THE CAUSE OF ANXIETY

We all know that our day is always full of events.  There is prior to an event.  There is when the event is occurring. And then there is after the event. If we want to prevent a particular unwanted event from taking place, we direct our attention to performing preventative measures to try and stop the event from happening. But at the same time, we can also think about how we would deal with the event if it did occur. And then, if it actually does occur, we simply get on with life and deal with the consequences of it. This might sound logical to many people, but you will soon find out the reason why it does not seem at all logical to someone suffering from an anxiety attack.

The more we become focused on trying to prevent the event from taking place, the more we will become concerned, until we start to label the emotion as anxiety. I am sure every person is familiar with the feeling of anxiety. It’s completely normal to get anxious every now and then when you are really focused on stopping an event you don’t like from happening. The level of anxiousness a person experiences will depend on how threatening they believe the event is, and how likely they think it is to occur. For some people, anxiety can get extremely severe and persistence and can be labeled as an anxiety disorder. To someone suffering more extreme anxiety, the thought of “dealing with the event” would not be something they are ok with at all. The anxiety sufferer believes they must prevent the event or everything will go wrong. They believe that the event cannot be dealt with, and so the only option is to prevent it.

 Stage One Anxiety

 In anxiety we have the following thoughts: “QUICK QUICK QUICK, I must take care of things so that nothing goes wrong!”

 The reason that the situation is perceived as so threatening is usually because the person believes that the event will take away their personal value – they believe their self esteem will be knocked down if the event happens. In anxiety, we think like this: “If the event happens, it will prove me to be a failure and unworthy of receiving my future life events and development”.

If you look at the diagram below, you can see a line drawn just before the unwanted event. This represents the fact that in anxiety, we do not believe we can survive anything to the right of that line, so the concept of “dealing with the event” doesn’t apply.

Stage Two Anxiety

Anxiety progresses to stage two when the unwanted event a person is trying to prevent is the anxiety itself! They usually start to believe that the anxiety is displaying them to be unable to mentally cope with doing things. They believe the anxiety is the event which will ruin their chance of proving themselves worthy in life. They can also believe the anxiety is ruining their  health. So they are now desperately anxious about preventing their anxiety! And this is what is fuelling their anxiety!  Behind the scenes the mind believes it will die if personal value drops significantly far enough due to being seen to be anxious and hence considered unable to psychologically cope.

 Panic attacks

 Panic attacks are a very severe form of anxiety. In a panic attack, the respiratory system becomes very restrictive, and doesn’t allow the lungs to fully expand and take full breaths. Breathing becomes rapid and shallow, and the person can feel like they are suffocating. This is the result of a drastic increase in their concerns about a loss of life. In a panic attack, a person believes they are really in IMMEDIATE and DIRE danger of losing their duration of life. It is a fear of missing out on their time of life, the time when things are available for their development and survival. The person’s mind believes that “Quick quick quick I better attend to things OR I’m going to MISS OUT on my duration of life opportunities right now!”