Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
That's a horrible subject, but I didn't really know what else to put... I was reading another post and people talking about their GAD diagnosis (which I also have) and how dealing with anxiety is just an on-going thing in people's lives. That got me thinking about a handful of things which tie into work I'm doing in my IOP around irrational beliefs. But, back to the thought I wanted to put out there...
Everyone has anxiety in their lives. Those of us with GAD just seem to have an extra helping, or we're extra sensitive to it, or both. That makes me wonder... I play guitar. The longer you play you build up callouses on your fingertips to protect them from the strings. When we spend time in the sun we get suntans (well, I'm a red-head so I only sort of do) to protect our skin from the exposure. So, why is that people with anxiety disorders don't develop callouses, so to speak, against the anxiety? We seem to stay just as sensitive to it no matter how often we deal with it. I mean, the thing I keep hearing in the anxiety meditation courses I'm doing is that, through mindfuless, we're trying to change our relationship with anxiety so that we can observe it and allow it space without getting attached to it or fighting against it. But why don't we just become sort of numb to it if it's there so much?
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Ever since I stopped doing therapy because of insurance, I've been feeling that old tense and irritable sense of anxiety and stress. I hate that. I was making so many strides and changes during therapy, my therapist would acknowledge all of my progress and accomplishments, and I miss that reassurance. Today I thought about it, and I made those changes! She would always tell me that I chose to...
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
Theories abound and I strongly suspect that ALL those theories hold true for at least one member of any given anxiety support group (including PTSD). I sincerely do believe that every case of anxiety disorder is unique.
For what it's worth
I, too, play guitar and I will callous, but my callouses fall off as fast as I can grow them. My hubby will still have his callouses after not playing for 6 months. NFF! ! ! No Fucking Fair! ! ! The good news is that the skin under a callous is still much tougher than virgin skin. My fingers do stay tougher for playing daily.
For me, I feel anxiety, and I begin to do things to reduce it, no matter where I am, and that gives me the calm to keep doing what I am doing.
Asking questions of your anxiety is one way to figure out how it is working for you.
Don't cure it. Train it. It weren't designed to make me crazy over nothing.
Some has to do with how you were brought up. *They* say anxiety can be 25% genetic. If you had a parent, sibling, other family member, that had anxiety, and you saw them being anxious when you were growing up, you might have a tendency toward having anxiety later in life as well. I have a parent and a sibling that also have anxiety disorder.
What you're talking about getting numb to it is interesting. That's a form of desensitization therapy where they expose you to the fear, in incremental ("baby steps") until you eventually become desensitized to that ONE fear.
The problem with that type of therapy, is that works on one fear. With GAD, it can be lots of fears about nothing in particular.
Thanks for what you wrote and I hope you keep searching.
I agree that, especially with GAD, desensitization can be a difficult thing because of the way it can just sort of show up for no reason. But what if it's not just about becoming desensitized (not numb, but less reactive) to anxiety showing up, but sort of turning the tables on it and using it instead of being kicked around by it?
I've kind of created this image in my mind that anxiety is like some obnoxious, demanding, trainwreck of a "friend" who just shows up some times, plops down on the couch and just brings turmoil with him... demanding all my attention, interrupting whenever I try to talk, and just generally throwing things into disarray. So I guess the two levels of the idea would be first, that when he shows up first, I invite him in and ride out and unpleasant visit the best I can instead of trying to hide or block him at the door or whatever. And if that's the first level, the second might be something like inviting him in and engaging with all the bs and saying to myself something like, "I have got to keep working on myself so that I do not end up like that".
Maybe? Does that make sense?
1. Recognize it is not productive. Behind much anxiety is the belief that worrying is good, by recognizing challenges and its importance, you will do better. Try to eliminate that, you can work at a high performance level without creating stress for yourself, and that stress is not good. At the Super Bowl, the Coach does not emphasize the importance of the game because he knows that will heighten anxiety and probably reduce effectiveness. Instead most take pains to treat this as another game.
2. Develop intelligent self-criticism. When I make a mistake (and I do a lot), I write what I did and how it could be changed.
Note not everything that comes out wrong is a mistake. A good book is Kornikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to ... Master Myself, and Win.
Asked what is the secret to poker (analagous to life, ups and downs, luck) her teacher said, making good decisions. Even if you lost, you review did you play the hand intelligently. Again not everything that comes out badly is your fault but when it is take a second to give yourself some candid criticism, evaluate why you went wrong, and what you can do to change.
Making constructive changes and improving your performance in whatever you do will reduce stress in two ways: 1) you will perform better and fewer sources of stress, 2) knowing you worked hard, you will blame yourself less.