Today's Reading
Jon's story of using his creativity—or discovering it—is one that moves me and may inspire you. In his words:
I'm a mid-30s architect who thought his "creativity" was strictly three-dimensional. At Uni I had panic attacks that made exams a kind of torment. In my final year, I tentatively discovered positive visualizations. At first, they weren't much more than seeing myself somewhere relaxing. Later, I could envisage myself in any tough situations in considerable detail ahead of time, kind of deciding as I went what direction I wanted to take and, really, what outcome I was aiming for.
There are several benefits: 1) I can now "re-direct" scenarios that ignite old fears, mainly of "not making it" competitively; 2) I'm aware now of where fear takes me; 3) When I'm not calm enough to shift perspective internally, I go walking. Not sitting, not brooding, may be the last thing I want to do, yet having pushed myself out the door I can guarantee breaking the circuit at least somewhat. Funnily enough, it's my feet pounding the ground that helps most, my feet moving, getting me somewhere.
2 | Your name is not Anxious
Anxiety is not fixed by anxiety... I used to get anxious ABOUT anxiety. In order to get over it in my experience you have to reach a point where you break that loop. Where you don't fear or stigmatize yourself.
MATT HAIG
Whether anxiety is with you always or erupts only from time to time, it helps to know that of all the familiar psychological challenges, anxiety is the most treatable. This is because you can effectively learn to put anxiety in its place, in large part by seeing yourself more generously and your inner resources with greater trust.
Everything this book offers supports that.
Anxiety is not now and never will be the most important thing about you. Your name isn't Anxious. Anxiety is not your identity. What's more, anxiety is never your whole "story." Nor should anxiety dictate the stories of who and what you are. Ever.
To write this book, I had to catch up on some of the exhilarating progress neuroscience has made and is still making. This is new frontier territory that affects us all. Yes, your mind is far more than "brain." Yes, you are far more than "mind." Nonetheless, brain and mind are powerful influences on your self-understanding.
To help myself as well as you, I needed to understand far better how you physiologically and psychologically respond to experiences in the present; how you store and make memories; and why some situations keep tripping you up. I also needed to understand how changes in the way you view, see, limit, or encourage yourself can best restore hope—and choice.
Science offers discoveries to support everyone enduring long-term visits from anxiety. These insights certainly include the effects on every aspect of your health when you are subjected to extended periods of stress and elevated levels of stress hormones, like cortisol.
Managing stress is not optional. Managing the physical effects of stress is also not optional. Stress does not explain the whole of the complex anxiety story. However, the release of stress hormones affects your entire body-mind. Sleeplessness, irritability, and increased anxiety can follow elevated stress hormone levels.
"Managing stress" in a world that causes so much stress takes skill and courage. But it must be done. In The Myth of Normal, Gabor and Daniel Maté write that on the "terrain" of economic achievement (for some, not all), "...we find many people in a state of chronic uncertainty and loss of control, subject to stress-inducing fears that translate into disturbances of the hormonal apparatus, of the immune system, and of the entire organism."
That statement means a couple of things. None of us can shop our way to peace-of-mind success, believing that the next acquisition (or round of applause), or the next one, will "do it" for us. Plus, you need to know—and many, many of us don't know—that whatever anxiety you feel, it is never "all in the mind." It is everywhere in your body.
It makes you reactive, probably irritable or angry, and certainly tense. That affects your outlook, at least as much as your "outlook" affects your moods. Nothing in this story about you and anxiety is linear; it's all "circular," which made me feel excited when I could confirm the obvious: that when your mind is agitated, and you most identify with the emotions that anxiety brings, soothe your body first.
That again means strictly limiting and controlling stress—even and especially when you are saying, "That's impossible..."
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