More info about "The Anxiety Relief Program"
The Anxiety Relief Program
a Mushroom eBooks sampler
Copyright © 2004, Dennis Radha-Rose
Dennis Radha-Rose has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
First published in United Kingdom in 2004 by Mushroom eBooks.
This Edition published in 2004 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of Mushroom Publishing,
Bath, BA1 4BX, United Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a sampler of The Anxiety Relief Program by Dennis Radha-Rose. If you enjoy reading these sample chapters and would like to read the rest, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual bookshops online, or find more details at www.mushroom-ebooks.com.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The Anxiety Relief Program is not a substitute for professional attention, but a guide to self-help intended for those who suffer from any form of anxiety to a not overly severe degree. Those whose anxieties and symptoms are acute should take medical advice before doing the Program. The author or publisher cannot be held responsible for the consequences of following any of the suggestions made in this book or of doing any of the exercises in it.
Selecting your program
Read the whole book through before you try any of the exercises. Then, using the questionnaires, identify your symptoms. This will give you a guide to the type of anxiety you have, though this is not a medical diagnosis. Then turn to Chapter 8, “Your program” select those exercises you want to start with. You may want to change them later as you try them out.
Psychic and other illness
If you are having or have had any treatment for anxiety, many of the exercises may not be suitable for you. If under these circumstances you still want to do the program, you should refer to your doctor first. You should also consult him if any anxiety symptoms get worse or new ones appear. If any of the physical exercises gets painful, stop immediately and take medical advice. If you have severe emotional difficulties or other symptoms you should immediately discontinue the program and refer to your doctor.
Medication
The object of the Program is to overcome anxiety and phobias without medication, but if you feel you need it to keep your symptoms under control, consult your therapist or doctor. On no account simply stop the medication without medical advice.
Legal Disclaimer
Any use of the Anxiety Relief Program shall be deemed to be an acceptance of and agreement with the above and constitutes the Contract between the author and the user. This Contract shall be governed by and interpreted in all respects in accordance with the law of England.
INTRODUCTION TO ANXIETY
Anxiety is a feeling like hunger – it creeps up on you whether you want it or not.
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner
What is needed rather than running away or suppressing it or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
J. Krishnamurti
Introduction? Who needs an introduction to anxiety? We all have it at least from time to time, and if we didn’t we would often find ourselves in threatening situations, for it is a warning signal that something is not right with our world, that there may be something dangerous out there – or worse, in here, in our body or mind.
How the program helps you to cope with anxiety
You can’t stop the waves of anxiety but you can learn to ride them. No program, medication or therapy will cure a severe illness or change a situation such as your bank account being in the red. External circumstances remain as they are. But what we can do is to change the way in which we react to the situation so that the object of anxiety does not control us, which means keeping ourselves under control. Then we are in the best possible position to cope with the outside situation and improve it as much as it can be. The Anxiety Relief Program will help you to do this. Of course, some anxieties are imaginary, such as that of a person who continually washes her hands because she is afraid they are “contaminated”. Here the ARP helps by changing the relationship to the thought of contamination.
Since 9/11 there is a new and appalling cause for anxiety – terrorismdirected against us all. It is all the worse because there is no way to know what will happen next, and we cannot do anything personally to prevent it. But we have to learn to control our anxiety about it so that it will not destroy us.
Sometimes anxiety becomes excessive and to overcome this you need to understand why and how it happens. Although the popular (and not so popular) press often prints lengthy and colorfully illustrated descriptions of the neurophysiology of anxiety, we need not concern ourselves with that here. It is far more important to discover from our own experience what gives rise to our anxiety, how we feel it and above all what we can do to overcome or at least cope with it. If you have, say, acute anxiety when you have to board a plane, you will hardly be helped by thinking about what your amygdala, limbic system and other parts of your brain are doing. But you can be helped by the Anxiety Relief Program, therapy or both. It may be early in the book to say so, but though a quick Valium taken at the check-in may help you board the plane, tranquilizers lead to dependence, and so on your next trip you will probably have to take two...
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If allowed to do so, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. You can’t think of anything except what you fear. It does not help to try to suppress or deny it or merely to try to distract yourself from it. You cannot run away from it because it will follow you wherever you go. You have to face up to it, admitting to yourself that you are excessively anxious and that this can dominate your life. True, you can take tranquilizers to get over a crisis point, but they only work for a limited time and help only with the symptoms. Tranquilizers do not solve the basic problem but cause you to avoid confronting and accepting your anxiety, which is the only way to cope with it. You can go to a therapist, who will be a help, but even he or she will tell you that in the end you must do the actual work of coping with your anxiety yourself.
Anxiety can get you into a vicious circle
Anxiety, if not kept under control, can change from being a thin stream to become a raging torrent, overflowing its banks and sweeping away everything in its path. But you can control it and so avoid the disasters that can result from anxiety. It may only be one particular worry or anxiety that develop into the “General Anxiety Disorder”“. It is important to be able to recognize it in its early stages and to take steps to cope with it, otherwise it can paralyze your thinking and make you act irrationally and you will no longer be able to take effective steps to protect yourself from danger. Uncontrolled anxiety can lead to panic attacks, which can begin with a feeling of intense terror and impending doom followed by physical symptoms. Or it can lead to compulsions or phobias, which are unreasonable fears of objects, activities or people, these being quite unrelated to the real cause for the anxiety.
Anxiety brings much physical discomfort. This includes shakiness (both inside and outside), rapid heart beat or palpitations, stomach distress, sweating, dizziness, rise in blood pressure, rapid breathing, and an increase in muscle tensions; the intestinal blood flow decreases sometimes, resulting in nausea or diarrhea as well as numerous other bodily sensations. They are naturally worrying and so can cause further anxiety. Now you are in a vicious circle and have a double problem – you are anxious about becoming anxious! This is one of the paralyzing aspects of anxiety. You can’t walk into the elevator or drive your car because you are afraid you will have an anxiety attack – and its accompanying physical symptoms, causing still more anxiety
To get out of this vicious circle an anxious person can learn to raise his tolerance for discomfort and so not get obsessed with the bodily sensations. If you do focus too much on the symptoms you will inevitably become anxious about them and they will dominate your thoughts. You need a change of attitude towards the symptoms and sensations.
Accepting it – “I’m an anxious person”
One of the most important skills one can hope to master in order to bring an anxiety disorder under control is acceptance. It can be difficult but is the essential first step in coping with anxiety in all its various forms.
The typical attitude to the physical symptoms of anxiety is that they are “horrible, terrible things”. If you can learn to regard them as merely “uncomfortable” you begin the process of accepting anxiety and so reduce the tension it causes. An example might be having tight and tense jaw muscles. Instead of thinking “This is intolerable”, try to see it simply as a passing discomfort – after all it cannot last forever. Acceptance is not approval of what is happening but only the process of rethinking what is going on in your body and telling yourself the truth about your present reality.
Anxiety stops us from doing many things we would like to do (flying is an example) but once you have mastered the skills of proper breathing, relaxation and countering unrealistic thoughts, and practiced graduated exposure in facing your fears, you will no longer be concerned about feeling symptoms of anxiety but will simply be able to do whatever you choose to do as if you had no anxiety and are free of all the restrictions you used to impose on yourself. You can honestly ask yourself if you would do a certain thing if you did not have anxiety. If the answer is “Yes”, you can simply do it. This is the ultimate acceptance and freedom from any bonds that anxiety ties you with.
A further level of acceptance is broader and more personal. It requires learning to approve of oneself in a very realistic way. If you are a person with anxiety, it does no good to berate yourself about it. Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of or to feel guilty over, for we do not have direct control over our emotions. You do not have to keep it a big secret or hide it from the world and there is no need to be ashamed of anxiety – it is something you have in common with the rest of mankind.
The anxiety film
One of the destructive effects of anxiety is that you get lost in it. Your thoughts are so focused on the reason for your fear that you lose all consciousness of “what is going on in your head”. What in fact frequently happens is that you make a “film” of the future events about which you are so anxious and run it over and over again. Because you yourself are the script writer, producer and director all in one you can change or add new scenes and details to the film, which gets nearer and nearer to a catastrophe every time you run it. The leading role is always taken by the same player – yourself. But it won’t earn you an Oscar, that’s for sure.
There are special exercises for stopping the film, and if you are continually running it you should certainly do them.
Stages of the Anxiety Relief Program
The ARP has several stages, though these are not completely separate. It consists of a series of training exercises which you can try out, selecting those which you feel best with. This means that you can construct your own program. There will be a period of trial and error at each stage but you will have the advantage that the exercises you do are suited to your personality and your problems.
Acceptance is the first stage of the Program; acceptance that you are a generally anxious person, preoccupied not only with the objects of your anxiety but with its symptoms as well. You can and should admit this not only to yourself but also to your partner or a trusted friend, but that in itself is not enough. Acceptance is a skill that needs to be learned and this is possible through the second stage exercises.
Breathing exercises. It is a well known fact that incorrect breathing is both a cause and a symptom of anxiety, and so the importance of correct breathing cannot be overstressed. Breathing from the stomach rather than from the upper chest reduces the tendency to anxiety and also combats its symptoms. In case you are wondering how this happens, it is enough to say that there is an important nervous connection between belly and brain (ever had “butterflies in the stomach”? – then you’ll know). Therefore, to learn, or rather relearn, correct breathing is the object of the first exercises. All other exercises should be accompanied by correct breathing.
By doing the Breathing and Movement Exercises, not as mere physical exercises but with a distinct mental attitude, you will learn the skill of acceptance. This attitude is called “mindful awareness” and is an essential basis of the Program – it helps you to find yourself again when you are lost in anxiety.
Mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a process of healing the wounds in the mind which life brings to all of us. It has proved its value over thousands of years and is increasingly practiced today. It originated as the basis of Buddhist meditation but is in no sense a religious exercise; it can be practiced by people of all faiths and beliefs or of none.
In all of us there is a silent observer that keeps track of our mental and physical states, of the contents of the mind (what we are thinking about) and of our feelings. Unfortunately we frequently ignore it, because the quality that it embodies – “mindfulness” – is not generally known in our culture, yet it is an essential tool for coping with anxiety and stress.
Mindfulness stops us projecting anxious thoughts into an imagined and quite likely catastrophic future that can only too easily become a present but illusory reality. It does not dwell on painful memories of the past. It is awareness of what is happening NOW. This is not to say you cannot think about and plan for the future, but rather that you do so in a completely realistic way.
Above all, mindfulness makes no judgments about what it is aware of. It is simply an observer, making no attempt to be a critic of what it sees. If it becomes aware of a thought which causes the feeling of anxiety, this will not be classified as “good” or “bad” but simply noted as a thought which causes anxiety. This allows thoughts to be seen as simply thoughts and not mistaken for the reality you are anxious about. Simply observing a thought, as you would a bird flying by, reduces its power to create negative feelings. This is a very important point, so if it’s not quite clear to you please stop and read it over again.
The ARP is largely based on a modern and clinically proven method of stress and pain reduction called “The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program”. It was developed by Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and is used in more than 300 clinics in the USA. It enables you to train yourself to be in control of your anxiety and the stress it brings with it. This happens through the development of the skill of attention and moment-to-moment awareness without negative reactions to your anxiety and its symptoms. Mindfulness brings calm and stability. When thoughts or feelings come up in your mind, you don’t ignore them or suppress them, nor do you analyze or judge them as either “good” or “bad”. Rather, you simply note any thoughts and observe them intentionally but non-judgmentally, moment by moment as they occur. They are simply events in the field of your awareness. Paradoxically, this noting of thoughts and feelings that come and go in your mind and body stops you from getting caught up in them.
Selecting a program for yourself
The first step is to decide, not what you are anxious about, but what kind of anxiety disorder you suffer from. It is a disorder if it goes beyond the usual anxieties of life and is a disrupting influence interfering with your life and quite possibly making it hell. It could be a specific anxiety, chronic worry, general anxiety, agoraphobia, other phobias or an obsessive compulsion. As you read this book and answer the questionnaires you will recognize your own place in the overall pattern of anxieties. Chapter 8 gives more detail on how to select your program, so that you can then start work. Suggestions are made in the various chapters for sessions in which you do the exercises as described, but no fixed program is laid out. After all, every person has his or her own needs and reactions to the exercises. Just be sure you devote enough time to them. It’s an important matter, isn’t it?
Read the whole book through before you try any exercises; this is important as it will help you to understand them better. Then make a program for yourself with two weekly sessions (or more). Decide what exercises you want to start with. Try these for a while to see how you get on, then review your progress and how you reacted. Change the exercises if you think it would help and you feel you would respond better. Do the exercises one by one, not several at the same time.
The exercises
There are exercises for each kind of anxiety. For specific and general anxiety, each session includes visualizations, which get to the very core of your problems. You “record” your anxieties on an imaginary videocassette and then you play them back. If your feelings become too strong you press the “stop” button. Otherwise you make the picture smaller and then put the cassette in a safe. Before and after the visualization you do breathing, sitting exercises and Body-Scan, which all develop your mindfulness. They bring calm and relaxation and enable you to look clearly at your anxiety and see what it really is – an illusion, however real it seems. There are also breathing exercises and other exercises that combine breathing and movement.
How long does it take to overcome anxiety?
If you have been living with anxiety in any form for a considerable time, even perhaps from childhood, there’s no way you are going to be free of it overnight. Begin at the beginning; read the book completely through to get the general feeling, not skipping to the exercises first. Then work through the chapters again, and when you get to the exercises you need, start doing them as explained.
The platform of the Anxiety Relief Program
The ARP is built on a number of principles which you should follow no matter what form your anxiety takes: specific anxiety, general anxiety, excessive worry, panic, phobia or obsession.
Where there is trust, there can be no anxiety. Trust in God if you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu. If you are a Buddhist take your refuge in the Buddha. Above all, trust in yourself – you can do it! Trust your partner or a friend with your thoughts, fears, anxieties and even terror. The best person to trust is one who simply listens, not one who tries to give you ready-made answers or criticizes you.
Pray for the ability and patience to bring anxiety under control instead of letting it control you. God will give you the ability and patience, but you have to do the work, for he helps those who help themselves.
Develop "mindfulness", that is, moment-to-moment awareness. All the exercises will help you develop this essential skill.
Correct breathing is an extremely important ally in healing anxiety and its consequences. Many people breathe faster and faster when they are anxious, and many other bodily functions may get out of control. Mindfulness of breathing enables the body to return to normal.
You are larger than your anxiety. Any form of anxiety, if allowed to do so, comes to dominate your life and limit your horizon. When you have accepted yourself as an anxious person (and who isn’t, at least at times?) you will see that this is so and feel the need to reduce anxiety to a corner of your being. You will achieve this through the exercises.
Some lifestyle hints and tips
· Think of activities which calm you and distance you from the circumstances which cause you anxiety.
· Be sure you have a healthy diet, avoid alcohol and drugs (an occasional beer is OK).
· Avoid medicaments affecting how you feel, unless they are prescribed by your doctor. Even when he suggests one don’t just grab the prescription and run to the drugstore, but ask about its necessity, risks and side effects. And don’t be put off by that white coat!
· Do some relaxation exercises regularly in the morning and before going to bed, because a relaxed body feels no anxiety.
· Physical exercise burns off excess adrenaline and other stress hormones. Anxiety is the mind’s response to “fight or flight”, which releases stress hormones into the body even when they are not needed. Exercise improves physical well-being and helps to restore mental balance. Choose the kind that you enjoy and can do regularly – jogging, cycling, walking, swimming, dancing etc. Above all, don’t just sit there wrapped up in your anxiety. Do something!
· Learn how to slow and finally stop the whirl of thoughts. This will come as your mindfulness develops more. On no account try to “empty your mind”. This is often suggested but is an impossibility, as new thoughts come one after the other. Just watch them as if they were birds flying by.
That's the end of the sampler. We hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to find out what happens next, you can buy the complete Mushroom eBook edition from the usual online bookshops or through www.mushroom-ebooks.com.
For more information about Mushroom Publishing, please visit us at www.mushroompublishing.com.
More info about "The Anxiety Relief Program"