Anxiety Management

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When your emotions aren’t serving you well, it’s helpful to have a solid protocol. First you need to rebuild perspective, and then you need to focus on maximizing your influence.

My original notes on anxiety:

Loading (/anxiety)

Also, see the notes from Search Inside Yourself and Joy of Happiness

Don’t make stuff worse in the moment.

When anxiety is acute … the first thing you need to do is ensure you don’t make it worse … Based on Do no harm

Anxiety Management

General

(From Anxiety Management)

First, observe you are experiencing anxiety and label it “This discomfort I’m experiencing is anxiety”. Just knowing what’s going on will help calm the anxiety.

Emotions, especially pain, are usually automatic habits, not deliberate or optimized. Because emotions are not reliable, we should apply cognition before our emotions lead us astray.

Many pleasures feel good, but are not good for you - like too much chocolate. Some pains feel bad, but are not bad for you - like the source of anxiety.

Your emotions want you to handle anxiety through avoidance and procrastination, in more severe cases through addiction.

You need to tackle the problem head-on. The longer you wait the worse it’s going to get. Even just training yourself in “avoidance” will make your life worse.

Let’s apply something better than emotions. The right thing to do is to expose ourselves to the problem. Gradually, in duration and frequency. This exposure is the only path to resolve the anxiety - aka work the problem.

Oddly The more you avoid your anxiety, the worse it will get, at the same time The more you handle it, the less anxiety you’ll feel. So let’s figure out how to reduce the overwhelming effects of the anxiety …

Rebuild perspective: Focus on the “perceived” threat …

Identify the perceived threat - What is the exact/precise problem.

When you’re scared, you want to exaggerate and catastrophize - stop it makes it worse.

  • Do not amplify the problem,
  • Do not exaggerate the problem
  • Do not extend the problem with what-ifs
  • Just focus on the precise/immediate problem

(when that’s tackled or your anxiety is down you can tackle the next problem, until you’re operating at better capacity)

Generate a realistic probability of it happening

  • Anxiety encourages black and white thinking. This increases the contrast, but blocks seeing the many options.
  • Instead of saying it’s either the perfect outcome, or the worst possible outcome, there are probably several outcomes in between.
  • These outcomes likely fit a bell curve of probability.
  • Stack rank the outcomes … It’s not fun, but needs to happen.

Examine your level of self-confidence and hope

  • Don’t be overconfident or underconfident, be as accurate as you can.
  • Very easy to be unrealistic about what you can handle or deal with.
  • Self-doubt increases anxiety.
  • Getting a realistic assessment reduces anxiety.

Catching unrealistic self-doubts …

  • I can’t deal/handle this.

Seeing them consciously is the first step in tackling them.

  • I don’t know what I’ll do if …
  • I don’t think I can handle it if …
  • I don’t think I can face it if …

Now, look through your past for a counterexample. The counterexamples may be painful, but they are hope you will “survive”. This is important and plays to “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

If you don’t have one in your past, ask it of the human condition - have other people experienced this? Have they gotten through it?

If others can handle this, why do you think you won’t be able to?

If you can’t do anything to generate hope, then don’t think about the future, distract yourself. Call a friend, work out, watch TV. Feeling the future is hopeless if that is all you can do, then distract yourself.

Focus on influencing, not controlling

In general, you have no control, only influence…

The desire to control is black and white. Control is 100% influence, no control is 0% influence. Both of these are illusions. If you’re catching yourself using these extremes, you need to re-evaluate. 0% influence is hopelessness and that’s certainly false.

To tackle this, apply the following:

Understand what you are trying to control.

Sometimes you don’t think of the thing you’re trying to control consciously but it’s there. Ask yourself:

  • What am I trying to control?
  • If I had a magic wand and had one wish, what would I change?

Often the thing you’re trying to control is a link in a chain of deeper issues. The more of these you find the better, each is a point of potential influence! An example about getting sick…

TODO - Add a personal example.

Not the bottom of the chain is often controlling how you want to feel. You can’t control how you feel, but you can maximize your influence over it, using meditation and finding hope.

Brainstorm how to maximize your influence.

You get hope from…

Implement your influence

  • As you exert your influence, you will feel better.
  • If you got 1 and 2 correct, then you’ll feel better as you influence the situation.
  • If you don’t feel better, you probably got 1 and 2 wrong, start again.

For the thing everyone wishes to control, their influence over their emotions, meditation is the path. The more you influence your emotions, the better you’ll feel.

Examine your confidence and hope

Bonus - some breathing exercises

A box breathing exercise, breathe in a pattern - 5,5,10, in, hold, out. Just being able to do this will exert influence, which will help you feel better.

NOTE: I’ve been building up my box breathing skill for a while now, and do 12, 12,12,12. My goal is 15,15,15,15 to get up to a solid 1 minute box.