About Anxiety — 12 Ideas

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It is impos­si­ble to live life free of anx­i­ety. There is the anx­i­ety that comes when decid­ing to shift one’s way of being–the anx­i­ety of change, of pain, of growth. And

One of the things I’m most inter­est­ed in is the idea that we can shift our under­stand­ing of how life is, how we relate to our­selves, to oth­ers, and to the world.

But the weird part is that we are fight­ing against our natures–our egos–which are high­ly invest­ed in keep­ing us stuck in soci­ety’s view of “nor­mal.”

Anx­i­ety, then, might be seen as the result of what hap­pens when soci­ety’s — our ego’s — demands do not match our real­i­ty or our experience.

The problem comes when we think our ego view should trump what’s actually happening

While I could be accused of exag­ger­at­ing here, most peo­ple have a pret­ty com­mon view of how life ought to be. I call it the “Blue­bird of Hap­pi­ness” model. 

I coined this idea after think­ing about the lit­tle car­toon blue­birds that flit­ted about in car­toons I saw as a kid. My favorite one is shown here: Uncle Remus and the blue­birds, from the Dis­ney movie, “Song of the South.”

This particular model elevates happiness to the pinnacle

The odd part is that it is impos­si­ble to define happiness. 

Hap­pi­ness is high­ly sub­jec­tive, and, it seems, some­thing that is always just out of reach. The founders of the Unit­ed States got it right — they list­ed unalien­able rights, one of which is “… the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.”

Happiness is something we chase, but never quite catch. It’s “out-of-reach-ness” is what causes our anxiety.

Anyway, here’s a list of the “bluebird” expectations many people implicitly or explicitly have:

• I will always get what I want, when I want it.
• I will only be in rela­tion­ship with peo­ple that love and respect me.
• If I have chil­dren, they will be bright or even excep­tion­al, every­one will love them, and they will suc­ceed in every­thing they do.
• * Peo­ple will find me inter­est­ing, attrac­tive, and will desire me.
• My pri­ma­ry rela­tion­ship will work on autopi­lot, because I am with my soul mate, who has noth­ing bet­ter than to do than to be every­thing for me, to do my bid­ding, and to make me feel good about myself.
• Mon­ey will flow through my fin­gers like water, but there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
• True suc­cess is mea­sured in the size of the pile of stuff I’ve accumulated.
• Peo­ple who love me always agree with me.
• It’s my right: to demand that my feel­ings take prece­dence, to blame oth­ers for them, to express them harm­ful­ly, and to be end­less­ly for­giv­en for what­ev­er I dump on whomev­er I choose.
• I do not think that I should have to put any effort into com­mu­ni­ca­tion, because if I am mis­un­der­stood it’s the fault of the oth­er person.
• I know that hap­pi­ness is just around the cor­ner, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, as I wait, breath­less­ly, for every­thing to “work out.”

Now, you may be thinking that this very long list doesn’t apply to you at all.

I’m not say­ing that every per­son believes all of these things. What I am say­ing is that most peo­ple that I’ve met over my sev­en plus decades are pret­ty much stuck in this gen­er­al belief sys­tem.

They’re so caught in the drama that they miss the pattern.

One per­son I know, for exam­ple, gets into a “blam­ing cycle” about every six weeks. She tells me of the lat­est affront — and it always has some­thing to do with oth­ers not agree­ing with her per­spec­tive, or demand­ing that she change — and how she’s not going to put up with it. 

What changes is the spe­cif­ic “unfair­ness” she is present­ly mad about.

What she misses is the pattern of being affronted every six weeks.

Until she can step back and see the pat­tern that she is cre­at­ing, she is doomed to repeat her dis­sat­is­fac­tion. Her approach, 100% of the time, is to lit­er­al­ly or fig­u­ra­tive­ly leave the rela­tion­ship. And then she goes out and does it all over again, with some­one new, or she cre­ates a new sit­u­a­tion with some­one old.

To restate the key point of this sec­tion, the anx­i­ety she cre­ates regard­ing her dis­sat­is­fac­tion with oth­ers is more appeal­ing than the anx­i­ety she imag­ines she would feel if she dropped this approach and did some­thing different.

It seems to me that the work of adulthood is to challenge our presuppositions.

In oth­er words, to exam­ine what we believe in the cold light of reality.

• Is it real­ly pos­si­ble to have a healthy rela­tion­ship by demand­ing, end­less­ly, that our part­ner change — judg­ing that every­thing is his or her fault?
• Is it real­ly pos­si­ble to moti­vate our­selves to change through end­less self-crit­i­cism and judgment?
• Is it real­ly pos­si­ble to expect that all of our wish­es will be grant­ed, just because we want some­thing, and with­out ever con­sid­er­ing how our wish­es clash with the wish­es of our near­est and dearest?

This is not to suggest that you start doing life the way others want you to. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.

This is a pre­scrip­tion for direct per­son­al obser­va­tion, and clear­head­ed eval­u­a­tion of the results you are get­ting regard­ing the choic­es you are making.

Being an adult, then, is demon­strat­ed in our will­ing­ness to drop behav­iors that don’t work — I think that is only pos­si­ble when we are will­ing to drop our invalid beliefs. I call this “The courage not to be your­self” mod­el, because it takes great courage to drop what we always do in favor of what works.

And the only way you discover what works is to do it.

Our approach, then, is twofold.

• First, you must be will­ing to explore each and every one of your beliefs, in order to gain per­spec­tive on how you stay stuck — repeat­ing the same old stuff. As I not­ed in the long para­graph on sil­ly cul­tur­al think­ing, these weird beliefs are hooked into hap­pi­ness, as in, “If only peo­ple under­stood this rule, and changed their behav­ior, and gave me what I want­ed then I would be happy.”
• Sec­ond, you must be will­ing to face the anx­i­ety of change. I want to be clear here. You are chang­ing your behav­ior, not your essence. What I mean is your beliefs are as old as you are, and are going to be there until you die. There is no way to get rid of them. There is a way to make peace with them. As they arise, we hear them, we acknowl­edge them, and we let them pass with­out enact­ing them. This is hard, hard work. Anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing work. Most peo­ple would rather remain stuck.

As I wrote in my book­let, “The Watch­er, your goal is to cre­ate an alter­na­tive voice, anoth­er per­spec­tive, a clear­er, more direct, and ele­gant approach to life. With time and with prac­tice, this voice becomes the dom­i­nant voice in your head, and the process of choos­ing effi­cient behav­ior becomes simpler.

But as with any new learning, the learning curve is the steepest at the beginning.

We start from a place of accepting where things are, drop the endless bitching, accept ourselves as we are, and then make better choices.

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pli­cat­ed about this view. It just requires per­sis­tence. Once you under­stand that “the way it is, is the way it is,” once you ful­ly land in this moment, you are sud­den­ly aware that with­out pre­con­ceived notions your options are endless. 

It is the one and only way out of the labyrinth. Labyrinths require courage, cre­ativ­i­ty, and mak­ing friends with your anx­i­ety, so that you can dis­cov­er the way out.

And hav­ing a guide that has con­quered a labyrinth does­n’t hurt, either!

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