Anxiety.

What is it? Do you have it? Ever? Often? All the time?

The word is used increasingly these days. It has become a BIG thing. Like Depression, a big thing. Scary thing – like so many things in this world today.  Actually, I feel cross about the use of this word. It seems to me that it has become more than it ever should be. It’s as if, by creating this label that it becomes so big that it is not treatable. It’s a generalised word that is not specific in what it means. Like depression.

I’m not denying the suffering of the people. I’m saying that the concept of anxiety has escalated into a label that feels scary to people and then includes expectations and negative possibilities which feel hard to get out of. This applies to many diagnoses.

Then what happens, is that people blame the label for what is happening. It’s a cop-out. Rather than actually exploring what is going on for the individual. It’s not honest, because it shifts the reasons for behaviour to an outside source. Even though we know anxiety in something inside a person, using this label (like any label on a person) suggests that the cause is outside and therefore, there is nothing to be done. A label can also mean that there are generalised symptoms that everyone with that label has, when in actual fact, everyone is different.

When I explore this with a person, I want to get specific about what is going on. Usually there is an emotion (fear) and worry (thoughts). So when we look at these, we are looking at something that can be explored further, and delved into. Without judgement and without labels. In examining the thoughts and emotions and the circumstances, it is amazing how the pattern becomes clearer, which leads to a way out. By going in, we can find our way out.

Now, I might just be playing with words, but this is what I see happening in our society. Anxiety is feeling anxious, and under that is probably fear. Then the thoughts go round and round worrying about possibilities and creating more fear. Let deal with all this fear in an honest way. Let’s inquire into it. Let’s face it, up front. So that you don’t buy into having your life restricted by an outside definition of….that word.

By the way, often we can get determined to control………….

There is a simpler way…………….