Anxiety and Stress Relief, Part 1, Dissipating Intense, Unpleasant Feelings

Dissipating Intense, Unpleasant Feelings

When you're having an intense and uncomfortable feeling like stress, worry, fear, anger, sadness or aversion, scan your body slowly from head to toe. Notice any places where you feel physical discomfort. 

Anger and sadness often show up in the chest. Anger can feel hot or like wanting to push outward. Sadness can feel cold, heavy or empty. 

Worry and fear often show up in the stomach. Worry can feel tight or jittery. Fear can feel icy or spiky. 

Everyone's experience is unique. Just notice yours without trying to suppress or change anything. See if you can bring a friendly and compassionate feeling toward your discomfort, as if you were sitting with a beloved friend who needed company through a difficult moment. 

Notice if your breathing feels constricted or open. Notice the intensity of the distress, and give it a number from 1 (not too bad) to 10 (horrible). You can use this awareness to track any changes as you do the next steps.

Find the part of your body where the discomfort is worst. Imagine giving more space to the sensations. If your chest is tight, imagine the energy inside expanding outward beyond your body, it can extend three or ten or fifty feet beyond your skin. It's just energy. I've had feelings that fill up whole city blocks.

As the feelings have more room, you may notice that the intensity of them dissipates. Scan your body again, and see if the distress has decreased at all. If it has, this may become a stress-relieving tool you keep handy.

To practice this skill and learn even more body-mind tools to feel good, join me in the class, Techniques to Relieve Stress, Anger & Anxiety, May 19th, 7pm, at Pleasant Hill Rec and Parks.

The End of the World, and Dinner

On December 21st, there was an event called, “The End of the World, and Dinner.” The tongue-in-cheek wording of the invitation made me smile. On Facebook, someone shared a weather report from that week, in which the doomsday forecast showed fiery chunks of brimstone pelting the earth, predicted temperature: 1200 degrees. Hysterical.

In the same week, my beloved Honda died at the age of 15. As a therapist, the irony was not lost on me – the car blew a gasket. How perfect. And how perfect that I had saved just the right amount of money in my emergency fund to buy a new car.

Of course, as soon as I paid for the car, we had another emergency. My husband’s car had a crumpled strut (sounds like a pastry, doesn’t it?). Despite my ability to laugh at the end of the world just a few days before, feelings of fear and stress began to surge when I learned how much the repairs would cost. I looked around for someone or something to blame – and because I was looking, I found it.

I began to question my decision to replace my old Honda, rather than repair it (blaming myself). I thought mean thoughts about my husband’s car maintenance habits (blaming him). I wondered if I negotiated hard enough for the new car (self blame again). I faulted both of us for over-spending and not being good savers (two in one!). I felt a weight pressing in on my chest. The most important relationships in my life – the one with my husband and the one with myself – were under attack. By ME.

This is how the world “ends” for most of us on a regular basis. We get stuck in a pattern of fear, anger, shame and blame. Either we turn on ourselves or we turn on the people closest to us (or both). Sometimes we even turn on unsuspecting strangers. I was fortunate to see pretty quickly what was happening – that I was creating a catastrophe where there really wasn’t one.

My inner seven year old likes having the emergency fund fully funded. And she gets very scared when we use it for – you know – emergencies. But I saw what she was up to, and I sat with her while she ranted and railed. I didn’t try talking her out of her pain. I know that doesn’t work. I validated how scared she was, how hard it was to trust that all would be well.

Because I’ve had great therapy, I know that when my inner seven year old is triggered my job is to hold her tight till she can see straight again. I can give her what my parents could not: my own loving and accepting presence. And when she has that, everything gets easier. She calms down faster. She feels safer. She knows that she can tantrum and stomp and hate how stupid the whole world is, and she will still be loved and held. Ahhh.

After the world ends, we have dinner. All is well.

May you all feel your own loving arms around you whenever you need comfort or care in the coming year.

Inspirations for Self-Care in the New Year

Don't place your mistakes on your head, their weight may crush you. Instead, place them under your feet and use them as a platform to view your horizons.

- Unknown

And there was a new voice

Which you slowly recognized as your own,

That kept you company

As you strode deeper and deeper

into the world, determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save

- Mary Oliver

Too many people undervalue what they are and overvalue what they’re not.

- Unknown

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself... What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with.
― C. JoyBell C.

When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn't healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits - anything that kept me small. My judgment called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.
― Kim McMillen

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
― Siddhārtha Gautama

No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.
― Robert Holden

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
- Steve Jobs

Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies. Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises. Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.
― SARK

Anxiety: The Heart of Addictions and Compulsions

We tend to think of Addictions and Compulsive behaviors as problems that stand alone. Once the addiction or compulsion is stopped, everything is okay. And while recovery from an addiction or compulsion is a huge relief, it is also essential to heal the underlying emotions. As George Carlin once said, “Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town."

So what’s under the addiction or compulsion?
It all starts with anxiety - specifically anxiety about being deficient, or “not good enough.” Typical indicators of this anxiety are:

• Perfectionism – striving to meet an unattainable ideal
• Avoidance – hiding imperfections from others
• Compensation – Having outward signs of success, but feeling like a fraud inside
• Judgment – Finding fault with everything and everyone; feeling frustrated that no one can measure up
• Self-Judgment – Finding fault with oneself
• Irritability – a toned-down (and socially more acceptable) expression of anger about having to prove one’s worth
• Depression – a “why bother” response to repeated failure at “measuring up”

How does Anxiety Become an Addiction or Compulsion?
Compulsions are actions we are compelled to take even though they don’t make sense and may have negative consequences. At first, the compulsion provides pleasure and relief from anxiety. Then, guilt or shame over the negative consequences becomes the focus of the thoughts and the unpleasantness. Compulsions are a great distraction.

Addictions operate like compulsions, but in addition to the psychological component, there is also a physical component. The body requires a substance to achieve equilibrium. Recovery entails healing both the body and the psyche.

The Anxiety-Compulsion Cycle
The belief “I’m not good enough” is self-perpetuating. The truth is, we are all flawed. That’s just normal. It’s the fantasy that we shouldn’t be flawed that causes distress and an unending pursuit of relief from that distress.

Addictions and compulsions provide that relief for a while. Eventually, the addiction or compulsion creates more anxiety than relief. When this happens, people become obsessed with controlling their behavior. “I can stop anytime,” is the mantra, and indeed there are many “successful” days, months, even years when the new problem remains under control.

Often the success lies in transferring the obsessive thoughts to controlling the problem behavior (getting the monkey off your back). When we channel energy into dieting or abstinence, each day of success “proves” that we are “good enough.”

There’s just one problem. The original wounds that resulted in the belief about NOT being good enough are still there, unattended (this is the circus that George Carlin refers to). The positive feelings that result from successful abstinence are shaky at best, because they are conditional. One misstep or slip, and the negative self-judgment is re-confirmed.

Why Traditional Approaches Fail
Approaches like AA, Weight Watchers, or Clutterers Anonymous fail for three reasons.

1. By focusing on the addiction or compulsion, they give anxiety a new area of focus: doing the program “good enough.” The result is an addiction to AA or the gym or some other source of “help.”
2. Because they don’t heal the underlying anxiety, the risk for relapse is always high. Interestingly, both AA and dieting have a 95% failure rate after 3 years.
3. Traditional approaches inadvertently perpetuate the fear of judgment. In AA and other 12-step groups, people count their days of abstinence. If they “slip,” they have to start over at day one. It’s like being a bad kid who’s sent to the back of the line. With dieting, it’s much the same. As long as you’re on the diet you’re “good.” As soon as you go off, you’re “bad.”

So What’s the Answer?
Identifying and healing the original wounds that set the whole thing into motion.

These wounds are frequently the result of criticism and judgment by family members, teachers, peers or other important people as we’re growing up. We internalize this judgment and develop our own “inner critic” – the voice in our own minds which is often more harsh than the original criticism.

When we identify the source of these wounds as adults, we realize that those original messages were inaccurate and distorted. We also come to see that the expectation that we become “perfect” is unrealistic and unnecessary. These realizations allow us to form more appropriate and realistic beliefs and expectations about ourselves and others. We can relax into our imperfections and come to like ourselves as we are, unconditionally.

While this work is neither simple or easy, it is incredibly rewarding and effective. Not only do you get to enjoy life without addictions or compulsions, you get to live with a person (YOU) who is kind, respectful, forgiving, nurturing encouraging…in short, you get to love yourself.