Coping with anxiety is something that most people have probably dealt with at some point in their lives. Being nervous and twitchy about something is a natural reaction, particularly in a world of lawsuits, divorce papers, terrorist threats, and Orwellian paranoia. To top those off, there are also concerns about one's social status and place in the social hierarchy, which can sometimes compound social anxiety on top of regular anxiety. This multitude of factors makes coping with anxiety that much harder in modern society. While most people inevitably learn how to adapt, for others, coping with anxiety and having to deal with social anxiety can become a less than productive activity.
People with subtle mental issues, such as malignant narcissism, are hard to spot, though most experts agree that stressing out an already unstable mind can be a disastrous activity. Social anxiety is already seen as a common denominator among the psychological profiles of modern serial killers, with some people in the field believing it to be one of the root causes of the deviant behavior exhibited by such individuals. Others similarly theorize that the behavior of a serial killer is a way of coping with anxiety, albeit one that is affected by other psychological conditions.
Interestingly, people coping with anxiety and social anxiety do so in different ways, particularly in different cultures. For example, some Japanese people, buckling under the pressures of Japanese society and social duties, have found an unusual way of coping with anxiety. While the hikikomori tactic, which involves withdrawing from all social activity and interpersonal interaction for extended periods, is more accurately seen as running away from social anxiety, it is nonetheless their means of coping with the societal pressures in their lives.
Other Japanese people, generally males, have become drawn into otaku behavior as a means of dealing with social anxiety. In Japanese culture, an otaku is an obsessive fan of a particular show or series that ends up collecting each and every piece of merchandise of that specific obsession. While not as completely cut off from the rest of society as a hikikomori, an otaku is nonetheless a person that has little in the field of social skills, or at least perceives himself to lack such skills. To a degree, the otaku is using his obsession to substitute for human social interaction, though it also promotes meeting with similar individuals to locate potential buyers when the otaku eventually sells his collection in favor of starting a new one.
In Western culture, particularly in the US, social anxiety is seen as a weakness and something that is ?not entirely normal.? Society has a tendency to push people that are socially withdrawn into the social arena, without any regard for their psychological capacity to adapt to such circumstances. In rare cases, when in conjunction with other mental disorders, these people can lash out at society, generally by openly rebelling against the social norm of their particular community. An example of this would be the ?Goth? culture that crops up in some schools, which stand in direct defiance of the homogeneous social policies of most high school student bodies.
However, it is the ones that strike back covertly that one should be wary of. These people may not necessarily turn into serial killers along the lines of Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK strangler or Ted Bundy, they can potentially turn into another Dylan Klebold or Seng Hui Cho. The difficulty here lies in the fact that people tend to ignore the signs of this sort of backlash until the guns have already started blazing.
Dealing With Anxiety And Panic
This article is based on a technique that demonstrated an 80% success rate in eliminating symptoms of anxiety panic attack. This is a description of the third session with the first client named Jane with whom this technique was discovered. Jane had uprooted her family and moved from Florida to NJ to be with her sisters and mother six months prior to the onset of agoraphobia panic attacks. I had in-home sessions with her as she was house-ridden.
Generally the original source of panic attacks is poor nutrition or a side effect of medication which was true for Jane. But even after stopping the offending medicaton or adjusting the diet, the anxiety panic attack response often continues as it has become a conditioned response.
The challenge was to shift Jane and the dozens of clients after her from the conditioned response of anxiety to freedom. According to Clara Weekes? book, Healing Your Bad Nerves (out of print), there are three phases to the anxiety panic attack. Initially there's an alarm. This is also true of the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). The alarm is what takes us away from our homeostatic level. It's the stressor. The next phase is the physical reaction?activation of the fight/flight. At this point breathing quickens and becomes upper chest, muscles tighten, extremities become cooler, heart rate quickens, blood pressure increases? all preparing the individual to either fight or run. More about stage three later.
However, what was not understood by Jane (and many professionals treating anxiety) is that the fight/flight is not only activated when there is a real physical threat, but any time her ego, and or family, social or financial status is perceived to be threatened. Yet, fighting or running from these types of life stressors is an inappropriate means of handling them. For instance, would you run away from your supervisor who criticized your work? Or punch him in the nose? Of course not, these are inappropriate responses, but nevertheless the body is activated to either fight or run. Not knowing this, the individual is left with the body in gear and totally at loss as to why. Jane's doctor came to a conclusion and said, "Because this happens when you're in wide open spaces like a super market, you have agoraphobia. Aside from some medication to take off the edge, we don't know how to cure it or even why it happens."
In the first two sessions with Jane I gathered information about her, (especially her life's disappointments) discussed nutrition, and outlined the goals. In my third session with Jane I provided an explanation of Hans Selye's GAS along with Clara Weekes? three stage theory.
Essentially the third stage is an exaggerated over reaction of the second stage (maybe as much as 100 times in magnitude) and this is because in the absence of any real physical threat, as previously noted, Jane and others do not understand that the second stage can be kicked in simply with something so basic as a threat to ego.
At this point, Jane had the frame work of understanding on a conscious level what has happened to her. The next challenge is to change the frame of reference from, ?I have anxiety attacks,? (which is actually a conclusion) to ?I notice tension in my chest,? (an observation). I needed a way of her understanding that she was jumping to conclusions and that conclusions for her are dangerous. Now I could have explained the difference in conclusions and observations a hundred times and it would have had little value. I needed to provide an actual example for Jane to experience to connect on both conscious and the subconscious level.
Looking about my home, I had found an old object. When I picked it up to move it out of the way, I discovered part if it missing--I had jumped to a conclusion?that it was complete. I needed something to build a shift from internal focus to external focus. Her internal focus was on her breathing and muscle tension which contributed to her jumping to conclusions which invoked the third stage.
When she wasn't looking, I positioned the object on her kitchen table. I then pointed to it and asked her what she saw. She identified the object from her point of view. I asked her if she made an observation or a conclusion and she thought it was an observation. I then asked her if she felt right in her observation and she did?anxiety sufferers like to be right and up until now, she's been ?right? about muscle tension and breathing tightness being a panic attack from her perspective.
I then picked up the object so she could see the missing part and her mouth dropped open in surprise. Using this device provided all the hypnosis I needed. Although the entire event took no more than a minute, in that time period Jane, as well as countless others with whom I've since used this device, was hypnotized. It was less than ten seconds of ?Wakened Hypnosis? that provided the shift from conclusion to observation?the key to getting beyond the third phase of Clara Weaks? model.
We then took ten minutes to look at the difference between observation and conclusion. If we named the object it was actually a conclusion'a dangerous one if we tried to use the object functionally. From observation it was an object approximately 4? in length with one end being 2 ?? in diameter with the other end approximately 3? in diameter. The end with the smaller diameter had a section approximately ?? in length that flared outward with one section slightly elongated. On one side of the object was a protrusion which connected to both ends. It took another three minutes to complete the observation without coming to any conclusions such as handle and spout.
I noted that we're rewarded in school by our ability to take A and B and come to conclusions which in this case are dangerous and from observation, we'd be hard pressed to figure out it what the object was.
This example has a lot more impact from a visual perspective as is on the dvd of the program at my website.
Her homework was to observe objects and write them down'an external focusing technique?practice observation with the understanding that one day she'll simply be able to observe muscle tension and be free of jumping to conclusions. They say the definition if insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. Why is it that standard procedures keep trying to have panic anxiety sufferers focus inward and control breathing? It is clearly insane to keep doing what doesn't work when the results of such misguided approaches are so poor.
Both Alex Ellorde & Richard Kuhns are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Alex Ellorde has sinced written about articles on various topics from self improvement and motivation, Cure Anxiety and Lose Weight. If you are having severe body pains try this one Buy Cheap Tramadol OnlinePeople who reads this article also gives interes. Alex Ellorde's top article generates over 135000 views. Bookmark Alex Ellorde to your Favourites.
Richard Kuhns has sinced written about articles on various topics from Panic Attacks, Cure Anxiety and Guided Meditation. Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified is a prominent figure in the field of stress management and personal change. He is author of the best selling cds at http://www.DStressDoc.com. He aims to raise awareness that outward observation exercises are the a. Richard Kuhns's top article generates over 14800 views. Bookmark Richard Kuhns to your Favourites.
Behavioral Therapy For Insomnia Bright light therapy is not a widely used, or even widely accepted, method for helping people overcome some forms of insomnia. But it is becoming a more and more accepted method of treatment
