Healthy Worry or Chronic Anxiety?
This time we are trying to determine the difference between useful worry and pathologically worrisome state (in this case - generalised anxiety disorder) and how we can help ourselves if we are suffering from the latter.
Here are two people, Gary and Julia. Both are adults and function quite well in everyday life. They both have a job, a family, friends and hobbies. But somehow, Julia overall feels calm and content, while Gary is mainly in a slightly negative mood. Julia is noticeably more satisfied and collected compared to Gary. When we take a closer look, we discover that Gary, like many others in our modern society, suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
How did we know this? First, let’s see how they live and worry:
How Julia lives and worries:
Julia is a mentally healthy person.
She has extended periods of life when she is not worried much at all. Like anybody else, she faces anxiety periodically, but it is fastly resolved.
On a scale between “0” - neutral mood and “10” - ecstatic, on a regular day, her mood generally varies between “0” to “+3”.
If something happens, she faces her anxiety without running away from it.
When she has problems, she develops a strategy for solving them.
She takes action and resolves her problems.
Julia doesn’t worry about things she can’t change and does what she can when she can.
Julia fundamentally believes that she is capable of dealing with any arising problems in her life.
She believes that there are many places for her to gain needed resources.
How does Gary lives and worries:
Gary is a person with generalised anxiety disorder.
At the back of his head, he is constantly worried about something.
He sees his life as a series of big and complex problems.
His worry stretches to many topics, mainly the future, work, close relationships, health and livelihood.
On average, his mood varies between “-3” to “0” (where “-10” is awful, and “0” is neutral).
He questions his ability to solve his problems.
He perceives problems in life as highly threatening.
He believes there is no help to be found anywhere.
Gary is terrified to make mistakes, and he often acts out of guilt or a sense of obligation.
He can’t stand uncertainties and doesn’t take new situations well.
Gary could be happier and more satisfied if he would learn to use his anxiety emotion better. But, unfortunately, many people with anxiety disorder believe being this way helps them live their lives and be prepared, which is hardly true.
How does General Anxiety affect you?
Constant worry makes you exhausted and confused.
You lose the ability to prioritise your problems.
You find issues where there are none instead of solving the real ones.
Constant worry damages the healthy function of anxiety emotion to inform you of danger.
It decreases your quality of life.
Your emotional scope becomes limited. There is a lack of such emotions as interest, joy, love and curiosity.
Your perception of the world becomes inadequate.
It reduces your quality of sleep and increases muscle tensions.
You tend to get into mental paralysis.
It gets in the way of achieving your goals.
Elements of GAD:
Avoidance to think about worrying problems
Fear of experiencing anxiety
Avoiding sitting down to finding a solution to the problems, mental chewing on the situation instead
Many positive and negative thoughts about one’s anxiety (ex.: it is terrible that I am so anxious, or it is good that I am, etc.)
Hard to withstand uncertainty; has to find the solution as fast as possible and know the exact answer.
People with GAD are:
Mostly Introverts
Find it hard to say “No.”
Live primarily motivated by the feeling of duty and obligation
It is hard for them to speak their mind
They have an enormous paralysing fear of making mistakes
Are not in the habit of listening to one’s requirements
Have a lot of negative beliefs about themselves, the world, and other people.
Now that you are sure that misused anxiety and worry are bad for your life, let’s see how we can help ourselves become more of a Julia and less of a Gary, meaning more mentally healthy and overall content and collected. It is quite possible to heal yourself from these negative patterns, but of course, it will take some effort on your side and might take some time.
What can you do to treat your Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
There are two situations the person with GAD has to learn to deal with:
When there are no severe problems in life;
When serious and threatening difficulties arise.
The goal of the treatment is to get rid of the process of worrying as it is now.
Step 1. Change the attitude towards the worry process.
Treat your way of worrying critically. First, you need to explain to yourself the problem of dealing with anxiety the way you deal with it. Without clearly understanding that this is bad for you, you cannot change.
Learn to recognise when you are worrying. Catch yourself when you are in these states and tell yourself: “I am worrying right now about this..”
Learn the skill of problem-solving.
Step 2. The problem-solving skill.
Determine whether the problem is significant or not. If not, learn to let it go, stop thinking about it, and distract yourself, getting back into a neutral mood.
If the problem is significant, write down (or tell someone) what are you worried about exactly. Then, find all the components of your fear.
Write down (or discuss) all the possible solutions to this problem.
Take the best possible solution and break it down into manageable steps.
Take the steps required to solve the problem.
After you took all the steps, decide if you can do something else about this problem. If not, or if not necessary, let it go and stop thinking about it by distracting yourself.
Step 3. Catastrophize the situation. Go through the steps:
Find what worries you exactly.
Think - what is the worst possible thing that can happen?
What is the most negative consequence this might have?
What could you do if that happened?
What else could you attempt to do in that situation?
This process will ease your anxiety as your brain plans the actions you would take if the worst had occurred (it probably won’t, by the way).
Step 4. Change the basis of your worrisome mind.
Change the fundamental beliefs about yourself, the world and other people. Here are some affirmations:
You are capable of dealing with problems that arise.
Problems are manageable and scarce.
You are an adult who is capable of coming up with good decisions and solutions.
Other people struggle as much as you.
There are no all-knowing authorities who will judge you.
Get rid of the fear of failure. Affirmations:
Making mistakes is a part of progress and is inevitable and valuable for you.
It is not shameful to make mistakes.
There are no authorities out there, and everybody is figuring it out and making mistakes.
My worry is not helping me. There is no point to continue worrying.
I can, and I am allowed to make my mistakes because it is the only way to learn something new.
Maybe I will make mistakes, but it will be my own mistakes.
Tell yourself: at least I tried, at least I did my best. I did what I could, I wanted to do it this way, so I did.
2. Become okay with uncertainty:
When there is a problem, my goal is to solve it correctly, not as fast as possible.
Some problems take time to solve.
3. Learn to listen to your wants and requirements:
Ask yourself often what do you want? What would make your life better? What does my soul desire?
Every day write down things you would want - small and immediate, and big and long term.
Start realising your desires, ignoring the sense of guilt and obligation when you do so. Remember, guilt and sense of duty is overactive in people with GAD)
Use your problem-solving skill to make step by step plan of achieving things you want.
Tell yourself that you are experimenting and discovering.
You are allowed to do what you want to do and make mistakes on the way.
Believe: You have the ability to solve your problems independently.
Good luck in your endeavours and tell us if this topic was important to you!
This approach is based on insights from a licensed psychiatrist and psychoanalytic Evgeniya Streleckaya. Use with care. We Are Seed Publication!
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