Not All Anxiety is the Same

Not All Anxiety is the Same

There is generalized Anxiety, Panic disorder, Specific phobia, Social phobia, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

I’m sure most therapists and other mental health professionals would agree that self-diagnosis is a bad idea, but since most everyone is going to do it anyway, and since a large portion of people will never end up talking to a therapist, why not? Right?

Circle, or number in order of importance, the three attributes you feel are the worst, the ones you avoid the most because they have no or few redeeming qualities to them. Also, circle or number in order the three least bad attributes or ones you see some redeeming quality in:

Exploitation (taking advantage)

Obligation (guilting)

Intolerance

Fake or Unkind

Rage

Provoking Pity

Complaining

Leeching

Fanaticism

Pride

Bartering (loving with strings attached)

Relentlessness (bothersome)

Competitiveness

Skepticism

Manipulation

Intrusiveness(nosey)

Plagiarism(uncreative)

Exclusion(cliquey)

Deceit

Ego inflation

Dogmatization (ideological thinking)

Which words we list as being the worst on the list are our most consistent sources of stress, which means they all produce anxiety, but if you picked rage, deceit or unkindness, those are the three main sources of anxiety. If you picked any of those three, you definitely should keep reading, because there are important things to understand about those specific anxieties.

I have never met a person that wasn’t anxious, everyone has a very real anxiety, but different kinds. We all have sources of stress, how they manifest and coping mechanisms, some of which cause more stress.  I have met several people that are no Obsessive Compulsive about anything… except loading the dishwasher. I get it, it’s not just a matter of making all the plates and bowls look nice in a line, they wash better that way, and we wouldn’t want to think a bowl is clean, but because it was haphazardly placed the germs didn’t die.

I probably shouldn’t go off on a tangent right now, but just so you know, common germs very rarely have the power to infect a person who’s healthy. If you just got an organ transplant, are undergoing chemotherapy, or worry so much that your stress hormones suppress your immune system to critical levels, you’re allowed to take a little longer organizing the washer, but otherwise, you’ll be fine, chill out, there are better things to do with your time, life is short. Many early American died from cholera, I got that and a bunch of other things while I was in Mexico, and despite loosing a bunch of weight and having a temperature regulation that is a little off, I was fine. Germ theory was good, because it gave us basic hygiene, but unless you are doing surgery on someone, you don’t have to try and sterilize everything… because it’s impossible. I have heard several people say that a dishwasher sterilizes the dishes. That’s not true, an Autoclave sterilizes things, and that is a pressure twice that of the atmosphere, and at a temperature of 250 degrees. Because I said this, don’t go putting stuff in your hotpot—I’m just saying, things aren’t nearly as clean as you think, and that’s okay. We shouldn’t let how much we hate germs control how much we are able to love all the things that we love.

More often than we know, we are forced to pick between letting go of hate, or letting go of love. I know we wouldn’t consciously choice hate over love, but in the heat of the moment, hate is so much more palpable… and why not hate germs?

Running from where we don’t want to be is different than running towards where we do, and we can’t do both.

If you have made it this far, and nothing has seemed relatable, then that is because I have not mentioned the particular stressor that gets you.

Did you put that deceit was one of the worst attribute from the list? Well, see if this sounds relatable.

Do you feel annoy when what you say is scrutinized for things that could be used against you later? And do you prepare specifically against that happening? Does everything except being as transparent and forthcoming as possible seem dishonest? And is being transparent and forthcoming exhausting and inconvenient, but seems to be the only way, even if it comes at the expense of problems that could have been avoided using discretion?

In this sort of anxiety we anxiously try to articulate our thoughts carefully in order to be as transparent as possible while at the same time not offending anyone... a task that is near impossible. Sometimes we panic when the process of articulating an answer that is transparent and forthcoming gets rushed. It is really stressful when we are directly asked something or might be asked something and can’t find any way to say something without feeling it is being dishonest or that it might be taken as offensive.

We find that the best way to be honest and not offensive is to lay something out thoroughly so that it is all seen in context. It is very frustrating when we have rehearsed an extensive doctoral level dissertation to support a statement that is a sensitive topic, and someone doesn’t let us get it all out… then gets mad because only because they took it the wrong way. It is frustrating when someone summarizes what we said, not only overly simplifying it, but only focusing on certain parts and twisting them out of context. Ironically, we get offended when someone else feels like we offended them after we made a big effort not to.

We would rather tell the truth and accept the consequences, not only because we don’t want a lie to come back and bite us later, but also because we don’t want someone else to feel lied to. We take more time than most to not only be transparent, but to help someone understand… but because of that we have likely spent quite a bit of time in total over the years helping people understand things that were unimportant just so they don’t feel later that we were being deceptive by speaking over their head.

When in company of people that are sensitive, we sometimes try not to form definitive opinions about controversial things—it seems to be a temporary fix because we can honestly say we are not sure what we think about something when asked. This comes back to bite us when someone returns later to follow up on the question they asked us and we still don’t have a non-offensive answer.

Since we try to be transparent about things, we don’t like to rush into definitive opinions that could be controversial, because if we have only thought halfway through it and are asked what we think, we would not want to feel obligated to tell a half-finished thought… and then have to defend it.

We feel anxious sometimes about our mind, because we feel we have to own every random thought that pops in. We have a hard time distinguishing between thoughts and convictions, and panic sometimes when we feel obligated to try to turn every thought we have into a conviction, because we assume since it came from our mind that it is part of us. We have a hard time accepting that it’s okay that our convictions can change as our understanding changes—in fact, that’s what is supposed to happen.

Conclusion:

As soon as a conviction seems wrong, we can challenge it, and honestly say we are not sure when asked, even if moments before we felt certain about it. This doesn’t mean that we should instantly get rid of any conviction in the moment when we think might offend someone, but just put it back on the drawing board to refine it.

We have to eventually face the facts that what we say might offend people sometimes, we can’t just keep holding onto the hope that we will find a better way to say things, the anxiety that produces is not worth it. Finding better ways to say things doesn’t mean we also won’t find more ways people might be offended. We are very conscientious of everyone’s feelings, we should be conscientious of our own feelings too.

It’s not okay that we are fine offending ourselves with the false accusation that our thoughts are malicious, but won’t rightfully accuse others of just needing to grow up if they can’t handle an opinion that is not their own. We should consider why we are totally willing to panic over what to say, rather than risk someone else panicking when they get offended. The difference is that what we are panicking over is not really our problem, we can handle other people’s opinions.

Yes, people might get offended, and yes some of them might never forgive us, but if what we stress over finding the words for is what we really think, is it worth it to make the effort to explain if they won’t make the effort to understand?

Next anxiety: Did you put that the one of the worst attributes from the list was being fake or unkind?

See if you relate to this.

Do you try hard to emotionally invest in everything you do? How satisfying is it to see that a motivation we have done has actually helped someone do the good things they wanted to do, especially if all they needed was some kindness?

In this sort of anxiety when we are being kind to someone, if they remain unmotivated, especially unmotivated to be appreciative, it takes the excitement out of it for us—not that we just want them to appreciate us, but just be appreciative in general. We would rather do secret acts of kindness so that people don’t think we are being fake when we do them, therefore, motivating someone to be appreciative to someone else is often better than seeing them be appreciative to us.

We feel that it is either a choice between being kind and being unkind. We feel because kindness is so easy and so essential, that neglecting to be kind is unkind. We hate feeling that we are being fake or unkind, so we try to always be kind even when we don’t want to. This leads us to working our fingers to the bone, even for people who aren’t appreciative and don’t seem to be changing in a positive way.

More difficult than being kind to someone who is unappreciative, is being kind to someone who is disrespectful.

We feel that two of the most important things a person should learn in life is to be respectful and appreciative. We won’t usually call someone out for being disrespectful or unappreciative to us, but we will if they are doing it to other people. Just as we can’t believe why someone would not be respective and appreciative, we don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be helpful. If someone has not learned those essential things yet, it makes them seem childish to us, which sub-consciously puts us in parenting mode.

Giving tough-love is very difficult for us, because it hurts to not help. It hurts to think that someone could see us have reasons not to help and be enabled to make excuses not to help. This often leads to us pleading to the other person to just show us some small measure of improvement so we can justify helping them. This sometimes ends in us caving in and accepting the smallest, most insignificant improvement as justification to continue helping… only to realize after helping, how little effort they put in to change. Worse though, is the situation that ends with the person we want to help, making it clear that they have no desire to change, where we have to suffer with holding back our desire to help, and feeling unkind.

Our kindness is not only in deeds that can be seen, we spend a lot of time appreciating and looking out for people. Looking out for people often allows us to be very helpful because we are the first to know or see that someone needs help. Looking out for someone always feels like a very kind thing to do… this means we tend to worry a lot. The anxiety about someone’s future, feels quite a bit like excitement, but also feels like anxiety—Some days it feels mostly one or the other, and we likely haven’t found a way to control that.

Out of all the kind acts, people are least appreciative and most disrespectful for the time and energy we put into worrying for them. We know how alone it feels to think no one would know if we went missing or something happened to us. We also know how good it is when we don’t have to be dying for someone to notice things aren’t going very well. This is why it is really hard to debunk whether or not we should worry so much for others despite how many times we are told not to worry.

Ironically, we are glad to worry about someone else, but feel ashamed to worry about ourselves. It is hard to always be doing kind things for other people, and especially if part of the motivation is our fear of feeling fake or unkind.

We ironically resist being kind to ourselves because we don’t see ourselves changing. This is partly because we have set the bar high for ourselves with how many kind things we have already done, which makes it hard to always keep up with the person we know we can be. Because we always want to be doing our best, most of the time we are being hard on ourselves for not being our best… which makes it harder. Our kindest moments were when we weren’t specifically trying to be kind, and forcing it doesn’t always work. Kindness becomes so complicated that if we fall out of the rhythm of kind deeds, it is overwhelmingly stressful to get going again… we do though, because we have to. To keep us from worrying about ourselves when we could be helping someone else, we sometimes distract ourselves by keeping our stomach busy.

Conclusion:

Understanding why we get the craving when we are anxious helps avoid acting on it. There are two sets of hormones, those for fight-or-flight, and those for rest-and-digest. Fighting and fleeing both seem unkind, and though resting is not an option to help us do more kind things, digesting can calm the anxiety enough to keep doing kind deeds. Just as we fall asleep from a “food coma,” anxiety does abate while digesting hormones predominate. The problem is, the more we suppress our fight-or-flight hormones, the more unfamiliar those hormones feel, and the more they terrify us when they are come.

Stephen Covey said, “We must never be too busy to take time to sharpen the saw.” To chop trees nowadays we use chainsaws, and there are many different ideas of how long to work before stopping to sharpen it, but the best rule of thumb is to stop as soon as you actually have to apply pressure to cut. We don’t have to be kind in the ideal way we imagine kindness looking all the time—if our kindness doesn’t seem to be motivating someone, sometimes we will have to stop and sharpen our saw instead of just increasing the pressure. When we feel that strain of resistance, which comes as a feeling of anxiety, that is a good sign that we should to stop to sharpen our saw. If we don’t, like a chainsaw, if we keep pushing, the chain will break. If kindness isn’t working, there are twenty other interpersonal tools to try.

The bar of kindness has been set high for us, and part of that is that people glorify and exaggerate the kind things we do as a way to show appreciation, and we likely try to live up to that standard. We have to accept that it’s okay if kind things we did weren’t quite as good as people say—when we give a hundred percent, and someone says we gave a hundred and ten percent, we shouldn’t feel bad to know it was only a hundred percent… because a hundred and ten percent is not possible. We should also avoid giving those types of compliments to others.

We don’t have to make some extraordinary claim to make someone feel appreciated. “I really appreciate you,” is enough of a compliment, it shouldn’t be, “I love how you really went over and beyond, you always give a hundred and ten percent!”

Since we firmly believe that people don’t have to be perfect to be loved, we should apply that to loving ourselves even if we aren’t the perfect example of kindness all the time. We like to see people in candid moments because it makes them more human, we should be okay with looking human ourselves—we are already a super hero for some people just because we care.

We probably don’t realize it, but normal things are already a lot more fun for other people when we are around—we are enough, just being present is enough. We can continue being fun and just not stress about measuring anyone’s appreciativeness, respect or improvement.

The last quintessential anxiety: Did you put rage as one of the top three worst?

See if you relate to this:

Do you scrutinize your enthusiasm for traces of rage? Does this make finding pure enthusiasm very difficult? Do you end up having to stifle your enthusiasm often because it could seem aggressive to someone else? Do you feel that you have to be very compliant? Do you feel that you can only be enthusiastic if you are joining someone else’s enthusiasm? Do you only feel safe from accusations of being mean if you are extremely polite?

Most of all, is it hard to know what someone will consider aggressive, because in the past you have said something to be nice, and then had people get mad?

A strong dislike of rage would lead us to feel that anything we have to forcibly do is unnecessary, because there could be a non-confrontational way to do it. It is likely that we have seen or been the object of the unnecessary repercussions of other people’s actions—this could have been either somebody being confrontational with us or someone venting frustration that came from confrontation with someone else. We know what it is like for someone to take frustration out on us, that we don’t want anyone else to suffer from us doing it to them. It is very frustrating when we slip up and take out frustration on someone, because we feel so passionately that it is wrong.

So many simple things can become frustrating, when someone or something prevents us from doing things the nice or polite way. We try to look ahead for things that might make things difficult in order to be ready to meet them calmly. We are constantly on the lookout for things that could force the situation to be confrontational, and the more we see, the more we have to anxiously look out for. This keeps us on edge so much that we don’t have as much patience for the unpredictable things that come at us. We are always working so hard keeping things together despite all the unpredictable things that happen, that when there is something predictable and avoidable happens, especially when it is clearly someone else’s fault and they don’t care, we lose our temper.

Although, no matter how justified we feel getting mad at someone, we always end up getting mad at ourselves for doing it. This means that when we do vent our frustration on someone, we add the extra future frustration of being mad at ourselves to what someone already did to frustrate us.

When we do rage, it terrifies us because we feel we don’t even recognize ourselves. We look at what we did in our rage with disbelief as if someone else actually did it. Despite the disbelief however, we know since there is a liberating feeling in the moment of just letting our temper go and venting all the frustration, we know we must have done it.

Since we don’t want to look into the reasons we rage, we repeat it because we don’t end up separating the portion of assertiveness in our action from the hostility and resentment.

When someone else stifles us we can at least feel like the bigger person by forgiving them, when we stifle ourselves, it’s overwhelming. We end up raging against ourselves, but because no one sees it, and it seems to work to make us shape up, we have a hard time stopping that sort of behavior. We probably agree with the maxim, “Not planning means planning to fail.”  We can make everything work and everyone happy as long as we have enough time to plan, so when our plans get complicated, especially when they are complicated by trivial things, we get very irritated. We don’t vent it on others, we bottle it inside, but sometimes it slips out when it builds up inside too much.

We know that we don’t think clearly when we are angry, and avoid doing things in the heat of the moment. When we do finally think about things once we are calm, we quickly start getting worked up again—this makes it hard to decide between waiting or acting in the moment. Somethings almost seem impossible to think about without getting angry, even if we have time to cool down first.  We scrutinize our feelings so much for the presence of rage, that unless we are in a situation we are completely impartial to, we will most likely accuse ourselves of being too angry to think straight. Because of this, at some point, since we know that either way we will be too angry to think clearly, we decided we might as well act in the heat of the moment while we can still make a difference in what is happening… This leads to feeling guilty about it later, and repeating the cycle.

When there is someone or something we can’t be assertive with it is very frustrating. We sub-consciously don’t want to make not being assertive a habit, and so we find other things we can be assertive with… which mostly ends up being inanimate things. It can even get to the point where we obsessively assert ourselves on something that is disorganized or not clean, doors that might not have been locked… and we can get carried away with it.

Conclusion:

Once we figure out how to be assertive, the sub-conscious desire to practice assertiveness on inanimate objects will abate. Situations won’t fall apart if we are not perfectly organized, but they will “feel” like they are falling apart, if we consider anything but perfectly organized as falling apart.

If we are not assertive about letting people know to do or not to do things, they will keep happening or not happening, and we will continue to suffer through them until we either rage and push them away or communicate it. Someone feeling offended doesn’t mean that we pushed them down. We can’t stop climbing because we are scared someone might get offended.

We should make sure that when we are assertive, it is about something important and to the right person. Sometimes we avoid being assertive with one person about something important to us, and end up being assertive on several other people about things we don’t really care about instead. If the person you can’t speak about things openly because they will get confrontational, then make a conscious choice to let the hope that you will be able to tell them go.

If you didn’t relate to anything I said, look at what you marked as being the worst attributes from the list and imagine how the process of avoiding those might cause anxiety. Avoiding any of them on the list more than others can do it. Each attribute on the list is equally bad even if it might not seem that way. If you don’t believe me, ask someone you trust to pick the worst three from the list, and I guarantee they won’t be the same three. If you asked several people you would have someone vouching for why each one is the worst. In reality, anything but the right tool for the job is the wrong tool.

If you related to everything I said, you should probably chill out! And if you put the that the three worst were rage, unkindness and deceit, don’t worry, there is hope for you, lots of hope. Just having a very strong dislike for either of the three can produce a very real anxiety, but now that you know what it is that is causing it, you can start to change.

Panic, anxiety or fear are our self-preservation mechanisms, and when they are triggered, we should ask ourselves what we are trying to preserve. If we conclude we were trying to preserve our image, or anything else arbitrary, we should challenge why we assumed it was worth stressing over.

Anxiety is not part of you, it is a part of life. We shouldn’t identify as a person with anxiety, because we shouldn’t identify as anything, we are a person not a painting. We have to give up all identities, the good with the bad—we don’t have to identify as a kind person to do kind things. Society trying to label us with an identity as a way to attribute worth to us. It doesn’t matter what label you put on gold, it is still worth a lot. Our minds and hearts always work better when combined, and so connection is always worth it, we are always worth it. We stress so much about trying to be worth loving that we are to busy stressing that we can feel love, and we have a hard time loving. In both joy and pain anticipation makes almost all the difference. If you always anticipate the worst, you are sensitizing yourself towards them, and posturing to fight them instead of sensitizing to love and posturing to it.

Sensitize yourself to and posture for love, by being wholly present with yourself and with others. We can only love others to the extend that we love ourselves. If we only see ourselves as an emotional wreck, how could we imagine anyone would see us any different?

Love is not something we must try hard to do, love comes naturally, it is trusting that love is enough—That is the hard thing to do.

I didn’t mention PTSD, but will later in depth.