You are restless. Can’t sleep. Wound up. Keep going like the Energizer Bunny but accomplish nothing. Your mind is either blank or feels like running on a hamster-wheel. Upset stomach and diarrhea is common. You have a sense of urgency but nothing appears to be on the horizon that would demand your attention. Yet, you sense a “doomsday” that you can’t shake off. You have anxiety or panic attack(s).
What is the problem?
Anxiety is your body’s response when your mind perceives a threat to something that you value. Your body is standing by, waiting for your command. Sometimes you know what ails you. Sometimes you don't. Once you know your enemy you can choose your actions and ease your pain. Until then, you keep searching for its name.
Energy as it should be: Firing up to action
Like a dog caught in a cage; trying to escape but there is no way out. Your instinct pulls. The wires restrain. Is this a familiar nightmare to you?
You may have heard of the flight-fight-freeze response (FFFR). No? You are certainly experiencing it now so remember it. This is what it feels like. It’s your body’s natural response to an environmental challenge when you have to act to live. Normally, you don’t notice the “heat”; you just act. You act and use up this energy that’s boiling in you because you have a target. You know what you have to do; you accept the challenge; and you go for it. Then you feel accomplished because your brain is messaging the feel-good hormones. Mission accomplished. You are safe again. Your mind and body can rest.
Fighting the invisible enemy
But there are times when the target is not obvious.
You may not be able to put your finger on what ails you.
You may have too many targets (environmental challenges) and you don’t know where to start. You feel overwhelmed.
You may know what the target is but feel blocked – there are too many contingencies. You can’t just act and tackle the problem because it’s not completely in your jurisdiction. Other factors, perhaps other people, have to contribute to address and to solve the problem and they are not completely on board (yet).
You may be reluctant to address the problem. You are trying to run away from it, turn away and pretend it’s not there. You try to wish it away. You deny it. Fear paralyzes you so you don’t act. You may keep telling yourself that you try to act but you don’t know what to do.
The bottom line is the same in each case: your energy keeps boiling and it has no place to go. The target is invisible. You don’t act so nothing gets done so your brain can’t send the “mission accomplished” resting signals. You continue being restless. Can’t sleep. Trying to “run” but you know you “can’t hide”.
It may be tempting to reach for anything to put your mind at ease: pills; alcohol, a joint of marijuana, or other drugs. You may grab some “comfort food”, ice cream, or overeat to create a sense of being “weighed-down-and-can't-move”. You may go for a run or a workout in the gym to burn up that excess of enrgy. Either way, you are not solving your problem.
"Arousal" is another word you want to know
As I’ve suggested before, your mind’s eye sees a target (even if you don’t) and calls it “a problem to solve”; it fires up your body to tackle the problem. I like to refer to this energy at its scientific name: arousal. Arousal is your level of alertness. When you are meditating calmly, your arousal is low. When you are fighting your enemy and ready to die for your cause, your arousal is at its peak: you invest all your energy in the here and now and save nothing for tomorrow for tomorrow may never come. On a regular day, you are somewhere between these two extremes.
Arousal becomes pathological and we call it “anxiety” when the energy production persists and does not find its target for action. No action is taken, no “rest” is signaled. The boiling energy, like an army without an enemy, works against you and interferes with your attempt to engage productively with your life.
Sometimes anxiety persists when our body is mobilized to respond to a threat, but we cannot identify what the threat is or what action would help.
A thousand ways to handle “anxiety”
Scheherazade told one thousand and one tales over one thousand and one nights to the Sultan Shahryar so he'd stop chopping off women's heads to retaliate for his pain and anxiety that sprang from a sense of abandonment. Ok, perhaps I won't compile that many suggestions here but only 7 approaches to manage anxiety, otherwise we’ll never get out of here. And I think after this long introduction, the solutions will be obvious.
They all start with BREATHE. Smell the roses or attempt to breathe-in the entire fresh universe. With all this “intergalactic technology” (a term borrowed from the movie "Men in Black", an excellent stress management story as it targets the absurdity of life) that humanity has devised, breathing is still the most effective arousal/anxiety managing tool we have with the least side effects.
#1: If you only have a vague sense of "doomsday" and don't know what's making you anxious: identify the problem. Sit down, or walk around the block, and think and think. You can draw a life-map that I've described in my previous article on cannabis to map your life and identify the situations that demand lots of attention. Look out for not only the distressful events (events that you hate to have) but also for eustress (the life situations that you are happy to have, such as getting married, being promoted, or having a baby, yet require you to adapt). Both difficult and lovely circumstances can tax your energy. Don't forget to list your health condition if that's a pressure point for you. If you feel stressed out, it has a cause. You have to identify rather than deny it to address it.
#2: If you have too many targets and don’t know where to start: write a to-do list & prioritize. Start with the lowest hanging fruit or the most pressing issue; brainstorm solutions. But DO SOMETHING, one thing at a time. If you solve just one problem a day, you are getting somewhere. If you feel overwhelmed, focusing only on temporary relief may leave the underlying problem unaddressed.”
#3: If there are too many factors to solve the problem and your contribution is but one: be assertive. Use assertive language to get other people on board. Use the statement structure “When you... (do this) I feel... (a couple of feeling words) because I think... (give your interpretation of the other person’s actions). I would like you to... (do this other thing) instead.” The point is to be specific & concise when you offer your perspectives on the situation - instead of using accusing language such as "Your are so annoying..." Explain your views and suggest alternative behaviours to your partner, ones that you'd want them to do. This way you state what you want and give your partner a fair chance to respond.
For instance: “Honey, when you refuse to discuss this business with me, I feel ignored, hopeless, and sad. I feel alone because you're not engaging with me. I would like you to sit down with me to discuss this thing. It may not matter to you but it matters to me. I’d love to hear your point of view.”
If the assertiveness does not bring results after a number of attempts, you may want to set limits, too. “Honey, if you continue ignoring me on this matter, I will make my own decision but then it may not align with your best interest. You will feel left out of the process.” Then deliver what you have promised.
Do what YOU have to do. You can’t put your life on hold for ever and blame others for you not accomplishing anything. If others don’t want to engage with you on this matter – or anything that matters to you – then it’s not their calling. It’s all yours.
#4: If your problem is the weather or “the system”, you may have to capitulate and go with the flow – or with the “static”, which may be a better term in this case. If you are facing the health care system, education system, or the IRS, you may be out of luck. The individual agent that you are speaking with may or may not be sympathetic to your cause – but the system will likely be unresponsive, just like the weather. This is what systems do. (Yes, they change --- over time; over a looong time. Not now.) This is the part of the Serenity prayer when you ask for “God, give me Serenity to accept the things I cannot change”. Continue breathing. Ask for help (someone wiser than myself here). Try not to generalize your sense of defeatedness. (Generalize means taking something from one context and making it a general rule of life.) Focus on other areas of your life where you DO have control.
#5: If fear keeps you from acting: keep your eyes on the prize. Ask yourself these questions: “What are the short- and long-term consequences of this action?” “What are some alternative actions that I could take?” “Is this cause worth the effort and the risk?” Then you make your decision and make your move. Are you worried about whether it will be the “right” decision? Consider what “right” would entail. Alternatively, there may not be one right decision but only consequences that you can live with and consequences that you would not want to live with.
#6: If your anxiety is caused by something that you fear would happen: take the probability out of the possibility. “I’m afraid that if I speak up, my partner will leave me.” Acknowledge that what you are afraid of may be POSSIBLE (validate your fear) – and evaluate how PROBABLE it is to happen (pull out your rational mind). If the probability of the threat is low enough then you likely want to let go. You don't want to spend more energy on it than it's worth. If the probability is high, you want to prepare.
Possible is something that can happen – if the circumstances are right, there is nothing that would logically exclude the situation. For instance, it is possible that you get hit by a car as long as there are cars where you live. But if you live in the middle of nothing, where there are no cars anywhere around, then it is impossible to be hit by a car.
Probable means how likely it is that this thing that you are afraid of will actually happen. If there are no cars around, the probability of you being hit by one is zero. If you live in a city, you can go either by a general statistic (how many people out of 1000 get hit in your area) or by your subjective evaluation: what you feel is likely to happen.
Either option you choose to evaluate the probability, your successful not-worrying will depend on how much you can suppress your worry with your faith. Faith in the unlikelihood that you would be hit; or, faith in yourself, that no matter whether you get hit, you will be able to handle it and be ok at the end. If your trust is not in the environment, that something will or will not happen, but in your ability to handle no matter what the future brings, then I think you can substantially reduce your anxiety.
And sometimes, people believe that their risk is justified. If you are saving your child from being hit so you sacrifice yourself for a higher good - you may not spend much time with the evaluation. The prize outweigh all risks.
Hmm. I leave the value of faith in anxiety management up to you to ponder about.
One more brief note on a long problem before I close the door.
#7: Intrusive thoughts are driving you nuts. They don't have to. They only hurt you if you fight them. They keep coming back perhaps because you keep shoving them aside. No, you don't have to act on them.
But there is something between pushing them down and acting them out impulsively.
This something is Questioning; Conversations; Dialogue. Explore what this intrusive thought is telling you. Are you making this idea into an enemy by refusing to consider its truth or value to you?
If your intrusive thoughts are telling you to hurt someone, for instance, ask yourself whether you have been allowing yourself to be hurt by not setting boundaries or standing up for yourself. Could this intrusive thought be pointing to anger or frustration that you haven't found a way to express or address?
Is your unconscious suggesting you to fight back for an unrealized oppression of your needs - not by killing people but by taking decisive actions?
Consider Dr. Eduardo Duran's approach to treating alcohol addiction. He is a Native American healer and psychologist working with Native peoples whose primary "language" is storytelling. Instead of trying to suppress the cravings, he said (at one of his trainings I was lucky to attend) he'd put a bottle of the client's favorite alcohol in a chair across the client and ask the person to have a dialogue with it, just as he/she would do with an old friend that he/she has to let go now.
It sounds like a heartbreakingly difficult task for me to treat something, that people would normally be ashamed of and tried to hide, as an old friend to reconcile with before parting. But the cravings, just like the intrusive thoughts, can be approached as messages from a secret admirer who wants to look out for you—in their own way.
Ending the anxiety attack...
... requires you to know your "enemy" or the problem at hand; evaluate the probability that the threat will happen (most threats will never happen, as Dr. Rossman explains); take action when you have to and can; pray for Serenity when all you can do is to accept the inevitable. Yes, you need Wisdom to tell the difference between what you can and cannot control but that comes with practice over time and forgiveness for your and other people's mistakes.
When it comes to working with other people all you can do is ask. Ask them to work with you and explain how: that is why the last part of the assertive communication (where you offer an alternative action that you expect of them) is crucial. You don't want to be told what NOT to do but WHAT TO do if you want to collaborate with someone. All you have control over is your own actions. Your path is your responsibility and nobody else is obligated to walk with you. Be kind and firm when it comes to compromising your values if you want to keep the respect for yourself and reduce the stress on you.
Stop putting off facing your challenges. What makes tomorrow a better day to tackle a problem than today? But tomorrow will have today's as well as tomorrow's tasks.
To end your anxiety attack - explore yourself and the world.
Take care.
Find Relief from Anxiety and Regain Your Peace of Mind
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I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about these topics. If you have questions or would like to discuss something you’ve read, please get in touch.
This article is an update of a blog that was originally published on https://majapsychotherapy.com
Marianna Jakucska is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Sacramento, CA. She does psychotherapy online across California, in a setting that is variably called telehealth, video therapy or therapy-over-the-internet. She specializes in collaborative working with highly perceptive/sensitive people, the creative and the “misfit” to assist them in building a fulfilling life. Her clinical focus is on developmental trauma, depression, anxiety, cultural adjustment, and people single over 30; CBT, DBT, Existential and Eclectic approaches. She is bilingual in Hungarian and brings a broad cultural perspective into her therapeutic work. She is supportive of the LGBTQ Community and people who are seeking spiritual as well as mundane meaning to their life.