Anxiety For Dummies. Laura L. Smith

support groups, individual therapy, or self-help, those in the action phase begin doing something active about their anxiety. They remain in this stage until goals are mostly met.

       Maintenance: Now is the time to hold one’s ground. People must hang tough to prevent sliding back. During this phase, one wants to develop a plan for dealing with both expected and unexpected problematic events.

       Termination: The change has become habit, so much so that relapse is less likely, and further work isn’t particularly necessary. Not exactly everyone reaches the full stage of termination. Most people continue to struggle from time to time. That’s normal and rather expected.

      These stages look like a straight line from precontemplation to termination, but what these psychologists found is that people bounce around the stages in various ways. They may go from contemplation to action without having made adequate preparation. Others may reach the maintenance stage and give up on their efforts, slipping back to the precontemplation stage.

      Many successful changers bounce back and forth in these stages a number of times before finally achieving their goals. So, don’t get discouraged if that happens to you. Keep your goal in mind, and restart your efforts if you slip. Yep. Try, try, and try again.

Watching Worries Come and Go

      Sometimes anxiety feels like it will never go away. Believing that you have no control over it and that stress invades your every waking moment is easy. This section helps you to realize that anxiety actually has an ebb and flow. We show you how taking a few minutes to write down your feelings each day may discharge a little of your anxiety and possibly improve your health. We also help you understand that progress, like anxiety, ebbs and flows.

      Following your fears

      One of the best early steps that you can take to manage anxiety is to simply follow it every day in a couple of different ways. Why would you want to do that? After all, you already know full well that you’re anxious. Watching your worries is a good idea because it starts the process of change. You discover important patterns, triggers, and insights into your anxiety.

      Observing anxiety fulfills several useful functions. First, monitoring forces you to be aware of your emotions. Avoiding and running away from troubling emotions only causes them to escalate. Second, you’ll see that your anxiety goes up and down throughout the day — which isn’t quite as upsetting as thinking it rules every moment of your life. And, you’re likely to discover that recording your ratings can help you take charge and feel more in control of what’s going on inside of you. Finally, keeping track helps you see how you’re progressing in your efforts to quell your distress.

      

Track your anxiety on your phone or in a notebook for a few weeks. Notice patterns or differences in intensity. Fill out your chart at the same time each day. On a scale of one to ten, ten being total panic and one being complete calm, rate the level of anxiety you experience around the same time in the morning, then again in the afternoon, and later in the evening. Virginia’s story shows you how tracking anxiety can be helpful.

       Virginia complains to her friends that she’s the most nervous person on the planet and that she’s close to a nervous breakdown. Recently, her father had heart surgery, and her husband lost his job. Virginia feels completely out of control and says that her anxiety never stops. When her counselor suggests that she start tracking her anxiety, she tells him, “You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t need to do that. I can tell you right now that I’m anxious all the time. There’s no letup.” He urges her to go ahead and try anyway. Table 4-4 shows what Virginia comes up with in her first week of tracking.TABLE 4-4 Virginia’s Day-by-Day Anxiety LevelsDayMorningAfternoonEveningDaily AverageSunday4686Monday6797.3Tuesday5665.7Wednesday4575.3Thursday3886.3Friday5997.7Saturday3554.3Average4.36.67.46.1

       Virginia discovers a few things. First, she notices that her anxiety is routinely less intense in the morning. It escalates in the afternoon and peaks in the evenings. With only one week’s record, she can’t discern whether her anxiety level is decreasing, increasing, or remaining stable. However, she notices feeling a little better simply because she feels like she’s starting to take charge of her problem. She also realizes that some days are better than others and that her anxiety varies rather than constantly overwhelming her.

      THE POWER OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

      The field of psychology focused on negative emotions for most of the 20th century. Psychologists studied depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, behavior disorders, and a slew of other maladies. Only recently has the field looked at the pluses of positive emotions, the characteristics of happy people, and the components of well-being. People who feel grateful usually say they feel happier as well.

      One study assigned people to three groups. The first group wrote only about the hassles of everyday life. The researchers asked the second group to write about emotionally neutral events. The third group journaled about experiences that they were grateful for. All the groups performed this task merely once a week for ten weeks. At the end of the experiment, the group that wrote about gratitude exercised more, had fewer physical complaints, and felt more optimistic than those in the other two groups. That such an easy, simple task could be so beneficial is surprising.

Later studies have found that journaling helps decrease anxiety associated with multiple sclerosis, as well as other health conditions. Furthermore, it decreases stress related to school pressures and everyday anxiety.

      Writing about your worries

      Millions of people keep a diary at some point in their lives. Some develop daily writing as a lifelong habit. Keeping a journal of life’s emotionally significant events has surprising benefits:

       Journal writing appears to decrease the number of visits people make to the doctor for physical complaints.

       Writing increases the production of T cells that are beneficial to the immune system.

       Keeping a journal about emotional events improved the grades of a group of college students compared to those who wrote about trivial matters.

       Recently, unemployed workers who wrote about the trauma of losing their jobs found new employment more quickly than those who did not.

      Throwing out the rule book

      Journal writing doesn’t have rules. You can write about anything, anywhere, anytime. However, if you want the full benefits of writing in a journal, we encourage you to write about feelings and the emotionally important events of your life. Write about anything that troubles you during the day and/or past difficulties. Spend a little time on it.

      

Most smartphones allow you to dictate your thoughts rather than type them in. That’s pretty great if you don’t like tapping on a small keyboard. Like a journal, save your musings in a file and review them from time to time.

      

Writing about past traumas may bring considerable relief. However, if you find that the task floods you with overwhelming grief or anxiety, you’ll probably find it helpful to seek professional assistance.

      Counting your blessings: An antidote for anxiety

      Writing about your distressing feelings makes a great start. However, if you’d like more bang for your buck, take a few extra minutes and write about what you feel grateful for each day. Why? Because positive emotions help counteract negative emotions. Writing about