Antidotes For The Contagious & Deadly Anxiety Disease
By: Deborah D. Gillespie
Whether it be retirement, the unexpected and sudden loss of employment, ill health, a death, divorce, or some other trauma not yet foreseen, it is vital that we take measures which will enable us to be more secure and empowered when any of these potential difficulties occur. It is also important that we face today's difficulties head on. Avoiding or ignoring the trials of today, or the need to plan for future tribulations, would be irresponsible at best. However, it is important to bear in mind that even though planning for the future and addressing issues that may be difficult today are necessities of life, neither task is enriched with the use of anxiety or by worrying about it before it even happens.
Fretting about the trials we may face in the future and complaining about the problems we are dealing with
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today, only serve to increase the difficulty level of finding the solution and resolving the problem. No amount of anxiety serves a beneficial purpose in resolving any problem we may be faced with in our day-to-day lives or in our future planning. Anxiety does not aid us in any way, shape, or form with the emotional, physical, or financial requirements that are required to efficiently and effectively deal with any of the current trials or future planning requirements. The exact opposite is true.
Have you noticed how more than half of the people in America today look as though life itself is a dismal burden they are forced to bear, a task they are forced to perform, a job they are not paid enough to work, a difficulty they can't resolve, a goal that is impossible to reach? It is growing increasingly difficult to find a truly happy person in today's world. Day to day conversation seems to contain more complaint than thankfulness. A successful chat with a dear friend almost seems to require more discussion of trial than the sharing of positive experiences and thankfulness. Consider the common question asked between strangers and best friends alike; "How are you doing?" If asked by a stranger, or if you are too worn out to go into the details of your tribulations, the simple answer is an uneventful "Fine. How are you?” for which you are silently hoping for a similar response. If asked by a friend, you may go into great detail concerning the difficulties you are faced with. Sadly however, the percentages of “Fine” and “Not so good” responses tend to far outweigh the number of times the response is filled with thankfulness and joy. Even though the mere act of responding shows that you are still breathing, which in and of itself is something we should be happy about, the problem of the hangnail is permitted, more oft than not, to outweigh the thankfulness of breath.
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Worry, anguish, and overall annoyances are the general cause of our woebegone attitudes. We have allowed even the simplest of trials of life to strengthen the amount of deep sorrow and grief within ourselves. By allowing anxiety to play a roll in just about every issue we must face, our perception of life itself is afflicted in horribly distressing ways. This worry, this anxiety we have employed and habitually permitted to be a part of all of our current trials small or big, as well as playing a solo part in problems that have not even happened yet and very well may never happen, is what puts the deepest downward wrinkles on our faces; causes stomach aches, diarrhea, dry mouth, numerous heart problems, pain in the chest, shortness of breath, insomnia, irritability, an inability to concentrate, feelings of being out of control, and even severe mental illness or death. Worry may possibly be the most contagious and potentially deadly disease on the planet today.
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Thankfully, kindness, consideration, peace, and happiness, are equally contagious and extraordinarily successful in serving as the antidote to worry and anxiety. Yes it is difficult to be the one who brings a smile and a sense of peace to a funeral and even harder to smile when it is you yourself that is facing a trial. Harder still is accepting the task of bringing happiness to a group of distressed people that surround your daily life. Nevertheless, if the world around you had a headache, is it not better to share your aspirin than to run around banging your pots and pans together? When your loved one breaks a bone, will you poke at it and discuss the pain with him or will you seek medical help in an effort to set the bone and heal the limb? Does misery truly love company? Would you instead choose to break your own limb to show your love and share in their pain? Considering the obvious answer to these rather simple, and seemingly silly questions, one must wonder why then we feel the need to dispense gloom and doom to the world that surrounds us? Why on earth are we so comfortable spreading the disease of anxiety.
It was, at minimum, frightful and appalling when America became fearful of opening their postal mail due to the potential of it containing anthrax shortly after the horrendous events of September 11th, 2001. Yet few of us are as concerned about the number of people that are actively spreading the anxiety disease at far more alarming rates and with far greater consequence to our world and humanity overall. Though we have every right, and need, to seek counsel when we are facing difficulty, and it is vital to our own well-being to be able to confide in our loved ones, we have no right whatsoever to distribute anxiety in greater and unnecessary doses to ourselves or others; it doesn't matter how heavy our burdens may seem to be we have no right to place those burdens on others nor to even cast the shadow of them on the our heart or the hearts of others.
The most dreadful act of distributing anxiety is when we choose to afflict others and ourselves with worry and anxiety that never needed to exist at all. Stressing about something that hasn't even happened is akin to pulling your child out of a school play, where they were performing fantastically, in order to rush them to the emergency room because you feared they might actually fall and break a leg. By doing this you have ruined the play, and wasted the time, of yourself, the child, and everyone else involved in or attending the play. You have wasted a great deal of money by simply walking into the emergency room. Worse still you have likely made several phone calls along the way alerting, or should we say spreading the disease of anxiety, to friends and loved ones. Not to mention how absolutely terrified the child herself must be. WHY? Why on earth would you do this? Unless you are afflicted with a mental illness, the mere thought of such an action is ludicrous! Yet, when it comes to anxiety we tend to do it often. Worries about the potential of your boss possibly not liking you as much as you think is maybe required to hopefully keep your job causes you to spread the anxiety disease to all around you that are susceptible. "Oh no! What if I lose my job? I'll be doomed! I wont be able to pay my bills! I'll lose my house? How will I be able to feed my children? Etc…"
Anxiety is uncertainty. It is Instability. Worry weakens you and steals from your ability. Those who dread tomorrow are only able to tremble today. A successful person may always be wide-awake, but they are never up worrying. Worry, anxiety, and fear are like fine sand being thrown into life's delicate mechanisms; they cause more than half of the friction and steal more than half of the power.
Happiness, goodwill, and consideration are, on the other hand, strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Being happy is not an impossible task. Finding _pleasure_ throughout life does happen when this or that goes correctly or when these and those are obtained. Pleasure can be felt even by accident. However, true happiness requires effort as well as the creation of habits that directly provide your heart the antidote for its anxiety.. It requires one to set aside foolish and unfounded fears as to make room for, and increase our ability to see, the joy that enters our life each day. The joy that had previously been drowned out by the ridiculous worries we cultivated in astronomical amounts. Making ourselves truly happy requires us to tell our worries to wait until we have first fully acknowledged and appreciated our blessings.
Being happy is taking a deep breath, raising your chest, pulling your head up while no longer allowing your eyes to point to the ground, and thinking about how many things you have to be grateful for. Doing this may just assist you in finding that smile that has been growing in a place you have long since forgotten about.
Being happy requires you to consider alternative thought processes.
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Having no thought at all, hiding, avoiding, or doing nothing, would not be appropriate and does not resolve anything. While allowing anxiety to rule your thought only serves to make each of your problems more difficult to resolve, not to mention the threat that is being placed on your life as well as the lives of those around you that are exposed to the disease you are undoubtedly, even if unintentially, spreading. However, learning to consciously choose to cultivate calm and unanxious thoughts in matters surrounding business, to-do lists, difficulties, disappointments, trauma and drama, and all of the other things that you once allowed to cause you fear, anxiety, and stress, will enable you to find yourself laughing at many of the things you used to agonize over. It will enable you to see which friends are actually true and dear and which ones were merely there to share in, and help spread, the disease of anxiety in such a way that was literally
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draining the life from you as well as those around you. Not allowing unnecessary anxiety into your life, and remaining calm when trials arise, will also enable you to see what used to appear as dangerous giants set on harming you as puny, petty adversaries better left alone since their actions in no way will hinder or otherwise affect your ability to succeed and be happy.
On the contrary, if you continue to allow yourself to look at problems, and consider potential (but not yet born) trials, with dread, and you agonize over them, and look at them with eyes of fear, and you worry about them while spreading the disease to your loved ones, you can be assured that even the tiniest of difficulties will become the tallest most challenging mountains to overcome. You will be so overwhelmed with problems that your health will deteriorate, your friends will continue to bring you less joy and affection than you require, and true happiness will continue to be something you feel only possible at the end of fairy tale.
If you worry about getting sick.... you will absolutely become ill. However, if you take joy in the steps required to remain healthy, you will certainly be healthier.... and happier.
Yes, we all must bear our burdens and we will have plenty of them. The process of, or should we say the privilege of, living life in and of itself requires us to experience difficulties. But in no way do these difficulties need to break us. Sadness and sorrow must be fully felt and shared but never should these emotions be permitted to destroy us. None of these trials will be fatal to us or those around us if we remember to keep anxiety at bay, knowing with sound reason and logic that it does nothing to help but everything to worsen the situation. By consciously working to spread the antidotes to anxiety, such as joy, goodwill, sincerity, peace, calmness, we will then, and only then, be able to experience the true feeling of happiness more often than despair.
In that we find true success.
Copyright Notice
This work is copyright 2006 by Deborah D. Gillespie. All rights reserved. This work is NOT in the public domain. This work is made available to you for your personal use only. You are encouraged to read this work online or download this work and make a single copy of it on paper or disk for your personal review. You may not alter, take credit for, distribute, republish, or upload this work to any other computer system, message forum, network, or server.
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Last Modified: August 22nd, 2006
Comments on This Article:
Yvette Francino
03 Aug 2006, 07:45
Indeed! Negative breeds more negative. Positive breeds more positive. When something negative is thrown our way, the natural reaction is to react with more negative. Instead, look at it as a challenge. What can you do to turn the negative into a positive? For example, someone is unfair to you. The natural reaction is to get angry. Maybe, instead, try to understand the person without reacting negatively. It might lead to awareness. It might open your eyes to something you didn't understand before. It might even turn the situation around completely causing positive emotion rather than negative. But anger will serve no purpose other than creating additional negative energy in you and all those around you.
Good article! Thanks!
Yvette
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