“The mind that is anxious about
future events is miserable.” – Seneca
But anxiety is an emotional response to anticipated danger; its mind lives in the imagined future more than the turbulent present. Anxiety is a destabilizing emotion,
especially as shared in large groups. It produces paralysis and indecision (an
outcome of loss aversion), along with social withdrawal and dread of new
information, which is seen as distressing in advance and disruptive rather than
saving and securing, part of better knowledge that can be used to face and
solve the problem. Being anxious affects
human ability to learn and integrate new information, welcome or unwelcome.
For problem solving, the anxiety around things going wrong
translates to fear of the future, loss of confidence in people, things,
systems, and past experience and its meaning.
Anxious consumers suffer from lack of self-confidence and efficacy,
buyer’s remorse, and decision-making stall-outs because things going wrong
force the questions “How did this happen?” and “What was my role in making it
happen?” Unclear responsibility results
from this general confusion of causes and effects, especially when the problem
frame hasn’t yet been totally determined.
Anxiety therapy
Anxiety therapy resets and reduces the anxiety-producing fuzziness by 1) investigating how the problem came about and 2) clarifying how it can be resolved. The clarity brought to the table by the therapist is the work that the anxious sufferers themselves can’t manage. Even those very competent operators who have good histories of dealing with heavy issues overestimate their capabilities based on the assumption that they can handle anything. As their anxiety level increases to the point where they finally do meet their match, they realize there are too many data points and too entwined to untangle. But it is often late in the game before the breakpoint in anxiety arrives. Still, many of us still think we should be able to handle our own issues. It seems luxurious and indulgent to ask for help (especially for men).
Anxiety therapy resets and reduces the anxiety-producing fuzziness by 1) investigating how the problem came about and 2) clarifying how it can be resolved. The clarity brought to the table by the therapist is the work that the anxious sufferers themselves can’t manage. Even those very competent operators who have good histories of dealing with heavy issues overestimate their capabilities based on the assumption that they can handle anything. As their anxiety level increases to the point where they finally do meet their match, they realize there are too many data points and too entwined to untangle. But it is often late in the game before the breakpoint in anxiety arrives. Still, many of us still think we should be able to handle our own issues. It seems luxurious and indulgent to ask for help (especially for men).
There should be an anxiety stress test, even a simple one,
that can be self-scored. Here is mine:
Self-analysis questions (self-scoring, yes or no, total over half):
1) Can’t sleep? Does
your sleep revolve around bouts of anxious rumination?
2) Does your mind return again and again to your issue, all
day and in your dreams?
3) Have you tried to solve it yourself, with few or mixed
results?
4) Is this anxiety getting in the way of your life and work,
creating blocks to action?
5) Do you often wish this would just go away?
6) Do you discuss with others, hoping they will have an
answer to cut through the clutter?
7) Is there a sense of danger or dread around this issue, a
feeling that it might cause losses in health, mobility, housing, wealth,
work, future opportunities, or social relations? (Loss security = what I have today, I’ll have
tomorrow)? [Definitely yes!]
Anxiety answers
“Do what you can, with what you’ve
got, where you are.”
-
Theodore Roosevelt
The world is now subject to a universal anxiety episode. The current “CVX” (“The Covid-19 Experience”) compounds
anxious thinking and behavior as an aggravated public health crisis with an indeterminate
end-point. Social distancing has
suspended our evolved cooperation and socialization instincts so important to mental
health. This crisis is indeed different
from previous wide-scale sudden change because 1) it isn’t localized or
containable to one city, state, or country; 2) its effects are rolling, rather
than one-time, creating ongoing change waves difficult to track or
anticipate; 3) it disrupts all manner of expectation, planning, and process as
discontinuities and unanticipated consequences mount; 4) the scale is
unquestionably global and networked at every level in every domain of human
activity. This means that for every change that
happens, dozens more are released in an exploding multiplier effect.
As a form of fear, anxiety is a common outcome of
uncertainty, “normal because the future is unpredictable, unknowable, and
uncontrollable.” Psychologist Joe Minden’s new book Show Your Anxiety Who’s
Boss (March 2020) reviews the reasons for anxiety and proposes solutions
directly related to the work of solution-finding for the current health crisis
as well as the many life systems we must be able to negotiate.
Fear v. rational control
Minden begins by defining anxiety as a set of negative
“reactions that appear when we don’t want or need them,” creating an internal
battle for control between rational behavior and fear. Our tendency to become anxious in the face of
difficult, prolonged, or uncertain problems resistant to solving “is best
countered by taking action by logical thinking and purpose.” A subset of our common fear response when
confronted with confusion and uncertainty (risks we can’t control well),
anxiety is contagious in groups and self-reinforcing in individuals – as in the
current climate of unease, distress, and low-level panic of CVX. It’s a strange kind of dispersed group
experience because the source of its destructive effect is many interlinked
systems that affect everyone everywhere. Unlike other localized disasters, there is no
moving away from this one because it’s everywhere you want to be.
Like the flu virus, anxiety doesn’t go away but can be
worked with—by social interventions as well as by individual ability to
re-think and reframe it--in Minden’s terms, cognitive behavioral techniques. Navigating difficult terrain
can be done by identifying effective behaviors, making plans to get started,
then working through problems. These
commonsense principles, as simple as they sound, are not easy. Which is why they are offered as part of
working through anxiety with useful ready-to-use tools by therapists. But these are difficult
to set up and follow because anxiety’s effect is to overstate risks and
undervalue ability.
Minden comments on highly functioning anxiety patients who
try to “overcontrol” the disorder, discovering that they can’t control or “solve”
this mindset, only find ways of working with it by discovering
meaning and purpose based on problem solving.
“Many who struggle with anxiety are used to being high-functioning
problem solvers who successfully go through life by identifying obstacles and
taking steps to eliminate them.” But
anxiety “doesn’t buckle when you try to respond with similarly crafty
solutions.” The counter-productive outcomes to
giving in to anxiety are avoiding challenges, leaving important tasks
incomplete, taking on distractions at work to feel busy, and ineffective
coping strategies.
Anxiety tries to keep us safe by distancing from
danger. But it doesn’t serve us well in
avoiding problems that have grown to become obstacles to productive
effort. What is needed is a way to navigate
by breaking down problems into solvable frames and sequences that can, with
expert advice, be addressed for solutions.
Even more important is this approach now, in a climate of free-floating anxiety that
envelopes everything. As George M. Leader put it in his Sapiens article
(3.30.20), “The coming months will be a test of humanity’s deeply rooted
cooperation tendencies….But can we entirely override our long-programmed
interactive cooperation and replace it with distance cooperation?”
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