ANXIETY CAN BE AN ASSET

Anxiety can be an asset in your life if appropriately managed..

~John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America

We are not talking about crippling anxiety; we are talking about the small feelings that often stop us from taking action.

People may not realize it is anxiety, aka fear and doubt.

Life is hard to understand, and that makes it easier.

~M. Scott Peck

Anxiety creates a tendency to procrastinate if it does:

• Stop paying attention to your thought
• What’s the worst that can happen
• Can I handle it

Accepting anxiety into one’s life instead of always taking a pill is a start to looking at anxiety differently. Taking a pill does work; however, it does not solve the problem.

This may appear contradictory to current messages that anxiety should be “cured.” In some extreme cases, eliminating symptoms may be needed.

You are projecting what’s going to happen. Leo gives the example that when he leaves here today, he won't have any anxiety about getting his car and driving home; he could think about bad things, but they're not likely to happen. The coach mentions, however, that the difference would be the first time you got in a car and drove. You have a lot of anxiety because you haven't had the confidence and the skill yet. And, of course, if you didn't overcome that anxiety, you never drive a car.

Increasing our understanding of anxiety and our discomfort with the unknown can show the function of anxiety as a signal that something important is occurring.

Two women who carried Ativan but never took them;

One had an elevator phobia, and she was taking Ativan to release her anxiety.

The second woman had Ativan, but she wasn’t taking the pills. She keeps the pills in her pocket in case she needs them, like a security, the “Placebo Effect.” “

By looking at anxiety meaningfully, it can reveal things about the state of our lives.

The goal is to use anxiety as information to improve our functioning.

The client had issues with trucks, especially when she saw a truck behind her; she would pull over and let the truck by. When Leo asked her about that, she said that six months earlier, she'd been hit in the rear by a truck. A form of low-level PTSD

Anxiety is an unavoidable dimension of the human experience. The key is to use your anxiety as information to improve functioning.

Sometimes, anxiety is so mild that we don't even notice it; we might say to ourselves, “Oh, I don't feel like doing this or that.” When you get those feelings, it's good to start questioning yourself: Why am I feeling this? What's going on with me?

Engaging in the anxiety and thinking about it can help.

It is how we respond to anxiety that matters most. Our response influences whether and how anxiety may be meaningfully used to learn about oneself and become more effective in your life and work.

Attempts to deny anxiety or push it aside can result in a great deal of problems that we experience today, such as violence and over-consumption, which are typical of current ideas.

We can become overwhelmed with anxiety because we refuse to face and deal with it. Engaging with anxiety will help in acquiring its positive effects and life-enhancing effects.