Thoughts are a powerful trigger for anxiety. Our cognition’s can maintain, elevate, or lower our level of anxiety. Today we would like to give you a few tips. Anxiety can be debilitating and it is one of the ways that our bodies deal with stress.
The good news is that there are several ways to help deal with stress and lower your overall anxiety. Dr. Howard Schubiner has come up with a method to “Unlearn your Pain”. Doctor Schubiner is promoting his new book and will be visiting our blog to make comments on January 25th. We welcome his visit and wish him the best in promoting his new book. He has submitted the article below for your review.
Mind Over Anxiety:
Taking control of the fear Howard Schubiner, MD Director,
Mind Body Medicine Center, Providence Hospital, Southfield, MI Clinical Professor, Wayne State University School of Medicine
Millions of people suffer with anxiety in the U.S. and there are many treatments, both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical, that are available. From my point of view, the problem with most of these treatments is that they focus more on managing the anxiety, rather than understanding why it has occurred and getting to the root of the problem. Unlearn Your Pain
Anxiety can take many forms, such as anxiety that is situational (such as social anxiety or performance anxiety), anxiety that occurs in bursts (such as panic attacks), anxiety that focuses on certain events or objects (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder), and anxiety that just lingers most of the time (also known as generalized anxiety disorder).
The bottom line about all of these types of anxiety is that a fear response has been triggered, has become habitual, and has become chronic. An acronym for fear was given to me recently and it is this: False Evidence Appearing Real. When the fight or flight mechanism is triggered in our minds and bodies at times when there is no immediate danger, we are responding with an alarm mechanism to situations that appear real, but are actually not imminently dangerous. The human mind has the capacity to think and understand the world in ways our ancestors couldn’t do. Our highly developed cortex can create complex inventions and great works of art. We can ponder the meaning of existence and the theory of relativity. We can develop close attachments to family and friends and understand the cultures of people in other parts of the world. However, we also have the ability to worry about things that occurred in the past or about things that might occur in the future. We can worry about accidents, severe weather, diseases, and death. In addition to worries that anyone might have, we have the ability to learn from all of our prior experiences and these experiences shape our reactions to events that occur later in life. People who were brought up in safe, trusting homes typically welcome others and trust them. These people are often quite shocked and distressed if they are forced into a situation where they are unsafe and taken advantage of.
For example, I met a woman who grew up in a supportive family who was kidnapped at age 19 and forcibly held and abused for several days. After this experience, she developed generalized anxiety and was fearful of any new encounter. On the other hand, people who were brought up in chaotic, unsafe homes learn to be afraid of certain people (often authoritarian figures) and when they encounter people like that are more likely to develop anxiety because their brain remembers the reactions they had as children, which are imprinted in their minds. One patient of mine grew up with a father who was overly strict and stern. He would yell at her if she made the smallest mistake in how she served dinner, cleaned her room, or did her homework. After a while, she developed fear of making mistakes and this fear took the form of obsessive-compulsive disorder where she ruminated about cleanliness and her bodily appearance. None of us are born with a “blank slate” in that we all have traits that have been passed to us genetically. Therefore, some people are born with greater or smaller degrees of anxiety and fearfulness. However, these genetic traits are modulated by the environment in which we live. In my experience, I have never seen someone with a significant anxiety disorder who didn’t have clear triggers for the expression of this anxiety in their life events. Genes for fearfulness are not set in stone even if we inherit them. They are either turned on or turned off in a process known as gene expression or epigenetics.
Therefore our life events account for the most important aspects of whether one develops an anxiety disorder or not. Anxiety disorders are triggered by life events and develop into habitual responses by a process known as neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the simply the process by which the brain develops new pathways that create physical and mental reactions that can become chronic. When one learns to walk, talk, write, throw a ball, or ride a bike, these are all examples of neuroplasticity in action. After learning these skills, we don’t have to think about how to do them, they occur automatically because they are forms of learned nerve pathways that emanate from our brains and become manifest in our bodies. Anxiety responses are also forms of learned nerve pathways. When one reacts to a car backfiring as if one hears a bullet flying, this is a form of a learned nerve pathway. When one develops a panic attack before taking an important test, this is a form of a learned nerve pathway.
The book, Unlearn Your Pain, contains the program that I have developed to help people overcome chronic pain that is caused by learned nerve pathways. Although that is a topic for a different article, it turns out that learned nerve pathways are the primary cause of chronic pain in most people. Some of the disorders that are caused by learned nerve pathways are migraine and tension headaches, fibromyalgia, TMJ pain, insomnia, irritable bowel and bladder syndromes, as well as most back and neck pain. When you look at this list, you probably recognize that people with anxiety disorders commonly also suffer from one or more of these other disorders. That makes sense, of course, since the same underlying issues create these pathways for anxiety as well as pain.
One person who participated in the 28-day program to unlearn his anxiety wrote this: After years of intermittent anxiety, followed by depression, I knew I could no longer fool myself into thinking that my problem was caused just by a set of certain circumstances. I told myself that I only needed to get beyond the next problem and everything would be okay, only to be faced with a new set of problems that caused me to be anxious or depressed. After medication and therapy, I still did not have the tools to understand and deal with this reoccurring problem. I wasn’t sure that Dr. Schubiner could help when he invited me to his class. From what I understood, his approach dealt with physical symptoms, not mental or emotional ones. Dr. Schubiner’s inspirational lecture and guidance helped tremendously. I started to calm down and understand for first time what was behind my problem. The writing exercises brought out profound information about myself that I was unaware of, even when the subject matter was very familiar. Dr. Schubiner’s program is remarkable for being easy to follow and complete, but amazingly effective! The first step in the program is to understand what life events and reactions to stress and emotions have created the learned anxiety pathways. Once you have figured that out, there are a variety of writing exercises, meditative exercises, self-talk and affirmations, and a self-guided approach to making important changes that lead to healing.
Anyone with an open mind and a willingness to work at these issues with honesty and perseverance will be very likely to see remarkable changes. Unlearn Your Pain is available from: www.amazon.com
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