Ask anyone who has ever been seriously anxious about anything whether they want to react like that, and I can bet that everyone would say that that they didn’t want to and that for reasons known or unknown they reacted like that because they didn’t have any choice.
But, anxiety is a choice, and I bet you will vehemently disagree with me. But it is, because, if it wasn’t then no one could ever get well from it, and would instead continue to believe that it, anxiety, just descends upon them and anyone it happens to would all sink into anxiety and never get out of it, especially since there are people who
- a) don’t have anxiety
- b) have had it but manage to not let it run their lives
- c) have had it and something has allowed them to overcome/conquer it.
I was exploring my own reasons for why I did the things I did and I’ve always looked at my behaviours as being caused by my past experiences such as my upbringing, how a teacher spoke to me, my parents, the school I went to etc, basically anything and everything was the potential trigger for my dysfunctional behaviour and irrational thoughts.
And it was only when I looked at some pretty destructive behavioural tendencies, such as overeating, that it hit me, that overeating or any behaviour used to ‘feel’ differently about what’s going on is form of avoidant behaviour and because of that is open to being resisted.
And when I looked at it even more I realised that despite the reality that what I physically say and do is under my control, if you and I were to face each other and you told me that I chose my behaviours, I would argue blue was black that I didn’t, that it was caused by a list of causes such as those already mentioned and that meant that I couldn’t do anything about them.
How To Stop Me In My Tracks
But if you were to say
“Elaine, how do you justify doing that when you a) don’t want to do it, and b) it’s not in your best interests”?
I would be utterly stunned because how do I justify doing something that harms me rather than helps me?
The truth is my mind, just like yours is a clever little thing and can turn anything into something we have to do even when we don’t want to, and this is where the juice lies in creating change. Find out what you have justified to yourself and we are halfway to being able to change it.
So if you like to smoke cigarettes, but it’s harming your health, you can always justify why you have to continue. If you have credit card debt, and you’re in danger of being taken to court for non or slow payment, you can always justify buying more. If you lapse into anxiety because you’re scared you can’t cope, you can always justify feeling anxious even if it stops you taking responsibility for your life.
There is nothing our human brain can’t twist and turn and make us believe one thing when we are producing a very different effect. And this is why how we feel is our choice. We may not believe that we have a choice when we are triggered into a particular response so quickly that we hardly have time to think about it before we act on what we are thinking, but the only thing that is keeping that behaviour in place is our response, and that response is kept in place by our justifications that this is how we react and it’s okay at some level to respond that way.
The Penny Drops
When I first got this, I realised that I had spent an enormous amount of time resisting what is, and that resistance led me to justifying my reactions to not being able to control, which meant I could continue to keep doing more of the same.
Are You A Control Freak?
Control, as you may realise, is at the very heart of every anxious person’s reactions. We believe that if we could control things then we’d be okay, we’d feel safe and all would be well in the world.
Conversely we also believe that if we aren’t in control of how someone reacts, what they do even how they do what they do whether it has anything to do with us or not ( I mean if someone cleans out your fridge but they start at the bottom and not at the top why would that matter if the outcome is the same? But it does to some people)
But of course no one can control everything but because we don’t want to hear that, feel that or acknowledge that, we then build this elaborate web of behaviours that in the end are just signals that we aren’t in control and want to be.
It’s not easy to admit that I feel like a small girl again stamping my feet asking why I can’t have x or why isn’t something the way I want it to be, but that’s what I’m still doing, on those days and times when I’m indulging in my anxious reactions (thankfully not too many now)
The Younger You Are The Easier It Is To Change
What I needed when I was a little girl, was someone to sit me down and tell me that it was okay that things were not how I wanted them to be, but that I would get the opportunity to create other things more to my liking as I got older and sometimes even that wouldn’t be perfect, but at least I still had a say in how it turns out.
If I had been shown this and grew up with this, would I have ended up the anxious person that I was only a few short years ago? I doubt it. I bet life would be as it was, but my reaction to it would be more of what can I do to create more of what I want and less about what can I do to rail against all the things I ultimately had no control over?
And that would have been a much more empowered life, wouldn’t it?
So what about you? Are you still railing against what is that you can’t control or are you much more empowered than I ever was and you know that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade and you don’t wish you had blackberries instead?
Nice chatting with you
See you soon
Elaine
