Hi, it is helpful, Hip Hop. I've been copying down the hints to add to my other guides for tackling anxiety.
He makes some accurate points about anxiety sufferrers, that aren't so flatterring perhaps. But I think I respect what is I think a 'tough love' approach. There's a firmness, here, in choosing to adopt a very different approach to thinking and even to some extent, personality.
I think that because anxiety is so hard to beat that a person really needs to learn to adopt fundamental new ways of thinking. ...it's so hard to change because the basis of it is central to one's personality. But this is also why real changes in thinking will balance a person out without changing what is good and unique about them.
...one thing, though, the author quotes Teddy Roosevelt, FDR -"The only thing to fear is fear it self' ...and this would be fine, except that in having talked at length about the reason for anxiety being the FEAR OF FEAR, he ends this section with:- 'Teddy Roosevelt was right. The only thing to fear is fear.' .....funny actually; but I think that it points out how truly confusing 'getting it' in your head can be, that even after saying the oposite, the author himself gets confused and contradicts what he says as his tip to beat anxiety. This, I believe, proves how automatic thinking can be and how much vigilance is required to truly change and correct thinking patterns.
ahhh yeh I see what you mean about the statements (after thinking about it for 5 minutes haha) but I can see what he's saying, I think when the author said "Teddy Roosevelt was right. The only thing to fear is fear itself" he meant "The only thing to fear is the fear of anxiety".I dunno.. anyway the main point I got out of it was not to fight it.. just leave it run its course! and the first time you let it run its course its very difficult because the pattern of negative thoughts and fear has built up.. so u get a really strong bout of anxiety and its like you automatically want to avoid getting more anxious.. but by doing that you continue the cycle! so yeh i found it helpful how he gives a broad range of things that you can do to minimize anxiety in different parts of life.. not just the thought processes.
The thing here is that, anxiety is based on fearing something, and that something is actually fear; so, to say: "The only thing to fear is fear it self' -is no antidote to the root cause of anxiety, the primary fear underlying the problem, which is the FEAR of fear. Just as the more we try to resist and ward off our anxious emotions (and FEAR our fear) the more they come back with a vengeance.
They say that our minds simply cannot process 'negatives', so it is therefore impossible to cure a negative with another negative. Just as they say that, darkness can only be measured through the measurement of light.
...so, a negative perspective, fear of fearing people and foreign situations, needs to be replaced with a positive perspective. Perhaps this could be something like: acceptance of oneself as being shy, timid and sensitive with a tendency at times of weakness for anxiousness -so that whilst anxiety is seen as the negative side of being very sensitive, it can also be accepted as going with being very sensitive. That: the negative exists relative to the positive. Since, anxiety is really just an enlargened form of sensitivity.
This way we could accept being anxious, because we would not see it purely as negative, but instead as an integral part of the fundamental positive that is being highly sensivite, with all its positive atrributes. There would be no more fearing fear. We could see it as a necessary negative to the positive of being highly sensitive. With this perspective we could stop being afraid of it, since such a perspective in seeing the positive of being socially anxious, allows us to bring this out as much as possible whilst controlling the negative aspect of it -but BECAUSE we accept the negative as being the other side of the positive instead of resisting it by 'fearing it' even if that 'it' is in fact fear. It brings it down to size, sees the good in the bad, what is real within what is an unbalanced exagerration of everything. ...they say: 'What you resist persists, but what you look at disappears'.
Did you get all of that?!!! much less confusing hey?
......anyhow, like I said: it's confusing and I don't think that we are so dumb for having confusion and for not knowing just exactly how to look at and think about things and what to do!!!!
I agree with you. I have got over my social anxiety. I suffered for ages without realising what it was. I thought it was some sort of agrophobia even though I could go outside. I didn't look to what I had because it was 'me' and I didn't see how I could change it.
But I started getting fed up with my reactions to things that other people just wouldn't react to. I would blush if I had to talk to people, even people I worked with a while before who I thought of as friends, drinking in public.. the first drink, getting it to my mouth was a nightmare. I worried that I'd spill it down myself and look stupid.
I felt really angry with myself for being the way I was. So I set about pushing myself to get rid of it. I made myself meet people. I became an avon lady. It was quite good because I didn't have to worry about what to say, because I had a subject to talk about. I made myself like myself more. Accepting who I am. It took quite a while.. It happened very slowly and it went just as slowly. Sometimes I worry that I might find myself slipping that way again, but I don't think I will because I prefer myself this way, there was too much agony that way. I know how you feel if you suffer from it. I really wish you well.
Hello everyone, I have been suffering for quite a real long part of my life from anxiety. At first, it seems that no one really take these symptoms into consideration due to the fact that all seems to be normal according to a normal person's life.I was getting quite annoyed with myself and the decision i had taken in my life. I was really stressing myself at anything that was happenning and getting anxious about everything and i thougt that i was just that i lacked confidence but then the fact remained the same. I even started a treatment with lexapro for some time and it worked but after some time i wanted to be by purely myself and i was so confident to fight away all the anxiety. i wanted to never take any lexapro and i started to work on my creativity an my will power together with my confidence. I joined a martial art master who trained me to all these stufs and told me to meditate often and be free from myself.
he even proposed me to start some paintings and indeed that is the results of all these stuffs: i am freeeee
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much less confusing hey? 
