anxiety

How to Resolve Conflict Avoidance

October 19, 2019 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

This is simply a “you just have to learn it” skill. The most successful and happiest people I work with are able to enter into conflict with those in their life, family and work. And I can’t begin to tell you how many otherwise talented and genuinely good people get hamstrung on their inability to have difficult conversations. Psychologists refer to the problem as conflict-avoidant behavior.

We are conflict-avoidant when we know we need to face a problem with someone and get it resolved, but our high anxiety makes us kick the can down the road, hoping against hope that things will get better. 99% of the time, they actually get worse, sort of metastasizing into something we really don’t want. So instead of going for the short term peace of avoidance, go for the long term solution that will really make things better for you. Here are some tips to help you:

Deal with your anxiety. Most of the time, we don’t run from conflict for a logical or rational reason, for example, when someone is threatening us with a gun. There is sound logic there! We more avoid conflict for emotional reasons, manifesting themselves as anxiety. Figure out exactly what drives your anxiety, because anxiety always has a focus. Some common sources of anxiety are:

Rejection: When someone important to us disconnects from the relationship.
Anger: When we don’t have the skills to handle an angry person, and we become frightened and overwhelmed.
Guilt: When we are prone to see ourselves as the bad guy, and take on all the responsibility for the problem, instead of our actual contribution.
Loss of control: When we are more afraid of our own strong feelings than we are the other person, and we actually are concerned we might say or do something we’ll regret.

We don’t have space here to go into these sources, but often, talking it out with a mature person or counselor can do a great deal to help. The point is, don’t let anxiety paralyze you.

Script the conversation. Research shows that we do better in conflict when we have thought out what we want to say, in a talking-point manner. Then we don’t get lost or confused. Write out a brief script and learn it, so you won’t need to have it in front of you, and you can have good eye contact with the person.

Make the sandwich. Conflict resolves more effectively when it begins and ends with authentic affirmation and care, and when the issue itself is the meat in the middle of the “sandwich.” Think how much it has helped you to have someone let you know, in a real way, that they are for you and not against you, in a difficult talk.

Know when to back off. Some people readily deal with conflict, when they are approached, and navigate it with truth, respect and love. They do well in these scenarios. And some react in anger, victim statements, intense emotions, blame and excuses. Just learn when the reactions are dominating things, and you don’t see any progress. That means it might be time to call it a day and try something different at another time. If it’s not working, it’s not working.

Conflict isn’t fun, but neither is surgery. When done well, however, it can lead to a great deal of positive results in your life.

Best,

John

Peace of Mind

February 26, 2019 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Peace of mind is one of the most important experiences we can have. It’s what I call a state of internal harmony. That is, no matter how stressful your circumstances, your mind is able to feel harmony, or in sync with its different aspects. It’s like the experience of being inside a well-built car while it’s moving at 70 miles an hour: though a lot of motion and noise are going on outside, at the same time, with the doors and windows shut, you can be in a quiet environment with just a little hum going on. All the various parts of the car are synced with each other and everything is running smoothly.

Unfortunately, peace of mind is often hard to come by. We live in an anxious age, where we often feel fear, debilitating anxiety, panic, and phobias. Nothing good comes from this. So here are some tips to help you develop better peace of mind.

Identify what is causing anxiety or a feeling of stress. Global anxiety is a vague sense of unease, and it’s hard to deal with. It’s always better to pinpoint exactly where the stress is coming from A financial issue? A work challenge? A family problem? A health situation? You will notice a decrease in anxiety, and an increase in peace, just from that simple step.

Take problem-solving steps. Even if a challenge can’t be totally solved, our peace increases when we take initiative and do some action steps to resolve them. The more passive we are, the more we live in our amygdala, and we become increasingly anxious to a sometimes overwhelming degree. Initiative and moving on something, almost anything positive really, will increase peace and move us from the amygdala mode to the pre-frontal cortex mode, where we are calmer and can think more clearly.

Pull away several times a day. Since we live in a highly stimulated world, our brains don’t have a chance to calm down and center ourselves naturally. So just make that a quick habit. Take a “pull away” break, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening, get away from the stress, and think about the actual good in your life (don’t make stuff up, I mean the actual good !): you have a body that works, you have people that care, you have choices and freedoms. This little habit will make a significant difference.

Call your resilience to mind. Resilience means that you’re strong enough to handle the hard stuff. You have a history of facing challenges. Remember your wins and recall that you have made it through other stressors.

Make vulnerable contacts. Every day, stress or no stress, have a brief supportive conversation with someone who cares about you, and whom you care about. Be vulnerable, meaning be open with the negatives: what is stressing you and what you fear. Don’t ask the other person for solutions. Instead, tell them you just want to know they “get it”, and have them convey that to you. Internal harmony comes from this sort of conversation, in which we experience that we aren’t alone.

Life will always be stressful to some degree. But work on experiencing the hum of that well-running engine in your head.

Handling Anxiety When You Actually Don’t Want to Admit It!

November 29, 2018 by sgadmin Leave a Comment

OK, so we know from the research and statistics that all humans get scared and anxious sometimes. 100% of us. It’s a fact. Fear is just part of life (except for those who are in toxic massive denial, which is a recipe for life misery). Lots of us would rather pretend we are secure, confident and have it together. But at a deep level, we know that we do feel insecure and scared at times. So what do we do when we know we feel this, but we don’t want to know we feel this? Here are some solutions and tips for this:

Understand the disconnect.

There is a disconnect, or what are called incompatible realities. In the psychological world, we call this a “fear of the fear.” We are afraid of being afraid. But unfortunately, our brains crave reality. Reality, whether it is positive or negative, is good for our minds. So when we act like we are OK when we are scared, our brains go into overload: How do I function and make decisions, when a lot of my energy and bandwidth is being used to pretend I’m not anxious, when I actually am? That costs us a lot, and isn’t good for us.

Get to the “why.”

There is a reason you aren’t comfortable admitting you have anxiety in a situation. It can be about relationships, work, mistakes, challenges, your past or a number of things. But your “fear of fear” didn’t arrive in your head in a vacuum. Here are a few common “why’s”:

Shame: When we feel that our behavior or feelings will cause us to be embarrassed, or that people might think less of us, we are vulnerable to the fear of the fear and we hide it all.
Control: Fear and anxiety are, at their core, about not feeling in control. It might be that you have a relationship you can’t fix, or a job situation that’s out of your hands, or a health issue with no known solution.
Isolation: We are more afraid when we are alone. Humans are social beings. We feel safer in a tribe of a few good people, and more afraid and vulnerable when we are without that.

Take action.

Not doing anything will just increase the fear of the fear. But if you take a risk with a safe person and tell them that you are anxious about something, their warmth and compassion will reduce a large percentage of the feeling, and you will feel relief. Another great action step is to simply admit to yourself, and write down in a journal, that you had an anxious day. This is called normalization, and you won’t feel so strange. And finally, pick a few good friends who are comfortable saying when they become fearful and ask them how they do it. Healthy people aren’t afraid of being afraid.

It’s OK to say when you’re anxious. In fact, it’s just healthy.

John Townsend, Ph.D.

Overcoming Fear and Anxiety

November 9, 2018 by sgadmin Leave a Comment

There are three kinds of people in the world:

(1) those who have fear and anxiety and admit it;

(2) those who have fear and anxiety and don’t admit it

(3) those who truly don’t have fear and anxiety, but cause it in others!

And often, a (1) and a (2) will end up marrying a (3), but that’s another blog for another day.

So this blog is for the (1)’s. If you do struggle with anxiety and are courageous enough to admit it, you know how difficult it can be. Fearful thoughts popping in your head in the middle of the night, difficulty making decisions, second-guessing yourself, and then severe issues such as anxiety disorders and panic disorders can make life miserable. Here are some practical tips to help lessen and even resolve fear and anxiety.

Set the bar at “manageable anxiety” and not “zero anxiety.”

A life with zero fear and anxiety is not a healthy life. Would you want to be married to someone who doesn’t care enough about you to worry about your relationship, your health and how your job is going? Sometimes anxiety just means that you care about yourself or someone else.

See the value in some anxiety.

You need your anxiety. When you wake up on the morning of the first of the month, you need to be concerned that you pay your rent or mortgage. Your anxiety keeps you from saying, “I had a long day yesterday, I’ll call in sick and go to a matinee.” Fear can be your friend, at decent levels.

Get to the “why.”

Instead of trying to stop feeling anxious, move toward the feeling and not away from it. Ask yourself why you are feeling it at this particular time. Often, when you understand the root, you are halfway to getting it resolved. For example, you are anxious about keeping your job because your boss told you that your performance was lacking. However, if it’s a long-term job and you have a good history, and your boss said nothing more than that, that anxiety is probably irrational. So why would you have that fear? For many people, it’s because they aren’t able to feel secure about their talents, their competencies and their value in the workplace. So when there is a glitch like a negative performance review, they forget who they are and what they can do. If that is the “why”, you will feel some relief almost immediately.

Never, never, never suck it up and isolate. Fear is like a cyst. It metastasizes in the darkness, and it shrinks in the laser beam. Use the laser beam of the right people in your life to tell them your fears. Let them be “People Fuel” for you, and that will calm you down.

Manageable fear doesn’t get in the way of a great life. Keep the balance.

John Townsend, Ph.D.

Three Steps to Overcoming Anxiety

August 3, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

We live in an anxious age. In fact, it’s now pretty much acceptable to talk about our anxiety with others without feeling weird or shamed.

We all feel it.

Simply put, anxiety is an experience of unease, both physically and mentally, typically about an uncertain future. You “feel” anxiety in your body, including heightened alertness, muscle tension, increased heart rate and blood pressure, chest tightness, gastrointestinal churning, and sweating. It is not a fun emotion to experience.

3 Common Anxiety Causes and Solutions:

I want to lay out three very common causes of anxiety and some practical solutions.

1. Isolation. It’s a simple as this: isolation increases anxiety and vulnerable relationships decrease it. From birth, we are relationally driven to other safe people who are warm, consistent and real with us. Relationships are our shelter in the storm. We know from neuroscience that positive endorphins, such as oxytocin, flood our brains when we are around the right sorts of people. We feel centered, comforted and calm. But when we have lost a relationship, or have difficulty opening up and trusting, we lose the access to those endorphins, as there is no person in the room to activate them.
  Solution: The “RX” for this, of course, is to spend significant vulnerable time with significant people.
2. A sense of lack of control. At its core, anxiety is about control. We feel anxious when we think something negative might happen to us that we don’t have enough control over to stop it. When the plane you’re sitting in begins bucking from strong winds, when the economy changes your company’s success numbers, when you are diagnosed with a medical condition that is serious, or when someone important to you treats you poorly and won’t change, the result is often mild, moderate or even severe anxiety.
  Solution: Often, it helps to “walk through” the experience you fear, thinking through the various parts of what could happen, realizing that 99% of the time, you can handle it. And the other 1% of the time, you have friends who will support and stand by you.
3. Being unprepared for life stressors. When we have overprotective parents, friends or communities, the love helps us, but the overprotection increases anxiety. This is because our sense of readiness and competence to handle life’s twists and turns is too undeveloped. It’s a little like being parachute-dropped into the jungle with a pocket knife. Most of us wouldn’t feel prepared. So unreadiness in life skills, career know-how, common sense, handling failure and obstacles, and knowing what to do with difficult relationships, can cause great anxiety.
  Solution: The best RX is to develop a sense of competency, or agency, over your life. Take some risks and push yourself to do new or difficult things, even if you fail.

These tips can go a long way to help you conquer anxiety. You’ve got this!

3 Ways to Keep Anxiety From Taking Control of Your Life

June 26, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Everyone feels anxious every now and again. Anxiety is just a fact of life and a perfectly normal emotion. Unfortunately, though, certain life events can lead us to feel a little more than just normal anxiety. These events might include your children getting married and starting families, the death of a loved one, job loss or transition.

All of these life events can cause an overwhelming sense of dread, which is not a healthy way to go through life.

What Does Anxiety Feel Like?

Anxiety, as an emotion, can stem from anything that is stressful or disconcerting. These days, some people experience this emotion simply by watching the news for a few minutes!

So, what happens when you experience anxiety physically?

First, you enter a heightened state of consciousness. You’re more alert.
Second, you feel some kind of fear about the future or the situation. There’s a dread, like something bad is coming.
Third, you have a fear and must be ready for action. That’s where the body gets involved. Your heart beats faster and you’re breathing faster because you’re preparing to get out of danger. Think of it like the “fight or flight” methodology.

Before I talk about the right way to approach feelings of anxiety, I want to first tell you about a few wrong ways approaches to anxiety.

Don’t ignore your anxiety! Despite what you may think, “I gotta just push through” mentality is not healthy. It’s a really bad idea to ignore your anxiety because the emotion is trying to tell you something. Ignoring anxiety can potentially lead to bad decisions, poor choices, and even health problems.

Similarly, stop shaming yourself about anxiety. Don’t make yourself feel bad for experiencing this very normal emotion. Don’t shame yourself and say, “I shouldn’t be feeling like this, I’m being a wimp, I’m being a kid.” No more shaming! Your anxiety is a valid emotion!

3 Healthy Ways to Overcome Anxiety

So far, we’ve agreed to stop ignoring and shaming our anxiety. Now, let me share some healthy ways to deal with anxiety.

Be in a relationship. This can be any relationship with someone who knows you deal with anxiety. Find three or four friends who you can reach out to and say, “From time to time, I deal with anxiety and I need to know I can call you and just say, ‘Can we talk, can you kind of get me off the ledge?'” This must be a relationship where you can comfortably express your feelings. Part of this relationship will require them to give you advice or guidance like, “Why don’t you go jog or go pray?” or something like that. Whatever they suggest should help get your emotions out of the cycle of anxiety by suggesting other activities.
Give yourself a pep talk. I am a huge advocate of taking a moment and reciting the Serenity Prayer to yourself. Say to yourself, “God help me to know the difference between the things I can change, and can’t change, and wisdom to know the difference.” This may seem like a small thing, but it can help change your mindset and start moving forward out of your anxious emotion.
See a therapist. If your anxiety reaches a point where it becomes unmanageable, including impacting your work or home life, it’s time to seek professional help. They can help you sort through what’s going on and what’s driving your anxiety. You can also consider seeing a psychiatrist for medication.

Hard times and anxiety come and go. When you start to feel those anxious emotions, it’s very important to take steps to overcome anxiety before it gets the best of you and disrupts your life in a way that can’t be fixed. I believe you have the faith, hope, and love to overcome anxiety and any other challenge you’re facing.