Laura L. Smith - Anxiety For Dummies

Virginia discovers a few things. First, she notices that her anxiety is routinely less intense in the morning. It escalates in the afternoon and peaks in the evenings. With only one week’s record, she can’t discern whether her anxiety level is decreasing, increasing, or remaining stable. However, she notices feeling a little better simply because she feels like she’s starting to take charge of her problem. She also realizes that some days are better than others and that her anxiety varies rather than constantly overwhelming her.

The field of psychology focused on negative emotions for most of the 20th century. Psychologists studied depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, behavior disorders, and a slew of other maladies. Only recently has the field looked at the pluses of positive emotions, the characteristics of happy people, and the components of well-being. People who feel grateful usually say they feel happier as well.

One study assigned people to three groups. The first group wrote only about the hassles of everyday life. The researchers asked the second group to write about emotionally neutral events. The third group journaled about experiences that they were grateful for. All the groups performed this task merely once a week for ten weeks. At the end of the experiment, the group that wrote about gratitude exercised more, had fewer physical complaints, and felt more optimistic than those in the other two groups. That such an easy, simple task could be so beneficial is surprising.

Later studies have found that journaling helps decrease anxiety associated with multiple sclerosis, as well as other health conditions. Furthermore, it decreases stress related to school pressures and everyday anxiety.

Millions of people keep a diary at some point in their lives. Some develop daily writing as a lifelong habit. Keeping a journal of life’s emotionally significant events has surprising benefits:

Journal writing appears to decrease the number of visits people make to the doctor for physical complaints.

Writing increases the production of T cells that are beneficial to the immune system.

Keeping a journal about emotional events improved the grades of a group of college students compared to those who wrote about trivial matters.

Recently, unemployed workers who wrote about the trauma of losing their jobs found new employment more quickly than those who did not.

Journal writing doesn’t have rules. You can write about anything, anywhere, anytime. However, if you want the full benefits of writing in a journal, we encourage you to write about feelings and the emotionally important events of your life. Write about anything that troubles you during the day and/or past difficulties. Spend a little time on it.

Most smartphones allow you to dictate your thoughts rather than type them in. That’s pretty great if you don’t like tapping on a small keyboard. Like a journal, save your musings in a file and review them from time to time.

Writing about past traumas may bring considerable relief. However, if you find that the task floods you with overwhelming grief or anxiety, you’ll probably find it helpful to seek professional assistance.

Writing about your distressing feelings makes a great start. However, if you’d like more bang for your buck, take a few extra minutes and write about what you feel grateful for each day. Why? Because positive emotions help counteract negative emotions. Writing about your boons and blessings improves mood, increases optimism, and may benefit your health.

At first blush, you may think that you have little to be grateful for. Anxiety can so easily cloud vision. Did your mother ever urge you to clean your plate because of the “starving kids in China”? As much as we think that pushing kids to eat is a bad idea, her notion to consider those less fortunate has value. Take some time to ponder the positive events and people in your life.

Kindnesses: Think about those who have extended kindness to you.

Education: Obviously, you can read; that’s a blessing compared to the millions in the world with no chance for an education.

Nourishment: You probably aren’t starving to death, whereas (as your mother may have noted) millions are.

Home: Do you live in a cardboard box or do you have a roof over your head?

Pleasure: Can you smell flowers, hear birds sing, or touch the soft fur of a pet?

Sources of possible gratitude abound — freedom, health, companionship, and so on. Everyone has a different list. Start yours now.

The brain tends to focus on what’s wrong or threatening in our lives. Noticing and actively appreciating what’s right helps counteract that tendency and will make you feel better.

If your problems with anxiety are significantly interfering with your life, you’re probably going to want to work with a mental health professional in addition to reading this book. In the following two sections, we tell you what kind of treatment to ask for and give you a set of questions to ask a potential therapist before you begin treatment.

Mental health professionals offer a wide variety of treatments. We’ve thoroughly studied the research on what works for anxiety disorders so you don’t have to. The best treatments for anxiety have been based on scientific knowledge about what anxiety is and how it works. Studies consistently show that treatments with this scientific foundation are particularly effective. Four treatments have shown efficacy over time:

Cognitive therapy (CT) focuses on teaching you new ways of thinking. People with anxiety often have distortions in the way they perceive events, and this approach helps you correct those distortions. For example, an anxious client may be overestimating the risks involved with flying. A cognitive approach would help her discover that the risks are small enough to warrant tackling her fear.

Metacognitive therapy (MCT) goes beyond cognitive therapy and targets the way people think about their thinking. So, it isn’t just concerned with distortions in thinking; rather, it also focuses on how upset one gets over disturbing thoughts. For example, an anxious person may overestimate the risk of being rejected. Cognitive therapy would help that person reassess that risk. MCT would help the person realize that much of the upset is about viewing the distorted thought itself as horrible instead of just a random thought.

Behavior therapy (BT) operates on the premise that changing the way you act or behave changes the way you feel about the things that happen in your life. Using the previous example of the woman with a fear of flying, a behavior therapist would likely help the woman go through a series of steps related to flying such as watching movies of flying, going to the airport, and eventually booking and taking a flight. Exposure therapy is a primary tool used by behavior therapists when treating anxiety related problems. (See Chapter 9for more information.).

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) guides clients to become more mindful of the present moment. Thoughts and emotions must be accepted rather than avoided. The very attempt to avoid thoughts and emotions makes them worse according to ACT. ACT also encourages people to identify their core values and live life accordingly.