Free Yourself from Anxiety (22 page)

Finding new ways of looking at your problems and dealing with them is a running theme through this book and you will have realised by now that the tools and techniques of self-help can be adapted to many situations. Goal-setting and using small steps along the way are particularly useful skills to help you work your way through complicated problems.

Anxiety clogs up your thought processes, and you can find yourself going round the same old loop as you try to solve a problem or make a decision. Negative thinking and the ability to keep generating ‘what if’ thoughts in particular can lead to you feeling frozen and unable to move forward to a solution or a decision.

Emotional reasoning can also be a barrier to good decision making. There are some things that just can’t be resolved by answering the question ‘do I
feel
like it?’ and others that need many more factors to be taken into consideration.

Even a simple decision can have more than one aspect. If someone says ‘I’m just making a hot drink, do you want one?’, the first thing you’ll ask yourself is ‘am I thirsty?’ But even if you are not thirsty you might still say yes to the drink because you fancy a break from what you’re doing, or you’d relish the chance to sit down and chat with the other person.

If you make the wrong decision about a hot drink it won’t really matter, but some decisions need more thought. The first step is just to allocate a level of importance to the decision. Deciding about the drink is very unimportant – you could give that 1 out of 10 – whereas deciding which house to buy is, for most of us, very important – 9 out of 10 say.

Anxiety and negative thinking can cause you to lose your sense of perspective and allow small things to become too important, so this is a very useful step that will stop you worrying needlessly about small things.

If the decision is important enough to warrant some effort, a points system is a good way of proceeding. Start by making a list of all the important aspects of the decision. Just doing this will clarify your thoughts and may in itself make it clear what you want to do. You can include both emotional and practical items.

Here is an example of one list for a family trying to decide whether to have a camping holiday in the UK or a package holiday in Spain. The items on their list are: cheapness, travel, weather, accommodation, adventure, beach.

The next step is to give points out of 10 for each of the items on the list for the two holidays, as follows:

At this point there isn’t much to choose between them. However, not all the factors are of equal importance, and you can reflect this by weighting each item. This just means increasing the score of important items by multiplying them by a chosen number.

In our example, the family really need a cheap holiday so they multiply the cheapness score by 3.

Now a gap emerges, and Camping starts to look like the best option.

And what happens if you work through this process and are dismayed to find that the wrong item has the highest score? That just means that you knew all along what you wanted to do!

Of course there are other ways of making decisions, all that matters is to find one that works for you and stops you getting bogged down in anxious thoughts. And the system described has the advantage of clarity.

Clarity is also needed in problem solving – before you can solve a problem you have to know just what the problem is. The basic steps in problem solving are:

Let’s work through a version of the holiday example above.

This stage is absolutely crucial and shows the advantage of free and open discussion. When everybody is encouraged to speak up then ideas soon start to flow. In this case the idea of camping on a site in Spain with plenty of activities suited everybody and from that point it was easy to Choose and Implement the best solution.

If your Anxiety has lasted a long time, and if you feel that however hard you try you simply can’t make progress with your recovery, then it may help to look at your whole life. What were you doing before Anxiety struck? Were you happy and fulfilled? If the answers are that you were doing something you disliked, and you weren’t especially happy or fulfilled, then clearly you’ll have no desire to return to that life.

This is why it can sometimes seem that an Anxiety sufferer gets some benefit from their illness. If you can get someone else to do the tiresome chores, if you never have to be the one that’s responsible, if you can cut out having to deal with office politics, dead-end jobs and relationship issues, then you might secretly feel that Anxiety has some advantages. Of course the gains are nothing compared with the losses, but if you can’t see any point at all in re-engaging with life then you will find it hard to develop the motivation for recovery.

Even people who have made good progress in their recovery sometimes feel disappointed in what their new life has to offer them.

In other words, some people find that recovery ultimately depends on finding a broad purpose or direction to give their life greater meaning. This may involve developing an unused talent or skill – boredom from unused potential can be a breeding ground for Anxiety. It may mean achieving peace of mind through a connection with a spiritual force, through a religious faith or philosophy, or working to make a difference in the world through political or social action.

Another, connected problem occurs when people feel trapped in a situation that they can’t manage in ways that suit them. This could be a relationship or a job that makes demands or imposes structures that they just can’t cope with. Anxiety takes them away from it, and however hard they work at recovery they will always have a secret fear of dealing with it.

These are very difficult issues for any Anxiety sufferer to face directly, because it can feel as if they’re being accused of doing it deliberately, of making themselves ill just to get out of chores or an awkward situation.

You didn’t deliberately make yourself ill with Anxiety. Nobody does. Do, however, think carefully about what we’ve said. Ask yourself if there is something about the prospect of a life without Anxiety that daunts you, scares you or simply bores you.

If you’re finding it difficult to explore this idea, try this visualisation exercise to help you:

Repeat this exercise for different scenarios until you come across one, or more, where you find it difficult to imagine being happy with the situation.

Sometimes resistance to recovery comes from your core beliefs. You may believe deep down that you are not meant to succeed. Or an ‘all-or nothing’ belief leads you to view anything less than 100% recovery as a failure. If this is the case, when you meet an obstacle of any kind, the old thought-pattern will assert itself, and you will interpret this as a major set-back. Remember that plateaux and set-backs are to be expected, and you can get through them. If you find it hard to shift these entrenched beliefs on your own, use your support system to do more work on your thinking.

This is also something that a trained counsellor can help you to explore if you’re finding it difficult to do on your own.

Once you have worked out what it is that you find difficult to face, you can decide if there’s anything that can be done about it. Sometimes it’s a question of using assertiveness or problem solving skills to manage your life in a different way. Learning to say ‘No’, encouraging people to treat you differently and setting boundaries can all help you make big changes in your life.

Sometimes, however, there may be larger issues to face. If your work is deeply unsatisfying to you then you may need to consider retraining for something that you are more suited to. This may not be easy if there are bills to pay while you retrain, or if your preferred work doesn’t pay as well as your current work.

Similarly, you may find yourself facing great difficulties in a relationship. It may even be that you will have to move on from a relationship, with all the upheaval and emotional turmoil involved.

These things are not easy, and for some people retreat into Anxiety can seem like their best option. If this is the case for you, consider getting professional help.