Dealing With Anxiety And Fear
I would like to share some thoughts in my “Think Right” this week that were first brought to mind through a conversation I recently had with a patient in my office. This particular patient happens to be an O.R. Nurse in one of our local hospitals. She stated to me that she had been temporarily reassigned from the operating room to the psychiatric unit in the hospital. Her next few comments I found to be very telling relative to the current situation that we all find ourselves in today. She said “the psych unit is filling up”. She went on to state that she “had never seen so many patients suffering from anxiety”.
So, why would this be and what is causing this phenomenon? In my experience in my practices, and my studies I can say that an anxious patient is typically always a fearful person. They fear something seen or typically unseen. The other stimulus to anxiety is guilt, but in my experience, this takes second stage to fear. I say this because fear ultimately seeps into the guilty mind over time. Fear is the core issue typically leading to anxiety. This deep-rooted fear causes a lack of focus, a lack of sleep, not to mention ultimately physiologic, and physical changes in the individual suffering from this phenomenon. Changes such as increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, sudden and uncontrollable emotional outbursts. These changes start to effect job performance, and interpersonal relations with the individual’s spouse, children, friends, and coworkers. As time passes these breakdowns become more common place. The individual may begin to close up, and “hide” from others. Sometimes sequestering from others in an ill-fated attempt to avoid the stress of dealing with the effects and outcomes of their anxiety.
Unfortunately, the person suffering from the fear-based anxiety often does not sense that they are anxious. They do not understand that they are acting differently then they normally would in a given situation. Perhaps they do not see the consequences when they lash out at loved ones or when they avoid friends and family in an erroneous attempt to quell their anxious feelings.
So, how then can this phenomenon be addressed? First of all, the individual needs to admit there is a problem. This can be a particularly challenging first step. But it is also a necessary one in order for the other remedies to be put in place. The individual then needs to wade through all of the progressively worsening layers of fears and get down to the core fear that started it all. The next step is for the person to understand that their fear, in spite of how they perceive it, most likely is baseless and empty. You see the mind tends to progressively magnify our fears as the days, weeks, and months pass. We also tend to ultimately consider our imagined fears as real. The true breakthrough comes when the person begins to face and stand up to this fear rather than trying to avoid or run away from it. If the fear is stood up to and handled it will be conquered. The fact that we can never outrun our fear must be recognized.
I think it is important that we all realize things have changed and are changing. I think we must all recognize that what Francis Bacon said centuries ago still holds true in dealing with the changes, and resultant fears we may experience from time to time in our lives; “He who will not apply new remedies must expect old evils”.
Sometimes we need to change our tack. We need to resist the usual. We need to apply those new remedies and move forward with our lives. Now is not a time to cower in fear. Now is the time to be vigilant, be creative, be able to repurpose, reposition, and redirect so that we can move forward. Because when we stop moving forward, we begin to slide backwards.