Terrible situations
What’s the difference between a bad situation and anxiety?
I hear from people all the time who tell me, “I don’t have anxiety. I have a genuinely awful, horrible, terrible situation. And I’m not making it up.” And then they tell me about something in their life that’s going on that really is a bad situation.
They’re not making that up. It’s not invented. It’s not “all in their head.”
And unless you also happen to have some intentionally developed skills for dealing with the tumult of thoughts, and emotions, and doubts, and interpersonal relationship issues, and self-image, and associations from the past, and all sorts of stuff that come up when you’re dealing with any of the broad range of difficult stuff that we deal with in life, there’s probably also some anxiety on top of the actual situation.
Developing these skills
So how do you develop these skills? For lucky people, they grew up in a household with well-adjusted adults who modeled this for them thoughtfully and intentionally, to help the kids learn to deal with the bumps and bruises of life. I don’t know about you, but that wasn’t my household.
One of my parents practiced the stoicism approach of “push it down, think it through logically, ignore emotions or pretend they don’t exist. Just deal with it, don’t talk about it. Get over it.” My other parent practiced the “try to make everyone else happy, play nice, self-efface, people-please, and as long as no one appears to be upset, we’re all fine, right?, right??, right???.”
Frankly, neither of these approaches really work. My parents were trying to be supportive, but didn’t really have the skills, because their families had never taught them, and yet they were trying to do better than what their families had done.
(But here’s how insidious anxiety can be. A part of me doesn’t want to say this about my parents, because they did their best, and I love them, and anxiety tells me that if I do better than them, or acknowledge their shortcomings, that I’m being disloyal, or criticizing, or a bad daughter. These are lies anxiety tells me, but they’re not true. And now I have better skills to deal with the anxious thoughts that are coming up as I’m talking about this.)
And yet, I got it good compared to many people. I’ve heard story after story from my clients across the whole gamut, from parents who, like mine, were trying to be supportive, but didn’t really have the skills, to families who were outright abusive, toxic, neglectful, traumatizing.
Were you ever taught how to deal with bad events in healthy ways? Was this modeled for you by anyone in your life?
I don’t know where your family fits in. Were you ever taught how to deal with bad events in healthy ways? Was this modeled for you by anyone in your life?
By parents? A teacher? A grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a family friend? Maybe a friend from school whose parents had a healthier relationship? Did you have anyone in your life that was enough of an influence that you developed these skills growing up, or in adulthood even?
If not, it’s not too late. These are skills. And skills can be learned.
You might have to seek them out more intentionally as an adult, as I did, and that’s a legitimate path.
So when you’re dealing with genuinely bad situations in life, part of what’s going on is your reaction to the bad situation. And sometimes your reaction to it, if you don’t have healthy skills for dealing with that, can make it even harder to deal with.
And that’s why one of the key skills that I share in my anxiety reduction course, is how to tell the difference between what’s the current situational problem, and what part of it is how you’re reacting to it, how you’re thinking about it, or the emotions that are coming up.
Not in a shaming way, not in a blaming way, not in a “you should have known this,” or “you should have done better,” or “you’re blowing it out of proportion,” or “this is all in your mind.” None of that. Never.
Rather, this is a part of the human experience. This is completely normal.
How else can you react?
Okay, so, what are healthy ways to deal with this?
So part of what’s going on is the genuinely bad situation itself. And part of what’s going on is how you’re reacting to that situation. The internal reactions, how you’re thinking about it or feeling about it, or shutting down, or whatever. And the external reactions, what you’re doing, saying, melting down, shutting down, whatever. It’s the internal reactions that I most want to play with. That’s what I want to teach some skills around.
Because that’s often where anxiety is, or a variety of similarly “unhelpful responses.” And that’s where all of the other reactions come from.
But when you can lower the intensity of that, then you get some brain space back; then you get some energy back. Then you can deal with the actual situation itself more easily.
You can come up with different solutions to your bad situation. You can try different things, because you have the brainpower to think about different options. It’s amazing how reliable this is.
When you lower the intensity of the anxiety around the bad situation, it becomes easier to find ways to deal with the bad situation. (Or sometimes, to accept that it is what it is, and that there’s not much you can do about it. But at least you don’t have to make it even worse than it is by how you’re thinking about it.)
If you’re interested in getting in depth into this, this is what I’d like to share with you in my anxiety course. It’s practical skills to cope with both:
-The cognitive aspects of anxiety: the thoughts, the ruminations, the stuck spots in our minds where we get into spirals.
-As well as the physical aspects of anxiety, where we start to panic, freak out, or get overwhelmed, shut down, melt down.
-And how to tell the difference between what really is the crappy situation, and what is being made worse by how we’re responding.
If this seems useful to you, here’s a video intro to the course, and here’s a link to all the information about the course, to see if it’s a fit for you. But whether you learn these skills from me or someone else, or now or later, I hope you find a way to learn the skills, a way that works for you.