December 22 2008

Mind Shift Technique

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Anxiety affects the mind and body equally. It can shatter your confidence, damage your psyche and bring your body into a frenzied state. I know this from personal experience. And after battling a severe anxiety disorder for a number of years, I have come to a place in which I no longer suffer from anxiety. Oh sure on occasion I will get anxious in the face of a screaming boss or when presented with a particularly frightening scenario. But does anxiety rule my life? No. On the average day do I feel even a twinge of anxiety? Not at all.
I simply live my life and 99.9% of the time I am not anxious. Coming from a person who barely left his apartment for two years, this is a remarkable accomplishment and it is one that I take an extraordinary amount of pride in. It’s how I am able to live my life today, interacting with strangers and “important” people, driving and taking care of errands, doing everything that I once thought would be impossible for me.
So you may be wondering, “How did you do it?’
That is the utmost question and why I started this blog. I think the important thing to realize about overcoming anxiety is that it is something you are going to have to do on your own. No matter how much money you spend on advice-doctors or filling your latest prescription of klonopin, you are never going to find relief unless you begin to take matters into your own hands.
Let’s look at how many people attempt to begin dealing with their anxiety:
First they go to a therapist. Therapists are wonderfully well-meaning people who are suitably educated to discuss psychological matters with you. Unfortunately, they almost always have zero experience with anxiety disorders themselves. Every thing that they know about living with anxiety they learned in a workshop or college class. As a result, you don’t get much from a therapist that can actually help your anxiety, since they don’t know. What you will get is one of two things: You’ll get what their college textbook prescribes for treating anxiety or, and much worse, you’ll get their personal opinion on what causes anxiety.
You may think that a therapist’s opinion on the causes of anxiety must be pretty valid since they are a trained professional. Unfortunately, and this is from personal experience of dealing with over a dozen certified therapists, they don’t know the first thing about anxiety. Their concentration in graduate school could have been how spirituality soothes the soul for all you know — which is fine, but if you think they are going to help you with your anxiety disorder you have a rude awakening in the coming.
The simple fact is that most therapists make their living by having an active interest in their client’s lives. They meet with their clients, get to know them, express interest in their success, and give you advice based on their world view. As a result you end up with a person who absolutely has a rooting interest in your life. They will ask about your troubles and listen and give advice. And that is all well and good if that is how you want to spend your money.
But, you will never get better. Never. Because the dirty little secret of psychology is that they don’t know how to help you. And you will spend two years, or three or four or what have you, seeing your therapist, spending thousands of dollars, and not getting one bit better.
So, if you love your therapist, you may be feeling a bit angry at what I have just said. And, remember I think that therapists are lovely people who really want to help. So, you may love your therapist and think they are the bees knees. And that’s fine. All I would point out is there is a difference between wanting to help and actually being able to. And, in my vast experience, most therapists simply can not help you.
The reason for this is more simple than you might have guessed. Therapists don’t know how to treat anxiety because they have never dealt with it. It’s that simple. They don’t know what actually works, because they don’t know. It’s that simple. So, that said, all I would ask is that if you want to continue seeing your therapist because you like them, ask yourself, is it okay that they are not helping you? Is it worth it to pay for someone to listen? In some cases, I most confess, it is worth it.

So, what generally happens next is your therapist will recommend that you see a psychiatrist or check into a psychiatric hospital. Because your therapist does not know how to help you, they will refer you to another professional who makes their living “trying” to help. At the psychiatrist you will hear the recommendation of psychiatric medication. You may or not need them. I, for instance, have been on psychiatric medication for fifteen years. I am still on some medication to this day, mostly because the withdrawal effects of stopping them are worse than simply being on them. I continue to take them and see a psychiatrist because I basically have no choice. But that is neither here nor there.

So your doc will put you on some meds, because that is all they know to do. Like therapists, very few psychiatrists have any experience with severe anxiety disorders. They dispense medication because that is their job. That’s what they know. Know some shrinks will inform you of the addictive qualities of certain psychiatric medications, and believe me the anxiety meds are about the worst offenders here, but many times they won’t even mention it to you. Why? Because they see meds as life-changing and once you get on them you won’t have to worry about the withdrawal effects because, you won’t EVER be getting off of them. You will be on the meds for the rest of your life, and, even better for them, you will be cutting them a check every six weeks as you see them for medication management. Now, again, if meds have saved your life, I don’t begrudge you. But, meds did NOT save my life. They made it appreciably worse. And, not only was I left back at square one with my anxiety disorder, I was worse off because now I had to deal with the horrible discontinuation syndrome so typical with most of these drugs.

So, anyway, you’re now seeing a doctor and a therapist and spending hundreds of dollars a month. And you are only maybe 10% better, because drugs do help some, and you’re dependent on your “support network” to continue functioning. How’s that sound?

I’d like to propose another solution. And this is what I eventually had to do. The solution is simple. Stop looking to other people to “cure” your anxiety disorder. Start taking accountability for your own feelings and well being. And start solving problems yourself, with calling a professional every time that you encounter some diversity. Because, believe me, they need you a lot more than you need them. In fact, based on my personal experience, unless you have no friends and no family you do not need a them at all.

So, back to the issue, what can you do to address your anxiety disorder? Quite a lot actually. Because the disorder impairs the way that you think about yourself in relation to others it becomes paramount to re-align your personal paradigms. What you need to do is to start thinking about yourself and your environment much differently than you have been in the past. In my experience, the majority of anxiety results from uncertainty and fear — it can be fear or uncertainty about anything though it usually centers around your health, life, social status and safety — so to fight it you’ve got to neutralize it. How do you do this? That is the question.

Now, I use a method that absolutely works to re-frame your universe and eliminate anxiety. However, it does have some downsides. If you come to believe what I believe you will find your entire value structure altered and you may encounter new difficulties on the road of life. But anxiety will not be one of them.

So, what’s the secret?

You’ve got to come to accept your place and, to be terribly honest, your own insignificance in the universe.

We’ll come back to that in a moment. For now, just prepare to throw all of your old preconceptions out the window. In order to fully conquer anxiety you’re going to have to adopt some (maybe even radical) premises. But, I can assure you, this mind shift technique works.

I have dubbed my top technique for dealing with anxiety “Mind Shifting.” The goal of mind shifting is to “shift” your state of mind from concerned to indifferent. We want you to stop caring about your anxiety disorder or its effects because, let’s be frank, the universe does not care that you suffer from anxiety.

First a little background about my case: During the most intense grips of the disorder I was barely a functioning human being. Everyday situations and interactions terrified me to the point that I rarely left my house. I could not drive a car, hold a job or even shop for the items that I needed.

I was always terribly afraid. For me I was terrified that I would humiliate or endanger myself. And these fears were debilitating. Despite the irrationality of these fears, I couldn’t shake them. I would have an episode and it would leave me trembling and unable to “be myself” for hours, until I was safely back at my apartment, alone.

I reached a point where I could not take it anymore. Realizing that I needed a new radical course, I started dealing with anxiety differently. You see, for me and most people with anxiety, fear was based in some way on the importance I granted myself and the opinions of other people.

Think about that for a minute. When you are alone, in a safe place do you often have panic attacks. I did not. But if you surrounded me with people or a situation I was unfamiliar with there was no saying what might happen. The reason for this was my fear that I would embarrass myself or be incompetent or endanger myself. For you it may be a different fear, but it is almost certainly a fear of something.

For the most part, I was afraid that other people would endanger me or think poorly of me. With a little practice, I discovered that I could alleviate most of the anxiety if I just thought differently about the situation. I realized that I was entirely too concerned with outcomes and other things that I could not control. For instance, what if it didn’t matter what other people thought? What if it didn’t matter if some danger befell me?

If I truly believed that my anxiety did not matter, would it still matter?

I decided to do a mind shift. I convinced myself of a few new (radical) ideas. First, I decided that even if something terrible happened it me, the universe would still go on and function just fine. Second, I decided that what other people thought — about me, about anything — simply did not matter.

Therefore, I could diminish my anxiety (to the point of disappearance) if I could convince myself fully of these things. You see, if I reached a point of indifference about my anxiety, if I simply did not care that I suffered from it, it simply could not continue to exist. It needed my fear to feed it.

It was one thing to decide that I would disregard my anxiety, other’s opinions, and my own significance. It was quite another thing to actually convince myself that these things were true. Which is absolutely critical for the mind shift to work.

So I started doing exercises meant to downplay the importance of myself and others. In order to do this, I would do a mental exercise which I invented. I mentally pictured a floating spot in space right in front of my face. This little spot just hovers before me. Then, I imagined 6 lines, like laser beams, firing from this spot in all directions — up, down, left, right, forward and backward. These lines, from the second I imagined them, would fire out at the speed of light from the spot floating in space. Right through my face, right through the earth, right on to infinity. All from this one little imaginary dot.

Because the universe is infinite these lines will travel forever in all directions. Never stopping. They will cover millions of miles per minute and will go on for billions and billions of years into perpetuity.

The sheer size of the universe made me and others feel momentarily small. Suddenly it was easy to think of these lines, going on ad infinitum, and not worry so much about if another thought I was foolish or if I was in imminent danger. Whenever my fears started to creep up on me, I pictured the spot in space, and I pictured the lines firing out in all directions. Suddenly, I felt right-sized again. I wasn’t preoccupied with the trivial things that I used to obsess about. I felt freedom.

That’s how you implement a mind shift. You imagine the size of the universe, the nature of all things, and wonder what difference does it make in all this if I am nervous right now. What difference does it make if this person thinks poorly of me. What difference does it make if I die.

The universe will continue on, maybe forever, regardless of your level of anxiety. You can bank on it. The simple technique of visualizing the spot in space and the lines serves to demonstrate how little your present fear-inducing circumstance really matters.

And once you have mastered the little spot in space, the mind shift takes place. Every time the anxiety starts to emerge, you simply imagine that spot in space. Think about how little “they” matter. And remember, that life will go on.

You don’t actually have to subscribe to these ideas to make the technique work, you just need to convince your mind of it. And your anxiety will simply melt away. Believe me. I am living proof.

So next time the anxiety starts to spring up inside you, do the easiest hard thing you’ll ever do. Trick your brain into thinking it doesn’t matter. And, in a nutshell, that is my top tip for dealing with anxiety.

Now there will be much more on the mind shift technique on allay anxiety. But I did want to take a moment to introduce the concept to you. Now this, and variations of it, are the techniques that I use everyday to overcome my anxiety. It works. And, obviously I need to continue to explore elements of it so that the readers of this blog fully understand how to make it work for them. But…

I have had more success using these techniques of my own design that seeing so-called experts for hundreds of hours. For me, they did not work. And if you are looking for others who can help you overcome your anxiety without costly advice-doctors, I recommend you make a habit of reading this blog.

And, remember, all I talk about is what worked for me as a person with a severe anxiety disorder. If something I say doesn’t sound right to you, then don’t follow it. The key to this whole thing is taking ownership over your own life, so if something sounds fishy then disregard it. Go find another site. Try another method. I am not a therapist and do not give advice. There are plenty of people who can do that for you (and send a bill). All I do is shared what I know will work.

The rest is up to you.

Posted by Alex in mind shift
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December 22 2008

Anxiety is Ruining My Life

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Oh, if I had a dollar for each time I thought to myself, “Anxiety is ruining my life.” For I can not recount how many times those words ran through my brain or escaped from my lips. In fact, it even got to the point that I believed I would just have to accept my misery, my glum lot in life, and play out my hand.

Is that you? I bet it is. And you probably want me to tell you that you CAN overcome your anxiety and that overcoming anxiety is easy and, even better, that I can sell you a program or book that will show you exactly how to do it. Boy, you are bound to be disappointed. You know why? Because I can’t cure your anxiety! But there are things that YOU can do to cure your anxiety but they are not easy. Working on yourself is hard. It is hard like coal mining is hard and everyday you have to hit the mines. There is no break, there is no reprieve. I know that my health is entirely contingent on the fact that I do the things it takes to maintain my mental compentency.

So, who am I? Good question. I am a fellow sufferer of anxiety. Only I had it worse than you do. After my first hospitalization my doctor remarked that I might have the most severe case of anxiety he had ever seen. I had been a wreck for sometime, though it was my social anxiety that was especially debilitating. I had taken all the normal steps, and luckily why parents had been pretty financially successful so I had access to many options and therapies that many people do not.

I saw a psychiatrist. He prescribed some benzodiazepines for my symptoms. The first few days were nothing but pleasant. My anxiety symptoms lessened. I even enjoyed the easy, relaxed feeling that the drug provided. However, it did not last. Soon my anxiety came back, first in social situations and then later full blown, and I found I had developed a new problem. Along with my anxiety, I had developed a powerful dependence on the clonazepam.

I thought that just having an anxiety disorder was unpleasant enough. It became a whole new ball game when I found myself completely addicted to benzodiazepines. This was a whole new hell, believe me. Words simply can not explain the misery brought on by benzo withdrawal symptoms. And this wasn’t a passing phenomenon. I suffered from benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome for more than two years. It was beyond awful. It was worse, in fact, than my anxiety disorder in the first place.

Quick aside: If you doctor is putting you a regular dosing of benzos — klonopin, xanax, valium, whatever — do the research before you do damage to your body that you will have difficulty coming back from.

So anyway, I started to see a psychiatrist and my condition improved somewhat with medication. So I started to see a therapist to work on “core issues” and really get to the bottom of it. But that was a joke. Sure, my therapist was a nice guy. He had an interesting world view and he took an active interest in me. But what he did not do was help. Finally, I stopped seeing him.

Today I do not see therapists. I do not pay people to have them share their world view with me. Instead I decided to take matters into my own hands. And if I didn’t make that decision I would still be suffering from my anxiety disorder in full force. For, I discovered that therapists and doctors they can only help so much. Most of the work you have to do yourself. If you want to overcome your anxiety, you are going to have to take action.

The question I get is how do I do that. Well, let me ask, have you even looked for an answer to your solution or are you waiting for someone to solve it for you? Because there are plenty of people who will trade you false hopes for cash. Your cash. But if you take action and find the answers yourself, you will be so-much-the-better.

You see, there are sites like this and countless others where people share the exact steps that they took to overcome their anxiety disorders. Oh sure they had some help from professionals, but they learned the majority of the techniques from other anxiety sufferers. We are a great community, these people who used to suffer from anxiety disorders, and we work together to help others out of their own situation. But, the thing is, you have to be willing to do the work. You can’t be closed off. You have to devour every website on anxiety and every blog and start learning. The internet is the best source of information since the dawn of man and you can take advantage of it.

So, read this site and read other sites like it. Learn from those among us who have re-taken their lives. And, with work you can join us.

Posted by Alex in managing anxiety
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December 18 2008

Deciding to Stop Anxiety

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One of the most troubling things about anxiety disorders is that the person suffering from them so often feels quite helpless when the symptoms strike. Sweaty palms. difficulty speaking and concentrating, and increased heartbeat have become facts of life for the millions of people dealing with anxiety.

Does it have to be this way? The answer to this question is somewhat complex. On the one hand when an anxiety attack strikes, a person has little minute-to-minute control over the symptoms that arise. At this point it is simply too late to do too much about it.

However, prior to an anxiety attack there are steps a person can take to diminish the effects and ultimately reduce the frequency of their occurence. Some of these things may be challenging or require some lifestyle alterations. Are they worth it? I believe they are.

The question becomes have you had enough of dealing with anxiety that you actually want to do something about it. Perhaps you have, perhaps you have not. However at a certain point an individual needs to make a decision. At some point you have to decide.

The little (and sometimes not-so-little) manifestations of the condition can be paralyzing. But often when the episode is over, the person thanks their lucky stars the bout has ended and either goes about their day or retreats into isolation in fear that the symptoms may return.

Very infrequently does a person stand up and decide enough is enough. Stopping anxiety is, quite simply, a choice. Which is fortunate for, like anything else in life, anxiety can be faced and overcome… once a decision has been made to confront it.

What often holds people back isn’t the failure to decide to make a change but rather the failure to realize that they have a choice in the matter. The feel imprisoned by the condition and mostly seek to manage rather than eliminate the symptoms. This is out of ignorance of any other options.

You have options, I am glad to report. There are several ways to attack anxiety and ultimately stop anxiety. But the prescription for relief is not altogether easy. There are things, difficult things, that you will have to do. And often times they don’t mean running to an advice-doctor for help. It becomes kind of isolating because the things that you need to do are things that only you can do. There isn’t anyone you can pay to do them for you.

But, you see, that’s part of the excitement that comes with a new way of looking at life. In the past I know that I would wonder why this was happening to me. What did I do to deserve this? I spent most of my time feeling sorry for myself and not taking any ACTION to actually improve my situation. And that’s what I observe so often in people with anxiety. They think that if they could just spend their entire life in their therapist’s office that there problem would be solved.

And they don’t get any better.

It comes down to the question of how much of your life are you willing to waste? If you died tomorrow do you feel like your life would have been a success? Because anxiety in and of itself is rarely the problem. It is the failure to rise to the occasion and overcome obstacles that is the ruin of people with mental illness. I don’t say this to be hurtful, I say it because it was true for me and when I realized it and started doing the work, my life started to get better.

You can too! That’s the whole point of this site. I want you to take action over your own life. Don’t be a spectator to your own life. Don’t spend your whole life filling the coffers of advice-doctors. Do something. You might have to even re-learn how to think for yourself, but the freedom that a life affords is vastly superior to a life dependent on others to tell you you are OK.

I challenge you to do the work to get there.

Posted by Alex in stop anxiety
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December 13 2008

Dealing with Workplace Anxiety

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One of the circumstances which provoked my anxiety to an extreme was being in the workplace. I struggled with intrusive thoughts about what others may be thinking of me and whether I was doing my job to the satisfaction of my boss. For me one of the most embarrassing elements of the disorder was having to muddle through workplace anxiety.

At the time I wondered just what there was to be anxious about. In my rational mind I knew that I was a competent employee and that I was generally liked and respected by my co-workers. There was simply no need for workplace anxiety.

Still, during nearly every shift some situation would arise and the symptoms would begin to present themselves; My palms would sweat, I’d get a lump in my throat, I’d become paranoid that I was somehow embarrassing myself and I would have difficulty thinking clearly.

I worked in a customer service capacity and, paradoxically, it was dealing with the customers that would often bring the most relief. I knew that the customers would only be present in the shop for a short while. I knew that my interaction with them would last only a few minutes and then I’d never see them again. I somehow convinced myself that what they thought didn’t really matter. And without the fear of judgment, I was able to successfully interact with them.

However, with my co-workers the anxiety was unrelenting. I always felt as if I didn’t belong in the workplace at all, that my co-workers were all superior to me in some way. And with these thoughts in the back of my mind, I could never find myself at ease with them.

But by far by biggest struggle with workplace anxiety was with my boss. I could never find my comfort spot with the man. I felt inferior and lacking and could barely look him in the eye. The fact that I could be fired by this guy at any time wreaked havoc with my sense of comfort. I thought at any moment he would simply fire me. I was anxious around him all the time.

I decided that something needed to be done about this situation.

I had reached the turning point. I decided that I could no longer operate under these conditions and I undertook to address the problem. Throughout this period I had been on a regular schedule of benzodiazepines. The klonopin I was taking would sometimes alleviate the worst of the symptoms. But other times it was totally useless.

As I have discussed previously, I decided that there had to be another way. I commenced to get off the benzodiazepines, which turned out to be out of best decisions of my life. I next turned to the internet in search of alternate treatment strategies for anxiety disorders.

What I found online was, quite frankly, depressing. There was rather a lot of pablum about anxiety symptoms and cognitive behavioral therapy but there was nothing that was actionable. I found stuff like this page at the top of the listings on the search engines for the term “anxiety.” Is that useful to anyone but the completely clueless? This kind of so-called conventional wisdom which implores people to go to a psychiatrist, get on a benzo and start cognitive behavioral therapy is putting a band aid on the problem at best. Such a course of action is exactly what I did and, let me tell, it didn’t help a whiff. If that sounds like a plan to you, so be it. But good luck with the benzo withdrawal syndrome and that’s if you can ever get off of them in the first place. So, having not found much useful information, I dug a little deeper. Next I encountered all the websites that were basically fronts for affiliate products like so-and-so’s ebook that claimed to be able to alleviate anxiety entirely for just one easy payment of $49.99. I never was much for pissing away money so I never got the chance to learn so-and-so’s secret. Such is life.

Anyway, back to my workplace anxiety. I realized that for me I was going to have to practice some acceptance. First, I realized that I would never be comfortable with the idea of a “boss.” I’ve always been an independent person. I see myself as a peer to others. I am not comfortable with being in the superior position when dealing with other adults nor am I comfortable being the inferior position. I just had to accept that about myself. I am not comfortable with bosses. They make me anxious. I’ve accepted it. Not coincidentally when I accepted my anxiety about dealing with boss, it started to diminish. It started to get better. Was it ever a perfect, anxiety-free relationship like the kind I have with a best friend? No. But that’s because my boss was not my best friend. He’s my boss. I accepted it.

The fact of the matter is that accepting anxiety is without a do the most effective way to neutralize it. If anything is the thesis of Allay Anxiety, it is that.

My next step was to take a look at other workplace situations that were causing me anxiety and to see what I could be proactive about. One of the main things about my job that caused anxiety was its fast pace. I worked in a busy restaurant where there were always a million things going on. It demanded rapid multi-tasking. Quite frankly this was never an ideal situation for me. I don’t perform at my best in hectic environments. As a sufferer of mental illness I have realized that I have to stack in my favor rather than against me. I need to work in an atmosphere that plays to my strengths rather than aggravating my weaknesses.

Dealing with anxiety does not mean that you have to a passive observer in your own life. You can take action to affect change. For me that meant finding a new job. I wasn’t in the right environment and I knew it. I was being stubborn and trying to “make it work” when it was never a round peg in the first place.

Which brings us to my next point: Stop trying to prove your “normal!” You are not normal. You have an anxiety disorder that affects your life. It may even impact it severely. Isn’t it time you acknowledged that fact? By trying to run against it, trying to do what the next guy does, just to prove that you are functional human being you are actually setting yourself up for failure. For me that meant that the restaurant business wasn’t a good fit for me. Did I take that to mean I was failure? Absolutely not. I just accepted the fact that I wasn’t doing myself any favors trying to force myself to conform to a situation that I wasn’t suited for.

It’s funny. Only a person with an anxiety disorder will continue to do the action that causes them anxiety. They will try over and over again to “face their fears” in the hope that they will overcome them. In Alcoholics Anonymous they define insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Yet that’s what anxiety sufferers do constantly. But it’s bad advice. You’re really not facing your fears so much as provoking them and, unless you’re a masochist, I don’t see the percentage in that.

The path that I chose was to accept the facts as the facts. I get anxious in a hot, crowded kitchen filled with screaming bosses. The more times I tried to face the situation the more despondent I became since my anxiety symptoms were not decreasing. Finally, I wised up and said if this workplace is causing me this much anxiety it might not be the right workplace for me. And, to be honest with you, I haven’t lost a second of sleep because of this decision. Once I decided to accept it, it began to lose its power.

If you are suffering from workplace anxiety I would invite you to start thinking more concretely about how to address your problem. I don’t think you need to continue to face your fears over and again to prove some point to yourself. You need to put yourself in a situation to succeed.

Take an honest appraisal of the elements at your workplace that are causing your anxiety.

Is there a way to make a change (or eliminate) those elements? Like me, you may not be a work environment that fits your disposition. If so you will probably be best looking for another job where you will be more likely to succeed. Only you can decide on a course of action, and, since I am not counselor, I’m not here to advise you on it. You need to step to the plate and start to take ownership over your own life. I would suggest that your first step be one of acceptance.

Posted by Alex in accepting anxiety, managing anxiety, workplace anxiety
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