirely. You simply cannot learn anything in that setting. You MUST feel to understand, and to change.

Therapy should not be comfortable; it should not be unbearable, but if it's comfortable then you're probably not really trying that hard. I most respect Fritz Perls, for his inspirational and challenging therapeutic interventions. He took what people expressed and threw it right back at them in a way that forced them to realize their shortcomings and either alter them, or run away. If you're not willing to face that situation, you're not ready for change. If you're not ready for change, no one can help you, not even yourself.

If you're troubled by anxiety, realize this one key point: discomfort will be necessary in helping you grow and change and eventually develop the tools and mindset to not feel that discomfort. If you're comfortable and happy along the way, find a new therapist. You're clearly reading this because you WANT something in your life to change. Whatever your mental concern may be, trust me, it isn't something that can be fixed by a passive interest in helping yourself. You must be seriously invested and willing to feel discomfort before you will feel true comfort. If therapy didn't hurt, it wouldn't be therapeutic.....and if you didn't experience anxiety, you'd have no basis on which to understand true placidity and lack of anxiety. Like I said earlier.....if it hurts...you must. No questions asked.