Get a Grip!: December 2009

To Conclude...

Since this is my final post on this blog, I would like to quickly reiterate some key points about anxiety and anxiety disorders.

Remember: the best and most natural way to deal with anxiety is to keep up with your body. This means exercising, eating right, getting enough sleep, meditation, and knowing yourself and how you deal with stress.
There are many different types of anxiety, not just generalized anxiety disorder. There is PTSD, ODC, along with many, many others.
Look at stressful situations with humor in mind. Remember that nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and that every experience is a learning experience. (Just remember "The Pizza Boy"!)

Level of Adults With Anxiety

http://www.symtoms.org/anxiety_symptoms.html

This graph demonstrates the different amounts of adults with the different types of anxiety disorders. It is important to remember that there are different types of anxiety, not just generalized anxiety.

The Stress Container

It is important to remember that stress is the main cause of anxiety. They are actually placed in the same category and treated similarly. This diagram shows the different types of stresses, and how much of each type a person with anxiety has. Daily stresses of the day's activities and relationships cause about a quarter of the stress, daily worrying and anxiety cause another quarter, another quarter is filled with unresolved issues caused by the anxiety and stress, and when the day is done, there is very little room left over for stress before a major meltdown. Taking away the "not dealt with by REM," and the daily negative introspection categories leave much more room for a healthy, normal life style. This diagram gives a great visual as to why it's important to take into consideration all of these methods of dealing with anxiety, because they eliminate so much stress!!

The Vicious Cycle

This diagram from www.anxietyuk.org perfectly describes the process of anxiety for a person who is unable to comprehend it, or it can help a person who actually has anxiety understand what it happening to them, from my personal experience. It's a little hard to read here, but it basically shows a cycle (which helps show that anxiety is a vicious circle as well), with "feelings," "thoughts," and "fear" as the three main categories. "Feelings" include the physical effects your body may feel such as a rapid heart beat and feeling shaky or sweaty. "Thoughts" includes the irrational feelings that anxiety causes you to feel, such as "I might die," or, from "The Pizza Boy" example, "there is someone at my door trying to hurt me." Finally, these thoughts and feelings lead to the fear that something is seriously wrong. Below is the explanation provided by www.anxietyuk.org.

The ‘fear of the fear’ often makes us feel worse as we are literally on edge waiting for bad feelings to happen; we stop doing things that we link with the negative (bad) feelings or thoughts. This is called avoidance. The more that we avoid the thing that we link with feeling bad, the more we think of it as being dangerous.

This means that the next time we have to face the situation or event, our body tells us that it is dangerous and the fight, flight or freeze response kicks in. We feel that we either need to run away from the ‘dangerous’ thing, fight it or we feel that our body is frozen to the spot.

Either way, our body is not happy when we feel all of these horrible feelings and think horrible things. By understanding why we feel this way, we can then take away the ‘scared’ feeling because we know that it is just our body reacting to something that it thinks is scary, even though it is actually harmless. No-one ever died from having anxiety!

Medical News Today

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/anxiety/what-is-anxiety.php

^^This link I just posted is a great resource for anxiety information if you are looking to learn more. I came across it while searching for information for my posts, and noticed that it is just a well-rounded, accurate site which covers many of the concerning areas of anxiety. If you're curious, check it out!

Medication

A popular way of treating anxiety symptoms and disorders is through medication. Medication is very effective and dependable, but there are many draw-backs from using them. According to Helpguide.org , here are the most common side effects of using medication to control your anxiety:

Drowsiness, lack of energy
Clumsiness, slow reflexes
Slurred speech
Confusion and disorientation
Depression
Dizziness, lightheadedness
Impaired thinking and judgement
Memory loss, forgetfulness
Nausea, stomach upset
Blurred or double vision

A common trend with anxiety-regulating medication also seems to be addiction. My aunt has had anxiety problems all of her life, and she chose to control it with medication. In the past 4 or so years, I have seen her on and off of countless medications, each one with a new promise to cure her anxiety. Although the medication does take the edge off, she has gained a good deal of weight that she cannot lose, she is much more irritable, she has diet issues, and she is now dependent on these medications as well. Not only is she dependent, but the longer she is on one pill, the higher her need for it is. That is, the longer she is on one type of medication, the more her body's need for it keeps increasing. Because of this and my own experiences with anxiety-controlling medication, I have chosen to stay away from it and depend on more natural ways of controlling it such as vitamins, exercise, meditation, and relaxation.

Control It With Humor

I was fifteen years old, and home alone at night- something that never happened, because I had so much anxiety about people breaking into my house. My parents were at a friend's house with my little brother, and would not be home for an hour or two. I took the situation as an opportunity to be brave and prove to myself that nothing would happen to me if I was home alone at night by myself. I turned on every light in my house and went upstairs to play on the computer.

A few minutes later there was a knock on my door. Most people would just go answer it, right? Instead, my heart started pounding, I couldn't breathe or move, and I convinced myself that someone was trying to get into my house. I stayed upstairs at my computer, praying that they would go away. After knocking for a few more minutes, they did. I was so incredibly relieved. I went back to my computer, and heard the car leave my driveway.

About five minutes later I heard another knock at the front door. I automatically panicked and called my parents, hysterical. The person at the door was pounding and pounding and would not stop. I was crying, and calling people to come and see who it was, because my anxiety had convinced me that it was someone trying to hurt me. There was no thinking logically at the time. I felt a little better knowing that my parents (as well as my friend's parents) were on their way, and I finally heard the car pull away again. Three more times I heard the car pull in and out of the driveway, and each time, whoever it was came banging on the door and would not stop. Finally, my parents arrived, and the car pulled into the driveway for the 6th time. My father ran over to the car, ready to hurt whoever had been pounding on the door all night. Inside was a 17 year-old pizza delivery boy who had been given the wrong address. He kept driving back and forth to a pay phone...and every time he spoke to the family who was actually expecting the pizza, they would say, "We're sorry! We didn't hear you knock. Come back, we'll open the door this time."

Anyway, this night is now known as "The Pizza Guy Night." My friends and family always know to call before they visit or else I will go into hysterics as I did that night. It's really funny to look back on in retrospect, and this is only one example of how people with anxiety can use humor to control certain situations. For example, if someone were to knock on my door at night when I was home alone now, I would remember "The Pizza Guy Night," laugh, and open the door.