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First, fall in love with, sense the goodness of the symptom - anxiety.
What other names can you call it? What other manifestations does it have when not excessive and intrusive? Planning? Thoughtfulness? Thoroughness? How does it take care of you? How does it express your values?
Second, limit inappropriate expression as you simultaneously develop appropriate expression: what is anxiety called when it finds its voice? At what levels is it enlivening, energizing, helpful, inspiring? At what levels does it become intrusive and troublesome? Shaping the expression of the energy is a fundamentally different approach than sedating or removing the symptom.
This approach, inspired by Stephen Gilligan's Self-Relations psychotherapy described in The Courage To Love, develops a practical and nurturing relationship between your normal, everyday sense of yourself and the troublesome symptom. It avoids generating the self-defeating resistance that comes from wanting to eliminate or obliterate the symptom. No part of our consciousness tolerates death threats without a fight. Good thing.
Skills
Sponsorship: Develop a felt-sense connection with the "energy" beneath the phenomenological surface of the anxiety; listen deeply and receptively; what does it need to happen next? Focusing by Eugene Gendlen, three-point attention, self-hypnosis, self-soothing (5-4-3-2-1), imagery, mindfulness meditation.
Tolerance: Develop facility with anxiety/exposure model; how to titrate exposure so anxiety is tolerable, and how to notice and be relieved by the gradual reduction in anxiety and re-establishing of comfort and confidence after exposure. Repeated experience of the "exposure - spike of anxiety - reduction of anxiety" sequence builds confidence and the expectation of further success. These are the essential elements of the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy approach.
Self-care: Add yourself to your caregiving list rather than piling up stress thoughtlessly or trying to simply limit obligations (this adds guilt and stress). Use the formulation: Caregiving is an important and essential part of life, and self-care is essential in being an effective caregiver. Also use the formulation: Receiving care is an essential part of every relationship, and is a skill that often must be developed and practiced. If these are difficult ideas, what experiment can you devise that would allow you to discover how they work for you?
Proper naming: When you notice yourself overfocusing on the content of a situation name the problem "excessive anxiety" or, even better, what specific emotional or physical responses feel excessive. This allows the solution to naturally involve self-soothing or tolerating, rather than exclusively focusing more and more anxiously on the external problem.
Practice self-soothing, tolerance, and sponsorship techniques regularly so that they are automatic resources when anxiety spikes. Which of the "Supportive Comments" in Appendix A of Reid Wilson's Don't Panic speak to you? Pay attention to your gradually increasing mastery of these skills. Marsha Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy provides a thorough list of skills.
Evaluating Progress: Develop specific goals under the categories of "affect stabilization" (What do you want to feel or do differently in what specific circumstances?) and "psychological immune system" (What triggers do you want to be less reactive to?). How can you measure progress? A blend of specific, measurable goals with a sense of inspiration and poetry about the direction and depth of your life is a powerfully complementary set of attitudes and tools.
Copyright
© 1999 Chuck Holton All rights reserved.