Just thinking out loud again....as usual  

Some of us have mentioned looking forwards, creating goals to basically give our lives a more positive direction, but isn't the direction of introspection in which RLR is guiding us actually just looking backwards to the causes of our anxieties ie where the fork in the road was for us as RLR mentions above?

So should we be looking both forwards and backwards at the same time? get what I mean?

Do we need to find out the reasons why and clear that up, before we can direct ourselves forwards?

Interested in hearing everyones thoughts

Jason

I believe that too much looking backwards and/or forwards is the root cause of our anxiety.

Sure, we have to learn from past mistakes and experiences, and we have to plan and set goals. But once we have done that, we have to live in the Now.

The best book I ever read on this subject is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The 1st time I read it, I didn't get it. However, after the 3rd or 4th time it started to make sense, and now I read it at some point during every week, and I brainwash myself with the audio book.

The 2nd best book on the subject is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. A much easier book, following the same principles.

Once you really  "get it", (i.e. that the past and future do not exist, only in your mind), life really does get easier, and even exciting! Honest, I kid you not!

Jules
x

I feel like that too. We can look back if we thought it was part of the process. I agree though, worrying too much about either can cause more stress. One can get too stressed by trying not to be stressed  


My thinking is about working on the here and now. How can I deal with stress? What is wrong in my life? Can I change the things that are wrong? etc.

Plus learning to relax. Not that I am being very successful right now. I am so stressed and in a situation whereby there is no way out right now. I am literally trapped in a stressful situ. All I can hope for is that  learn to relax somehow.

I have been doing so well, with only mild palps until this week. I have had the knock you over kind today. On top of that I fell while crossing the road. tripped over a pot hole and hurt my knees...that really helped

RLR wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2010, 2:52pm:



From RLR's above post I would say yes Jason, introspection is the key as well. But what is everyone's understanding of that.

this is what it has come to mean to me:

Many years ago, a friend of mine married and moved to the US with her American husband. It turned out that her husband was an alcoholic, so she came back to England with there baby girl. He followed some months later. He was in fact a lovely person, but when he drank, he was nasty and even violent at times.

They had no home and were staying with relatives and so the housing people rehoused them at the top of a tower block. My friend became completely obsessed that they would be trapped up there in a fire. She could not sleep and I remember her talking about her heart doing strange things and it was so bad, she would hang on to the wall in the street for fear of dropping (funny how we forget that we have heard of this before). She was prescribed diazepam and took it for a few years but still was worried about the block catching fire.

Eventually they were able to buy a house and she felt better, withdrew from the diazepam. Now she had a new obsession and feared something bad would happen to her kids. Again she was so scared she could not sleep and felt dizzy all the time.

Without writing a book, she would take diazepam for a while, come off it but each time her fears would skip from one thing to another.

Then one day, someone helped her to discover the REAL reason for her fears...someone helped her admit that she was deeply unhappy with her man. He was drinking, hiding bottles and had become impotent. She had felt she had managed all of this well, and that the obsessions were the problem for her anxiety.

Once she admitted this to herself, the anxiety went. Just like the other lady I told you about. My friend would say she is always a little nervy but these obsessions disappeared over night. She divorced the guy and after all the hustle was over, she was the happiest I'd seen her in years. No more anxiety.

What I mean is, by introspection we may find personal truths. That is, we may find that there are things we need to change and things that as yet have gone unsaid, or unthought - perhaps because they are too big or too overwhelming to tackle.

I am not proposing everyone has something hidden like my friend. But who knows if the inability to leave a job, change careers, leave a spouse or at least acknowledge the problems, recognise one's unhappiness somewhere, or just generally change the way we do things, is not the key?

Yes, introspection means looking within, or inward.

How will you know? I guess only you can answer that when you do know. Sometimes just changing something makes a difference and we never know. Its so individual but I can tell you, all my stress is being focused on the house, the mess etc. But deep down I know its not just that; its a lot more and very personal.

Perhaps it is a combination for many of us, that's why its hard to identify something. Perhaps its the feeling that you have to stay in the boring job, perhaps its losing your mother and that, perhaps its deeper. For example what if you have no belief in yourself, or not enough to say RIGHT, I am going to work toward getting out of this job and feeling positive and sure you will. What if you are unable to have belief in yourself because of X, Y and Z.

Of course it could be all or none of those. But you know, most of us are in denial, even me and my years of having and being a therapist. I am still turning corners; still having insights. I guess I always will

I think that introspection is very important.  Knowing the root of the anxiety might be helpful, but I don't know if we will all be able to pinpoint it.  If we are able to pinpoint anything, though, or even if we can't, I think that part of conquering anxiety has to do with acceptance.

I think this acceptance could take on many different forms and could be different for different people.  It could be that people need to accept themselves for who they are, or accept that they struggle with anxiety before they can move forward.  It could be that someone might need to accept facts rather than fear when examining physical symptoms and what they mean.  For me, I have to come to acceptance of my own mortality and that there are things that are beyond my control.  I get that intellectually, but when I lose sight of it emotionally, that is when I get anxious.  

Okay, things are progressing to some extent. I would just make the comment here that "acceptance" is really resignation to one's problems, whether past or present. The critical point is whether accepting one's circumstances equates with overcoming them or merely living with them.

Introspection is not simply about looking within, but using that ability to re-take control over your life in areas where things seem to have gone astray. You need to learn to effectively identify and confront suppressed issues to determine how you now perceive them by contrast to any point in history, whether recent or remote.

Understand that the control or influence these irrational perceptions have is directly related to your estimation of the ability to effectively overcome and deal with them in a confident manner.  

You can think of anxiety disorder as the constant reminder of circumstances unresolved that more importantly constitute the incorporation of irrational perceptions about both the issue itself and your relative abilities to resolve it.

The key element is using the sort of objectivity beginning to awaken and arise in the postings on this thread topic. In other words, if you approach these issues in the mindset of the person you've become as a consequence of their influence, then you become hopelessly repelled and wish to merely continue employing avoidance behavior as means to deal with it. Understand that avoidance doesn't necessarily represent an overt context, but can equally and more often constitute a more passive denial that something is awry.

Realize that chronic anxiety is not so much the consequence of the origin itself, but rather the mounting changes in lifestyle and personal constitution that the origin has ultimately produced. In other words, the more your life proceeds from the point of origin, the more influence you begin to permit take place and the more acceptance by relegation you encounter. Persons so affected will typically state that they've either always approached life in this manner or can sometimes identify a life-altering event which culminated into the contemporary lifestyle they now experience.

Either way, the origin is the same. You have to be able to identify your weaknesses in establishing self-change. The weakness can either constitute the use of inappropriate or inffective means or the actual absence of a strategy to alter its course and remove it as an influence in your life.

It might surprise you to learn that the actual successful and appropriate measure exists within you, for it is often observed being suggested in the case of others who appear to be experiencing similar difficulty. Some folks might even comment to the extent "Well, it's sort of odd, but I know better how to recognize it in someone else and offer insight than I can in my own instance."

So the question for the day is how can someone be attuned to, and recognize in others, similar patterns and be able to offer reasonable and logical insight while at the same time be prevented from directing this same ability toward themselves?

Let's continue.

Best regards and Good Health

I think it is always easier to look at others and recognize their issues and come up with possible solutions for them than it is to look at our own issues.  When we look at other people's situations, we don't usually have the emotional part that goes with it, so we can look at it more rationally.  In answer to Jason's question, even when you feel you may know what needs to be done to conquer this anxiety, sometimes the status quo is easier to do then to do something different.  Change is hard for people, and can cause anxiety.
Since my mother has passed away, I have noticed that the issue I have with dependency is very apparent.  I recognized this before, but see it even more so now.  I have a boyfriend, who my counselor and I both agree, is not very healthy for me.  He lived with me for 4 years, and because of his financial circumstances, did not contribute financially.  He also is very negative and very depressed.  So, I did eventually have him move out last November, but we have remained friends and he is over to see me pretty much every day.  Of course, last November is when my tachycardia started.  Then my Mom broke her arm and began to have her health issues.  Even though my counselor says that these added to the stress, my anxiety is an accumulation of stress over a couple of years.  Always giving to other people but not taking care of myself.  I know I probably should not see this friend of mine so often, but I know I do to some extent because I do not like being by myself.  So, this is one area I need to work on.  Learn to be independent and trust myself.  I have a big house to take care of.  I use to love it, now I am scared that it is too much to handle.  I have a wonderful son who lives only a couple of miles away who does help with things, but I need to learn to just depend upon myself.  With my 24r heart monitor coming back as sinus tachycardia (yes, even when it was going 167 bpm), I need to trust that and start my cardio exercising again.  I think I am afraid I will have situations come up that I can not handle on my own - my anxiety, my unreal feelings from the anxiety, the tachycardia.  I know though that I have dealt with these for many months.  I think with my Mom passing away, all these feelings of dependency and being afraid to be by myself has just become more recognizable.   The funny thing about it ist, I have a wonderful, though stressful, job that pays well.  I have much confidence in myself when I do my job as a Director of Nursing.  I am looking at doing something else though because I have done this type of job for 20 years and it does take a toll on you because of the stress.  So, I need to find something in my life to look forward to (even more so that my Mom passed away).  I am so used to taking care of other people, that I find it hard to do things for myself.  I want to get passionate about something and get my zest for life back.  I hope I haven't taken this thread in the wrong direction.  I think I do see what has caused anxiety for me - dependency issues, afraid of dying, afraid of being alone, an extremely stressful job.  I need to work on building my self confidence and trust my body again.