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Ch. 6 The Secret

Secret? Oooo mysterious. This isn’t like the other secret that you’ve been told about in other books where you think happy thoughts and then magically good things start happening to you. This is a bit of a side note, but you should really be careful with that sort of thinking. If you get in the habit of thinking that positive thoughts bring about positive things and negative thoughts bring about negative things, it can get really damn confusing when you realize that the universe is random and bad things can happen while you are thinking your happiest magical pixie dust thoughts. ANYWAYS. My secret is that I haven’t been entirely honest with you so far. Sorry. The secret is that when I talk about slaying anxiety, kicking it in the balls, or any of the other stupid things that I’ve said so far, I don’t mean that you will be able to make it disappear from your life. Just like you can’t make your stupid boss go away forever, you can’t make anxiety suddenly poof away in a cloud of smoke. What you are working towards in your recovery from anxiety issues is not only to help yourself avoid unnecessary anxiety when it’s possible, but also to learn how to better tolerate your anxiety symptoms.

One of the things that really maintains and worsens anxiety symptoms and panic symptoms is the phenomenon of getting worked up about the symptoms themselves. Don’t forget, your brain is a douche sometimes. It’s very easy to let it tell you that you should be angry, upset, or scared about the fact that you are experiencing anxiety.

Don’t get me wrong, anxiety sucks. That’s why you got this book. Anxiety is just a thing though. It’s a storm that you can weather and come out on the other side. If you are in the ocean surfing and you occasionally get rocked by a wave, it’s probably not the best idea to freak out and get super upset. If you did that, you’d thrash around underwater, probably skin your knee on some rock, and then come back up just to get blasted in the face by another wave. A better approach is to endure the wave, stay under the water for a bit until it passes and then try your best to prepare for the next set of waves rolling in.

Anxiety is just like those waves. The better you can learn to tolerate the discomfort of anxiety and recognize it as temporary, the less it will disrupt your life. I’m not trying to tell you to surrender to your anxiety. Not by any means. You’re still here to kick this thing’s ass, but fighting so hard against the anxiety head-on is not the best strategy because it fights back and then things start to snowball and get blown out of proportion.

A large handful of you probably experience socially related anxiety. The thought of going into a crowded place with tons of noise, no clear path through the mob, and no means of escape if you get stressed out probably makes you breathe faster and tighten up in the chest without even being in the situation yet. What happens when you can’t reason away the feelings that arise? What happens when, no matter how hard you breathe, your heart won’t go back to its normal resting rate? Nothing. The answer is that nothing happens. You are in the middle of a bunch of people and you have this internal discomfort that probably no one else even notices or cares about. Humans have a tendency to move away and to avoid the situation, but paradoxically, the best option for you is move toward the stressful thing. This is called exposure.

You can help temper yourself to better withstand anxiety by allowing yourself to gain exposure to the things that cause you anxiety. For some people, the Kool-Aid man method works the best. This is where you just bust through that wall of anxiety and endure what happens on the other side full force (OHHH YEAHHHHH). For many people, this is a bit too much. That’s okay. You don’t have to get there all at once. You can break things up into smaller, more manageable increments, and work toward feeling more and more able to withstand the discomfort of anxiety.

Say you want to run a marathon. You aren’t necessarily going to go out your first day and run a gazillion miles, expecting to be in shape afterward. No, you start out by just getting off your ass and taking a walk. Then you run around the block. Then you run a mile. Then you run 5 miles. So on and so forth. If you want to feel less anxiety when you give presentations at work, in addition to adjusting your thoughts and being good to your body, you can create a system to systematically desensitize yourself that anxiety. In other words, you keep lifting until you’re jacked like Arnold….in an emotional sense.

What this might look like is first imagining yourself standing in front of your peers at work. That’s it. Just imagining. If the thought of that is enough to cause you anxiety, then you are starting in the right place. So here you are sitting in your yoga pants at home imagining this workplace situation and you start sweating your ass off and hyperventilating. Good. You’re at home, nothing bad is going to happen to you. Try some of those deep breathing exercises while you stay in that situation and then just wait it out. I promise you the discomfort won’t last forever. Move through, not away. Then you do it again and again until you got that scenario on lock. No problem.

Now it’s time to kick it up a notch. Keep imagining that situation and this time actually practicing giving the presentation. Probably a little more stressful? Weather the storm, work through it, then kick it up a notch again. Go to the actual room that you will be giving the presentation in and let that freak you out for a bit. No biggie, though. Weather it, work through it, kick it up a notch. When you get to the day of the presentation, you’re going to think, “Shit, shit, shit! That asshole Robert didn’t give me a way to practice the actual real thing!” Well you’re right and you’re wrong. You probably can’t practice the actual thing exactly how it will occur in real life, but what you have practiced now is the secret that I have been blabbing about this whole time. You have been practicing feeling anxious and kicking ass anyway.