Anxiety Disorders

Many people who suffer from anxiety and anxiety-related problems have become immune to the distress anxiety causes. This is especially sad because many steps can be taken to reduce or eliminate anxiety. When anxiety is under control, it is possible to treat the underlying problems that are causing the anxiety. Many of my patients say they are used to their anxiety symptoms and they generally don't notice how much discomfort they are in. They see it as normal to be in a regular state of physical or emotional distress.

When anxiety and the underlying causes are addressed directly, relief is possible.

Unfortunate things happen in life and unwanted events do occur: we lose people we love, we get sick, we are mistreated or rejected by people we rely upon, kids grow up and move away, we lose jobs or competitions we had hoped to win, we get chosen over for a promotion, an award or a contract.

The experience of constant distress can be alleviated if you know how to recognize, identify, experience, and process the anxiety and the underlying feelings that occur in response to challenging or difficult life events.

Common EMOTIONAL symptoms include:

• A feeling of apprehension or dread

• Impatience

• Trouble concentrating

• Being tense and jumpy

• Anticipating the worst

• Irritability

• Restlessness

• Preoccupation with danger

• Mentally blanking out

• Being easily startled

• Irrational fear and excessive worry

 A Lens Through Which To Understand Anxiety:

No matter how well-meaning our caregivers might have been, most of us have experienced disappointment or trauma in childhood in the form of unhelpful, neglectful, or abusive parental responses to our feelings and behavior.

Without repair, these unfortunate experiences prime us to become adults who lack important healthy capacities such as: 

• the ability to soothe ourselves and to regulate and process feelings and anxiety of our own and others,

• the ability to form accurate perceptions of ourselves, others, and our possibilities,

• the ability to achieve success in life and relationships in accordance with our optimal potential.

Difficult experiences trigger feelings which get co-mingled with, and blocked by, anxiety. We often experience this anxiety instead of feeling our actual feelings leaving our feelings to get buried (i.e., pushed out of awareness).  As a result, our feelings get managed by a reliance on dysfunctional habits and patterns (i.e., strategies that determine how we treat ourselves and others), which I refer to as "defenses" (defense mechanisms). Automatically relying on defenses is a problem because defenses keep us from knowing and processing our real feelings. They serve as faulty coping strategies and can turn into regular patterns of managing feelings and life that rob us of free choice. These automatic defensive strategies get relied on into adulthood even though they no longer serve any productive purpose and usually cause or perpetuate suffering. Effective psychotherapy can help identify and remove unhelpful patterns so you can replace them with constructive ones in order to achieve your optimal potential.

Exercise is one way that you can reduce anxiety on your own, at least temporarily, while you work on identifying your unique anxiety triggers.

In the following video, Dr. Mike Evans provides compelling empirical support for the importance of exercising at least thirty minutes a day to improve both physical and psychological health.

Daily exercise, in moderation, can be a valuable tool for you as you work on improving your psychological functioning and your quality of life.