Anxiety

I've always thought of anxiety and panic attacks as something very foreign. On the "mellow" scale, I'm probably off the charts. Nothing really ever bothers me, I really don't worry much about things, dwell on them, lose sleep over anything. Well, that is, until this past month.

For whatever reason, I started to have rapid heart rate, heart palpitations, sweating for no apparent reasons, tingling from my neck to my hands and fingers, and constant and massive worry/anxiety about the most unimportant and trivial issues. Man, for me, this was foreign. I've talked about stress being a component in health that you need to control and address, and I have firsthand experience on how stress due to anxiety can tumble and compromise your health.

It felt like an out-of-body/mind experience, like someone kidnapped me and replaced me with someone else. It was a vicious cycle of stress->emotion->stress->emotion, etc. Words and actions, very unbecoming and unfamiliar, were flying out of my mouth and body like daggers from a soldier. Like I always do, I looked for answers, tried to understand what was happening to me, but in turn that frustrated me as well, and led to more problems.

Urban Meyer, head coach of University of Florida's very successful college football team, has serious anxiety issues, to the point he was going to retire from coaching to focus on his health. That got me thinking I had similar problems. So, I looked up a few books on anxiety and found the following from “Self-Coaching – The Powerful Program to Beat Anxiety and Depression” by Joseph Luciani.

“As with depression, I divide anxiety into two general categories: destructive anxiety and natural anxiety…Destructive anxiety is driven by insecurity, disproportionate to the circumstance, always exaggerated, and persistent. Its purpose is to try to control life with an intense flurry of mental gyrations (worrying, ruminating, obsessing, and the like). Natural anxiety, unlike destructive anxiety, is normal, proportionate to the circumstance, not exaggerated, and time limited.”

Of course, I had the destructive kind. The key for me was the phrase "disproportionate to the circumstance". Take one very minor issue (one that normally would roll off you, causing very little problems), put that in a vicious cycle of stress and emotion, and there you have my destructive anxiety issues. The key for me was to put the issue that was "disproportionate to the circumstance" to rest early, shut it down, see it for what it was, minor and unnecessary. Then, my symptoms became less, then gone altogether, in a matter of hours literally.

If you have anxiety issues, I feel for you. It's nasty stuff, turns you in Mr. Hyde without you even knowing it, and has untold effects on your health and wellness. I would suggest that you arm yourself with the knowledge and understanding to deal with it, just like you would for food, as I've been talking about in previous blogs. Be conscious of what's happening to you, educate yourself, make changes and observe their effects on your being. But, most of all, take action and do something about it, don't sit there and let it overtake you. You can do it, believe in yourself.

I wish all of you a happy new year, 2010! May the new year bring you peace, health, and happiness!