Anxiety

A friend of mine over the last year had started having anxiety attacks. When these attacks hit, her blood pressure would spike, her emotions would be on edge and she would develop a doomsday viewpoint, i.e. she would imagine the worst possible outcome of everything in her life to include that she was dying of one malady or another.  The attacks were often severe and she ended up in the emergency room a couple of times because she worked herself into such a frenzy.

When she was calm we talked about the things that might be contributing to her having anxiety attacks. At first she did not believe that her attacks were brought on by anxiety. She insisted that she had some medical disorder that the doctors were missing. She told me that she didn’t feel anxious and that she didn’t feel she was worried or pressured by anything. The fact that she did not see herself as anxious was interesting to me because I knew simply from observing her that she led an anxious life.

Anxiety is defined as “painful or apprehensive uneasiness of the mind”

It was clear to me that my friend was in pain and was truly experiencing an uneasiness of the mind. I observed her lifestyle and noted that in many ways her lifestyle was contributing to her uneasiness of the mind. She didn’t eat well, lived on fast food and snacks which were high in sugar and sodium and when she did eat a decent meal it was almost always eaten in a restaurant. When she ate she ate like the food was going to be taken away from her at any moment, she ate fast and furious barely having a chance to taste what she shoveled in her mouth.  I observed that she did not get regular hours of sleep and was often trying to burn the candles at both ends. She did not get any real exercise, when she wasn’t busy with work or school she could be found on the couch watching “reality” type shows such as COPS and other type shows which chronicled the drama of others and focused on the worst of human behavior.

When I shared with her my observations and how her lifestyle may be contributing to her anxiety attacks she was quick to dismiss what I had to say, yet each time she went into an anxiety attack or had a melt down because she was in a doomsday mental state she would reach out to me and ask for help. It was during these times that I would gently and sometimes not so gently open up discussions about the possible changes she could make that would help her to remove the anxiety from her life and each time she would put up a wall and defend her lifestyle choices and reiterate that she believed she was suffering from some form of medical malady that the inept doctors were not detecting.

Fast forward a few months; I am visiting with my friend; she appears to be in a good state of being. When I remark at how well she appears she shares with me that she had made a conscious choice to make some lifestyle changes and that she had not experienced an anxiety attack in quite some time, as a matter of fact she shared with me that she had never felt better.

When I asked her what changes she had made she told me that she became aware of what she was exposing herself to and that through this awareness she had chosen to no longer watch dramatic reality shows. She now realized that her exposures to these types of programs which she had viewed as entertainment were in fact having a negative effect on her mental and emotional state.  She also became aware of taking better care of her physical form by eating better, getting some form of exercise and having a more regular sleep schedule. Bottom line, she made some lifestyle changes and reduced her anxiety levels and she did this by increasing her awareness and opening herself up to the possibilities that she could effect change from her internal self and not look for external things to blame her anxiety on. The big, aha for her is that she had to take responsibility for her anxiety, which she did!

Truth is, she has only scratched the surface of removing anxiety from her life and experiencing a joyful life. She has made some changes yes and she feels better, however she now has set herself up to begin aligning herself with her spirit in a much deeper and more profound way which will take her to a level of joy that she has not yet known.

When we experience anxiety it is simply because our thoughts, words/actions are not in alignment with our authentic self, our spirit. The more aligned we become with our authentic self the less anxiety we will experience. Like my friend discovered, we must also be conscious of our physical environment and how we treat our form. It is interesting how as we become aware and make changes to our environment and how we treat and interact with our form that we begin to create an overall awareness or being. These changes can be a catalyst for the deeper internal changes that we need to make to align with our authentic self.

Note, if you see bits of yourself or someone close to you in the description of my friend, please understand that one does not have to change or “get it” all at once.  That being said, one does have to take accountability and responsibility for their state of being before any real and lasting change can take place. Know that even the slightest shifts in thought and lifestyle can lead to less anxiety and a more joyful life.

Anxiety is not something that we should cope with. If you drove a nail through your hand, you wouldn’t cope with the nail in your hand, you would take action to remove the nail and allow the wound to heal. The same thing applies to anxiety, we don’t need to cope with anxiety, we need to take appropriate actions to remove anxiety from our life and heal our self.

Note, one of the key learning’s/reminders for me was that even when people are putting up walls and dismissing your thoughts (even when they ask for them)  there is often a part of them that is listening.