Dear afeels:

“to just simply ‘experiment’ whilst in the midst of this anxiety it just was not helpful advice for me”- of course it is not helpful. When an animal is scared, the animal focuses on the perceived source of danger and on nothing else. It doesn’t eat, it doesn’t mate, it doesn’t play. It doesn’t forget the source of danger, not for a moment.  The animal is 100% focused on danger, uptight, heart racing, pumping blood for what may come next: running away as fast as possible or fighting as hard as possible, for its life.

When an animal is afraid, hearing a potential predator, it is not “muddled and hazy”. It is as clear and focused as can be. But for you, as you wrote your recent post and often other times, “Everything feels muddled and hazy”-

-this is because, unlike the animal hearing a potential predator, heart pumping blood, stress hormones released, your fear lasts and lasts and lasts, this is anxiety. For the animal in nature, it is afraid for a short time  (either the source of danger disappears by itself, or the animal successfully runs away or fights and the source of danger is at a great distance,  or disabled, or the animal dies and so, it is no longer afraid).

But we humans we are afraid for a long, long time, every day, some days more than other days, a whole lot of the time. We perceive multiple sources of danger, most or all in any particular day are not real life dangers, that is, our lives are not really in danger. It is exhausting to be afraid for so long and so often because our hearts work hard, the stress hormones create physiological events in our bodies that are physically exhausting and so  very unpleasant, distressing. And so, we feel unfocused, muddled and hazy.

Not all psychotherapists are created equal. It is always helpful to be able to talk and for someone to listen to you. This is something maybe all therapists can do, sit there and look at you, listening or at least looking like they are listening. But beyond that, some therapists are not only ineffective but in the patient’s way of healing.

“maybe I just need to accept that I will have this anxiety forever and do things anyway. What do you think?”- anxiety is the human condition, so yes, it will be there for the rest of  one’s life. But it can be less and then, even less than before, so that it is manageable. With less anxiety, you will at times feel that curiosity, that drive to explore, to discover, that “call of the wild” animals experience.

How to experience less and less anxiety? First remove yourself from the environment that scared you as a child and still does. Abandon the solutions you came up with as a child (the care taking family role, the reducer of family chaos), and come up with new solutions, first being, remove yourself from your home of origin and live elsewhere, far away.

anita