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0 By Kate Carre
I recently blogged about my realisation that anxiety lies behind a lot of the mental health problems I have experienced. I didn’t realise it until very recently and this particular epiphany hasn’t made life easier in the short term.
What it has done is make me more aware of anxious feelings and, since I’m trying hard not to avoid the situations that make me anxious, I’m experiencing more anxiety. So it feels a lot like getting worse and probably looks a lot like it from the outside too.
Everyone experiences some degree of anxiety. It’s a normal human emotion and has a biological purpose. It keeps us out of danger when we perceive a threat and it keeps us alive.
Avoidance is no solution
The problem arises when we learn, through experiences and perhaps also through predisposition or a particular personality type, to perceive threat where there is none or to magnify a threat so that the solution (avoidance) becomes a problem in itself.
Take my fear of travelling by car. There is a real danger, road traffic accidents being the leading cause of death in my age group. Nobody can guarantee that if I get in a car, I won’t die in an accident. In fact, the odds are significantly increased compared to staying at home.
However, that has to be weighed against the definite impact of not travelling by car. I do get in the car, but I am pushing forty and haven’t passed my driving test, nor do I own a car. Nor will I travel as a passenger on a motorway. It is highly inconvenient. It limits the places I can take my children and the activities they can experience. It takes us a really long time to get anywhere on public transport, and we can’t go at the time of our choosing.
So many people might think it ridiculous that I can’t drive due to anxiety. But they will have their own fears they have not yet faced.
So, the negative impact weighed against the risk… makes it sensible to learn to drive. I have avoided it for years. I haven’t acknowledged to myself that anxiety is the reason. There has always been an excuse, something practical, childcare, time, money… but the reality is that I am downright terrified of learning to drive, that reading about driving or thinking about driving send my heart racing and head spinning.
The fear of fear itself
So, there is a real risk, there is real fear, but somehow in my mind the risk has been magnified. And the fear of fear itself has exacerbated the anxiety. Feeling sick with fear, feeling that one’s death is imminent, is far from an enjoyable experience. So naturally, I have done what I can to avoid that feeling. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy… if I go on that journey, it will be a horrible experience. I won’t cope. This turns out to be true, so in future I don’t.
Another anxiety I have is social anxiety. I analyse conversations, social situations mercilessly and obsessively, convincing myself that I am ridiculous and people hate me. And so, just as I don’t drive, I avoid group situations as much as I can.
And I thought my coping mechanisms were good. Distraction, talking to a friend, looking to someone else for a reality check, preparing and rehearsing… all things designed to reduce my level of anxiety.
Except (and this has come as a shock to me)… it turns out that reducing anxiety isn’t what I need to be doing. That if you’re going through hell, you need to keep going. That the only way through anxiety is out the other side.
The only way to overcome anxiety
Quite often, the solution to our problem is the very thing that terrifies us most.
The only way to overcome the hold anxiety has over my life, is to ride it out, experience it and allow it to subside.
Turns out that is actually quite difficult. That when you are in the moment and convinced you are preserving your life or your sanity, keeping disaster at bay, avoiding a situation you definitely won’t cope with… the urge to act is pretty strong. Especially when it’s so much a part of your coping strategy that you have exited the situation before recognising that you feel anxious.
So that is what I am trying to do, a bit clumsily and chaotically… recognise anxiety when it sneaks up on me, and not act on it, but tolerate it until it subsides.
Which is why I’m a nervous wreck! Bear with me.
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Reproduced with permission, originally written for the Just Me; I Am Me website, and can be found here, along with further sources of support: just-me-i-am-me-mental-health-forum.com
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