Can be obvious
Anxiety is a state most of us do not even recognise were in or how much it is steering our lives. Most of us recognise it when it is obvious like it was for my daughter. For example, she would want to avoid parties, any new activity outside the home and unfamiliar people. At home she was an incredibly happy and bubbly child. However, when we tried to take her into new setting she literally switched into another person and we were left with a crying, stressed and fearful child.
It wasn’t hard to work out that she was suffering anxiety she was always in fear of what might happen. Anxiety is a fear of the future.
Can be more hidden
However, recognising it in myself was much harder. In fact, my actions were entirely differently. If I felt scared of something my reaction tended to go towards it. So as a young adult I set off overseas on my own terrified. I went for a teaching job at the Melbourne zoo even though it was a hugely sort after position and doubt plagued me (felling of never being enough). As a Mum I constantly handed my first-born child to anybody at church in an effort to encourage connection and not be a clingy Mum. So how could I possibly have anxiety.
The interesting thing is it can express in such varied ways and it is often hard to identify in ourselves as it can seep in gradually or have existed from such a young age it is just normal.
The funny thing is we all have anxiety in fact if we didn’t we wouldn’t be alive.
Can be helpful
Anxiety allows us to plan, attend, motivate, avoid danger and communicate. So realistically we all experience anxiety the difference is that at times this helpful emotion becomes out of balance. When this happens, it means that rather than being motivated and decisive it can be paralysing and create procrastination, indecisiveness and a spiral of self-doubt.
I experienced this after my husband died of brain cancer and I proceeded to have a tumour. My system was over loaded with fear of the future and I struggled to turn it off.
Even when it occasionally quietens down the smallest thing would set it off. A thought of something I hadn’t done, a memory, a conversation with someone where they tell me something great that was happening for them and yet I would feel dread. Thanks to unconscious therapies I found my way out of debilitating state.
What moves the threshold
When something is troubling us our job, relationship, health, kids, lack of sleep or ability to tolerate becomes less and with this comes the instinctive behaviour to protect ourselves. Commonly we do this by pre-empt problems, thinking of all the possible dangerous outcomes to a potential action in the belief that this will protect us. However, the danger is that if our focus is always on the problem then we never manage to see how we can make it work because we’re too busy inventing and thinking about the issue, considering all the possible negatives scenarios and so never investing in creating an alternative.
Where to focus
When planning my first business (running our current house at the time as a short-stay accommodation place), it required a dogged belief even though I had no idea how to achieve what felt like a mammoth goal. People would ask where are you going to live? I would be wondering how I am going to run it. But my predominant thought was that it was possible and it would become apparent. It would have been easy to keep my big idea in my head for fear of criticism or questions that I could not answer. But by talking with others and even expressing my reservations, opportunities unravelled. That is fine when anxiety is not running your life.
Where it lies
However, when I experience the debilitating anxiety after my operation there was nothing I could consciously do. When our fear is irrational, that is because it is not being steered by our conscious mind, it is in the unconscious, and therefore that is the part we need to address.
Everything is changeable
So, to any of you who are fearing anxiety, please hear this Anxiety is not your foe but can be your friend, and when it is not behaving this way, it is out of balance, controlling you. There are absolutely ways to get out of this state and restore a healthy balance.