The Comfort Zone, Part I

I promised last post that I would start into a detailed discussion of the Comfort Zone, which, in the Fear Mastery map I’ve developed, is the final stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle.  In the work of the last few weeks I’ve begun to realize just how remarkable the Comfort Zone is, and how much it can influence our thinking.  With this post I am starting what will turn into a short series of posts on the Comfort Zone, how it develops, how it restricts our behavior and thinking, and then I will turn to some of the tools that we can use to shake free/reshape our Comfort Zone boundaries.

I don’t know who the first person was who coined the term “The Comfort Zone” to describe the perimeter of rules and boundaries that we create around ourselves for protection.  My first clearly cited reference came from Peter McWilliam’s excellent book “Do It!”, which I first read back in the middle 1990’s.  The bottom line is that the Comfort Zone outlines what we each learn is safe and is not safe as we make our way through the world.  As little kids we learn to look both ways before we cross the street, not touch hot stoves (a particularly powerful Comfort Zone boundary in my experience), not stick screwdrivers in wall sockets, etc.  This is the Comfort Zone in one of its most useful functions – protecting us from real, physical danger.  And it is a pretty powerful protection too.  I once tested this by attempting to (at 2 in the morning, when there wasn’t a car for miles) cross a small residential street without looking both ways.  It was not only difficult, but also extremely uncomfortable.  I had warning bells going off the entire time, and found myself surprised at the energy it took to NOT look left or right as I did it.  Good thing, yes?  This is a natural extension of the Flight or Fight Response, this developing of rules for physical safety. 

But the Comfort Zone doesn’t limit us to physical safety issues.  We also learn what is mentally and emotionally risky as we grow and develop, and those dangers also get built into our Comfort Zone.  One of the classic examples is most people’s fear of speaking to a group.  I’ve been teaching Public Speaking for years and years (starting in graduate school as a TA) and I can tell you first-hand that most people carry this fear.  It ranges from mild discomfort to outright terror (and this is only the sample of people actually willing to take the class!) but it is fear, whatever the intensity.  Now I suspect most people know that they can’t actually get physically injured talking to a group of people, however scary it might feel.  That doesn’t make much difference – all they know is that speaking to a group is frightening.  Another example is cultural taboos – rules we learned early on about what topics are safe or not safe to think about out loud (examples might include sexual behavior, bathroom functions, or political beliefs.)

In a very real sense the Comfort Zone is the final home of our most serious fears.  If you’ve been following the blog so far you’ve learned that we start acquiring fears when we turn a problem into a crisis – when we activate our Flight or Fight Response over something that we can’t resolve immediately.  We start generating “what if?” scenarios that scare us, (The Worry Engine), then latch onto one of those scary scenarios and begin treating it as real (The Indefinite Negative Future), then in our efforts to avoid that frightening future we start avoiding thinking and feeling around the topic (Anticipatory Anxiety.)   If we don’t identify this path and convert the issue back into a problem or problems to solve, as opposed to a crisis that is frightening us in the now and must be resolved immediately, we will wind up walling that fear away – taking the behavior we develop during Anticipatory Anxiety and creating a Comfort Zone boundary. 

And it when it reaches that stage it is going to take some real work to undo.  By the time a concern or fear reaches this point we’ve probably been stressing about it for a fair amount of time, and it has been scaring us all along the way.  We’re weary of being scared and worried, we just want it to stop, and when we build a Comfort Zone boundary around it we can (to some extent, since it hasn’t gone away) take a break from the “tiger” we’ve created in our thinking.  We stop thinking about it (mostly), we reflexively shut down and move away from the topic or fear when it is presented to us, and we (most importantly) usually stop then trying to solve the issue.  And, in addition to the topic itself being frightening, we’re also now pretty strongly conditioned to avoid the emotions and physical sensations that accompany the scary topic for us – a process which also begins back in the Indefinite Negative Future stage, but now has become just about as scary as the topic itself.

It is an elegant solution – you’re afraid, you build a boundary to protect yourself, and you (mostly) then stop being afraid, since you’re no longer thinking about or experiencing the feelings/sensations associated with the issue.  It is also the exact opposite thing from what we need to do.  Because, unlike a hot stove or crossing the street, the topic we’ve walled off is a problem we almost certainly need to address, to think through and resolve.  And we’re not going to do that unless we’re thinking about it!  Not thinking about it in crisis mode (holy crap, what am I going to do, this is really bad, this will be a disaster, etc.) thinking, but problem-solving thinking (what are my options, who can help me, what plans do I have to make, etc.)

This is easy to say – but it is much harder to do when a fear or anxiety reaches this stage in the Chronic Anxiety Cycle.  That doesn’t mean we can’t do it – not by a long shot.  But it will take some work and energy!  And there are other issues to contend with in the Comfort Zone that need to be taken into account as we approach that work.  More on that in my next post…

Anticipatory Anxiety

I’ve been eager to get to the blog this week.  I’ve had a number of conversations with both friends and coaching clients around the elements of the Fear Mastery map, and my thinking around how those elements interact and reinforce each other has seen some good progress.  Some of that thinking  has been about the Indefinite Negative Future.  It has been impressive and encouraging to hear how many people get traction on their racing thoughts and their anxiety with this single element of the map.  Nothing can suck the joy out of life quite so quickly or thoroughly as an unrelenting dark view of the future.  It gets worse when we’re mostly unaware that we’re generating such a view, and so we continue to live in that despairing, or even hopeless, state.

For example:  let’s say my buddy Max has just learned that he has been laid off from his job.  He is anxious, angry and frightened about the current job market, and so he moves into crisis mode.  He begins to worry about finding work.  His brain, responding to being on full alert (i.e., the flight or fight response) is both ruminating over past experiences where things have been bad/scary/worrisome, and projecting potential negative outcomes to his not finding a job right away (i.e., he is generating “what if” scenarios.)  He both narrows his remembering of the past to negative experiences, AND he imagines bad outcomes to his hunt for work. 

His options seem to narrow in his thinking, and he starts to focus on the worst/most frightening possibilities.  What if it takes months to find a job?  What if he runs out of savings?  What if he has to start tapping his 401k or retirement money?  What if he can’t pay his bills?  What if he can’t find a job at all?  What if he runs through all his money, including his retirement?  I suspect some of you reading here find your own anxiety rising as you read these sentences and begin your own cycle of worry and anxiety – easy to do these days!  Max begins to obsess over these indefinite negative futures he’s creating, and in turn he continues to scare himself, generate more flight or fight responses in his body (physical and emotional), continue to ruminate and worry, and as a result make himself more and more stressed and anxious.

Now it’s possible that Max finds a job the next day, or talks himself down with a good friend about how things are not that bad yet, or gets a grip himself because he remembers that the last time he was out of work new work showed up pretty quickly.  But it is just as possible (and probably more likely, for most people) that Max won’t stop obsessing over his indefinite negative future projections, and he will continue to be anxious and afraid as the days pass.  He will find himself exhausted and stressed beyond his capacity to sustain, and so he’ll begin moving to the next stage of the Fear Mastery map – anticipatory anxiety. 

At this point Max begins to push away the scary future he’s been conjuring for himself – he works to stop thinking about it.  In a very real sense he runs away from the scary future.  He might do a number of things – distract himself with other issues, avoid the topic in conversation, medicate himself (alcohol, hours of TV, video games, excessive exercise, you name it), and works to even avoid the physical and emotional sensations that he’s come to associate with that indefinite negative future.  He is desperate to do anything that will ease the constant pressure of the flight or fight response’s effort to resolve this crisis.  And this makes sense, since he’s trying to solve a problem like a crisis.  Remember that a crisis involves an IMMEDIATE risk for injury or death, you have to act on it NOW, and it has to be resolved QUICKLY.  Not a workable approach for someone out of a job, at least most of the time.  He’s physically, mentally and emotionally weary of being afraid/anxious, and so he starts to push it out of his mind, wall it away from his conscious thinking.  And he begins to anticipate feeling anxious, and in an effort to avoid that closes off the situations and discussions that might bring up the scary topic again.  He’s literally becoming anxious about becoming anxious.

This is a pretty ugly scenario.  And I believe this scenario is being played out by just about every member of the human race, on one subject or another.  So what will stop this madness?  The same thing that will stop it at any point in this Chronic Anxiety Cycle I’m describing – making the simple move from crisis thinking back to problem thinking.  I am NOT saying that will necessarily be easy!  Weeks, months and years of worry rarely unplug themselves in a few minutes.  By the same token we can begin to see immediate results if we’ll work to deliberately unplug the Flight or Fight Response in our bodies and minds.  In the very near future I will begin to outline the techniques that work best for different parts of this cycle.  But first I must outline how we get into the last stage of the cycle, the Comfort Zone.  This is the home of the strongest and most seemingly intractable fears we possess, and any discussion of what to do with fear and anxiety must include an understanding of the Comfort Zone and how it exerts control over our thinking and behavior.

The Indefinite Negative Future

I apologize for the long gap in postings!  I have been doing a huge amount of thinking, processing out loud with friends and writing about one of the elements of the Fear Mastery map I’ve created, the Comfort Zone.  That is still several blog posts away, but I can tell you that this has been a very fruitful and interesting couple of weeks, and I can’t wait to share with you what has been produced since my last writing here.

I promised last time that I’d discuss what happens when we let the “Worry Engine” get away from us.  Remember that the Worry Engine’s natural function (in the Flight or Fight Response) is to both pull useful information from your past experience (negative experiences that might have something to do with what you’re worrying about right now, in theory if not always in practice) and project possible scenarios about the future (again, to help you with the thing you’re worrying about – usually possible negative outcomes that you’ll want to avoid.) 

All of this works really well if you’re dealing with immediate, right now danger that could injure or kill you – a real crisis.  This doesn’t work however nearly as well when you’re dealing with a problem as if it was a crisis.  It doesn’t work as well because you’re NOT dealing with a life-or-death crisis.  Sure, it could become one further down the road (or it may not… all of us have had it work out both ways) but for the moment it is still a problem, requiring the thinking that problems require (see “Crisis vs. Problem”, 2/3/10 blog posting.)

So here you are, worrying your head off, remembering difficult or hard experiences from your past (that may in some way relate to what’s got you stressed right now) and you’re creating scenarios about the future – almost always negative scenarios.  If you recognize that you’re doing this the cleanest, most effective way to shake loose of your stress is to stop the Worry Engine in its tracks – shut it down.  Acknowledge that you’re trying to solve this problem as a crisis, and instead move this current dilemma back into the problem column.  Get a little distance, calm yourself down, do some deep breathing, and then come at the problem AS a problem.  Easy to say, sometimes harder to do – other factors can make it VERY hard for us to shut the Worry Engine down – more about that as we develop the map here in the blog (and include the Comfort Zone and its components – the place where are deepest and most stubborn worries/fears/anxieties call home.) 

If we don’t unplug the Worry Engine we will move onto what I call the Indefinite Negative Future, or INF.  At this point we have taken one or more of those negative scenarios from the Worry Engine and begun to treat it/them as if it were in fact accurate, a real map of the future.  Of course we don’t know for sure, and if we were not caught in a pattern of worry and anxiety we’d know that, but we are caught in such a pattern, and so we begin to treat the scenario as likely, or even certain.

And that generates some ugly side effects!  We are now in a very real sense constantly scaring ourselves with our INF projections, firing up the Flight or Fight response again and again, and dealing with the emotions and physical sensations of that response on an on-going basis.  And that gets pretty tedious, pretty fast.  Each of us has a set of responses to stress that we tend to favor, physically, mentally and emotionally.  We’ll discuss these in more depth when we get to the Comfort Zone, but this applies as well to our contact with our INF projections.  So if, for instance, when Flight or Fight fires up in you, you may feel sweaty palms and get frustrated easily.  Or you may develop a stutter and butterflies in your stomach.  Or you might feel fearful and a little dizzy.  All kinds of combinations are possible, and all are directly related to the physiological elements of Flight or Fight.  So when we have those sensations, feelings and thoughts we get anxious as well – and we keep having them when we ponder our Indefinite Negative Future. 

But wait – there’s more.   We feel trapped, boxed in by that INF, and that is scary all by itself.  The future looks pretty bleak (at least for this thing we’re worried about) and I have yet to meet anyone who likes feeling trapped.  Often we have a feeling or sense of impending doom, and that can come to dominate our thinking and our feelings.  Yikes!  Who needs that? 

And it gets wackier still!  Because it isn’t like we only generate one INF projection about only one topic.  No – we do this on multiple fronts, about multiple topics, and so we can have a number of INF’s floating around in our heads.  These can vary in intensity – some less frightening, some really scary – but each pulling our focus, our energy and our time.

Nobody wants to or can keep this up for very long.  Flight or Fight is a response mechanism that is not meant to be activated 18 hours a day.  It is meant for quick, rapidly resolved crisis situations.  The chemicals involved in this response in our body are quite literally toxins when they are pumped again and again into our bloodstreams – and there is a physical price to pay for that repeated exposure. 

At this point I’m sure some folks reading this are already starting to worry about how much they worry.  Cut it out!  You don’t need to go there.  The goal is to move away from the worry and anxiety that pushes so much of your thinking.  My primary goal with this blog, and the resulting eBook that I’m developing for this Fear Mastery map, is to provide the tools to stop treating problems like crises.  Next up on this blog I’ll review where we go when we lock onto an Indefinite Negative Future and dwell there for any length of time, and get us one step closer to the final home of fear and anxiety – the Comfort Zone.

The Worry Engine

Hey Fear Mastery Readers!  Had a pretty exciting last couple of days around this work with fear and anxiety.  One of my faithful readers, Cindy, helped me create some “Eustress” (positive stress, a great concept from “The 4-Hour Workweek”/Tim Ferriss.)  I committed to creating a working outline for an eBook around the concepts I’m articulating here on this blog, and to start writing a bit in the first chapter.  Well, I kicked this in the butt – not only did I finish the outline, but I’ve finished the first draft of Chapter 1 and I’m hip-deep into Chapter 2.  Pretty dang cool.  And, of course, it is helping me clarify further what I want to write about in this blog, just like the blog is helping the process of writing the eBook. 

But that’s not all.  I’m also making contact with a couple of my biggest fears, Comfort Zone boundaries that have been in place for decades, about not presuming that I have the skill or capacity to be a writer that anyone would ever read, and if I was so bold as to write something, what if people rejected it?  Ugh!  Nothing like turning a problem (writing a blog, writing an eBook) into a crisis (complete rejection, total loser, shoot me now.)  Which, if you’ve been reading this blog so far, you understand is precisely what that thinking is about.

OK – onto the discussion of the first element of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle, as promised last posting.  I have two names for this first stage of turning a problem into a crisis.  The first is a technical name, the best I’ve found so far – the Negative Thinking Mechanism.  Another faithful blog reader here, Bob, has a more descriptive tern – The Worry Engine.  Both convey the nature of this first stage.  If you reference the post here on 2/8/10 you’ll see that I mention this as an element of the Flight or Fight Response.  We are hard-wired to, in the presence of danger (real or imagined) to begin to comb the past for similar, relevant experiences, so we have good information, NOW, to deal with the crisis.  In addition that same mechanism begins to project future scenarios, with the goal of helping figure out the likely best course of action in this crisis moment.  What happens if I do this?  What happens if I do that?  Again, fast, and (under the conditions of crisis) useful.

But when we turn a problem into a crisis this high-powered crisis response element becomes the generator of both a great deal of negative thinking, about past and future.  We are desperately (however conscious or unconscious our efforts) trying to find a way OUT of this current problem-turned-crisis in our thinking.  But because it IS a problem, not a life-or-death crisis, we usually don’t instantly (or even quickly) find a way out.  Remember the distinction between problem and crisis I outlined in the post on 2/4/10?  Crises need resolution NOW.  Problems, however much we want to solve them NOW, usually (almost always, really) need time, thinking, planning and work to resolve.

In essence your brain is constantly asking “what if?” over and over again, trying to help you escape the danger you think you’re in.  And because you’re in crisis mode you’re almost certainly not accessing all the capacities you have for problem-solving – logic, clear reasoning, brainstorming, etc.  You’re probably telling yourself the same 1 or 2 solutions over and over again, trying to choose between them.  This makes perfect sense in light of the way the Flight or Fight Response works. 

And of course those probable scenarios you’re projecting are negative ones, yes?  What if this all goes bad?  What if I fail?  What if they don’t like me?  What if I make a mistake?  What if I can’t pay these bills on time?  This isn’t to say that something scary or bad couldn’t happen in the future – far from it!  The point is that it isn’t happening NOW, here, in the present moment.  And us sitting and chewing endlessly over the possible negative outcomes rarely does much more than keep us in an elevated alert mode, adrenaline and cortisol pumping through our bloodstream, trying to get us ready to run or fight.  Which, of course, we can’t do – there is no tiger here with us now – just the scary thought of a problem down the road that we’ve turned into a crisis. 

But wait, there’s more!  Because you’re coursing with the Flight or Fight chemical stew you’re experiencing the feelings that should accompany that alert status – you’re anxious, edgy, fearful, etc. – again, to help you deal with crisis.  And you’re feeling lots of body sensations too, sensations that you’ve probably come to associate with the feelings – hollow feeling in your stomach (or outright nausea), sweaty palms, racing heart, maybe a little dizzy, and a dozen more besides.  And THAT makes us anxious too – a kind of feedback loop that we’re usually not conscious of – we just know this sucks and we want it to stop now.

Sometimes (sometimes rarely) we break out of this loop.  We realize we’re lost in conjecture and speculation, and we shut it down.  But too often (and more so if we’re seriously afraid) we’ll continue on this merry-go-around.  And that isn’t doing much for us to figure out what to do best to solve this problem-turned-crisis.  Great situation, eh?  Well, we’re just at stage 1 here.  Because if we don’t disrupt this work of what if scenarios, if we don’t move out of crisis and back into problem thinking, we’re setting ourselves up for worse.  Next time – what happens when don’t stop the Worry Engine.

Crisis vs. Problem Thinking – an example

Crisis vs. problem.  The more time I give to thinking about and working with this idea (and the more I review it with other people) the more I see how central this is to fear and anxiety.  Tiger = crisis.  That’s easy.  But when we are NOT facing immediate risk for injury or death, well, then you have a problem, NOT a crisis – even if it feels scary as hell.  An example:

I have a buddy (friends for 30 years last August, holy crap!) who was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer a year ago November.  Happy Thanksgiving… she and her husband of course freaked.  They were told “hey, take that cruise, you’re pretty much toast, so make the most of the time you have left.”  (Sure FEELS like a crisis!)  They went off and spent a week wrestling with how to best “do the time remaining” thing, in between some serious bouts of grieving.  And who wouldn’t? 

Except she woke up on a Sunday morning, about a week after the grim word was delivered to her, and she found herself thinking “wait a minute – how do I really KNOW this is it?  Shouldn’t I at least get a second opinion?”  She made an appointment, went with her heart in her hands, and to her surprise was told that in fact no, she didn’t actually have an “expiration date” that anyone could identify with certainty, and that she needed to start exploring treatment options immediately. 

Now, 15 months later, she has been through 2 major surgeries (and 1 minor surgery), she has been back to her beloved Hawaii, she has celebrated birthdays and Christmas-times and 2 more anniversaries with her husband (they are closing in on 30 years together), and what made the crucial difference?  She decided that she wasn’t facing (yet) a crisis, but instead a complex and important problem.  Because she could have sat in her house, worrying about her illness, afraid to talk to the doctor for fear of what they might tell her,  terrified at the thought of her life coming to an abrupt ending, sad for all the missed opportunities, etc.  All of which would keep her actively in Flight or Fight, with all the resulting limitations and paralysis. 

Instead she started educating herself on her illness, consulted doctors and websites, took an aggressive approach to her surgeries and chemotherapy, modified her diet, sought a therapist to help her manage her thinking and her stress… in other words, she tackled the problem.  Has she had dark moments?  You bet.  Has she found herself caught in chronic anxiety, worrying the day away, unable to leave the couch?  Absolutely.  Does she stay there?  No. 

Which, I would argue, is why she is still here, and in fact is healthier (by her own account) than she has been in years, in better shape physically and mentally, more in the present moment and with greater capacity to both continue her own care and enjoy where she is in that present moment.  All of which would be MUCH harder is she was approaching this cancer as a crisis…

 Next up – more examples, and the next stage of the Chronic Anxiety Cycle – creating the Indefinite Negative Future.

More About Crisis vs. Problem Thinking

I’ve received some great feedback on my blog so far – my thanks to everyone who has had things to say either here or by email.  It is pretty great to hear that people are getting traction from the idea that turning problems into crisis is NOT the way to solve problems!  I’ve got a LOT more to say about this… (see my last post about the details of this notion.)

Because it has become my conviction that once a person shifts into crisis mode to deal with a problem they begin a process I’m calling the Chronic Anxiety Cycle.  Or, as my friend Dale calls it, Perpetual Flight.  This process begins from one of the elements of the natural Flight or Fight Response we have to deal with crisis.  When we perceive danger, real or imagined, part of that response is to comb our memories (VERY quickly) for relevant information we have from past experience in dealing with this crisis.  I’m looking at a tiger, for example, so my brain rapidly sorts past tiger experiences to get the best approach to running or fighting.  Great tool in that context, no question!  In addition we rapidly generate scenarios with what we know in order to escape the tiger – we essentially start asking ourselves “what if?” questions.  Again, highly useful in the advent of a crisis…

But when you do this with a problem (something that can’t be solved, most likely, right in the moment, and it will take some time and work to resolve) then this trying to recall earlier dangers becomes a liability.  I call it the Negative Thinking Mechanism, or the “Worry Engine.”  We begin to start thinking “what if”, and the slant is always towards the negative – what happens if this bad thing occurs?  What are the expected outcomes?  We very rarely start projecting sunny and hopeful outcomes – we instead extrapolate negative outcomes.  Makes sense – running into tigers rarely results in happy outcomes.  That makes us more worried, so we do it again, and that increases our worry, so we do it again, etc. 

One of the ironic outcomes of all this projecting is that we step out of the present – we are either reliving previous negative experiences or focused on frightening or unnerving future scenarios.  We are NOT being where we are, right now.  Yet our bodies really only get right now – so regardless of what is upsetting you, your body will continue to generate flight or fight responses – more adrenaline, more preparing to fight or run, more physical and emotional responses designed to gear you up for whatever this danger is.  Only there IS, in this moment, no danger.  There IS a problem or problems to solve, but we are in crisis mode. 

As I said in my last blog post we are not in our most useful problem-solving condition when we are in crisis mode.  Which doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes solve the problem with our crisis response.  Sometimes it works.  And a great deal of the time it doesn’t work.  Whether it works or not the stress on our bodies and minds is much greater than if we don’t approach a problem as a crisis.  And even if we do resolve the problem via crisis mode we almost certainly haven’t accessed our best information, resources, or thinking to do so. 

And, of course, many times the problem continues to grow and get larger (in our thinking), so we worry some more about the problem and the scenarios we are creating around potential outcomes.  If we keep it up long enough we move on further into the Chronic Anxiety Cycle, which in turn takes more energy and increases the drain on our brains and bodies.  If we don’t disrupt this cycle here we begin to set ourselves up for long-term anxiety (i.e., chronic anxiety) and the resulting problems that creates for us.  More about that in the next couple of weeks.  In my next posting I will give you some examples from my own and other people’s experiences around this crisis-problem discussion, and what happens when we start feeding the Worry Engine.

Crisis vs. Problem!

In my last post I outlined the basics of Flight or Fight, both what it is supposed to do, and how it makes you feel and think.  And it is crucial to understand this because all of what we wind up turning into anxiety and stress springs from this source.  How does that work?

 It is remarkably simple.  Nature gave us a remarkable “first-alert” response system for dealing with danger.  It is, however, a system that is supremely suited for acute danger – i.e., danger that is real and present RIGHT NOW.  It is a system that works best for what I call a crisis.  Crisis, in this definition, has the following requirements:

There is real, immediate risk for injury or death

You have to do something about it right now

It has to be resolved quickly

 Now I’m clear that a lot of us (most of us, probably) have felt we’ve been in crisis for a lot of our lives.  Certainly in this current recession it feels like crisis is a part of daily life.  But it is very important to be clear on what really can be called a crisis and what is, instead of a crisis, a problem to solve.  This is hugely important because how we see/feel the difference in the two is what either triggers the flight or fight response in us, and what instead triggers clear thinking and strong problem-solving skills.   So what is the definition of a problem?  It looks like this:

There is NO immediate risk for injury or death

You CAN’T (in all likelihood) fix it right this moment

It will take some time, energy and thinking to be resolved

Compare the two – crisis and problem.  One does NOT have a lot of time for problem-solving and rational thought, and in fact the flight or fight response tends to close down most of that rational thinking stuff – you don’t need it to run from the tiger or find a rock big enough to defend yourself.  If you don’t do something NOW you’re going to be the main course for dinner (remember, immediate risk for injury or death is one of the elements of it really being a crisis.)  Don’t really need your brain to head for the hills or club something! 

On the other hand, problems don’t resolve the way crises do.  Problems require strategic thinking, some use of logic, accessing good information/doing some research, time to ponder different solutions, etc.  The conditions that make for great crisis resolution do not lend themselves to great problem-solving…

This leads me to the first (and one of the most important) keys to shutting down debilitating anxiety and fear.  If you are treating a crisis like a crisis, you’re doing the exact right thing.  If you’re treating a problem like you’re a problem again you’re right on the money.  But most of us tend to treat some (or many) of the problems in our life like a crisis – and THAT’S where we get into trouble.  The heart of this work, and everything I’m going to discuss from here out, will consist of exactly that – refusing to treat problems like crises.  Because good crisis responses rarely make for good problem-solving, but do make amazingly fertile ground for chronic anxiety, stress, and depression. 

Next post – how we build and maintain chronic anxiety/stress.

Fear and the Flight or Fight Response

I have been thinking about and studying the origins of fear and anxiety for a number of years.  One of my goals has been to find a simple, elegant map for the entire spectrum of fear and anxiety.  I am now convinced that all fear, regardless of the intensity or duration of those fears, stems from the basic physiological mechanism called Flight or Fight.  I am also convinced that there is an enormous amount of leverage on our fears that can be gained from this understanding.  (Look for the page on this blog coming in the next couple of weeks called “Research Information” for more material about the various physical and psychological issues that support and explain further the ideas you’ll read in this blog.)

It may seem simplistic to say that all the fear that people experience is simply a result of Flight or Fight.  But this isn’t to say that our fears are completed explained by F or F.  Several elements are required to create an accurate map of how our fears start, grow and maintain their strength with us.  No, I’m saying that the root, the basic origin of ALL of our fears and anxiety, begin in Flight or Fight.  And I also believe that this single understanding has a lot of potential power in helping us take on and defuse the power of our fears before they can grow and take over our lives.

The irony of the power of our fears and anxiety is that this remarkable set of responses called F or F is designed to keep us safe from danger!  Here’s what happens: 

1)       You experience a scary event or thing.  This can take many forms – a real physical danger (car accident, tiger in the woods), a relational problem (fight with your significant other, illness of a friend), a potential future event (loss of a job, death of a parent) or even large, global concerns (downturn in the economy, growing older.)  Doesn’t make much difference – the bottom-line is YOU are frightened/unnerved/worried about this event or thing.

2)      When this happens you activate a hard-wired system, what we call the Flight or Fight Response.  I will dig into the biology of that response in a later post here, but for the moment know that when this activates you are invariably going to experience some things that are designed to protect you.  It is important to understand that it doesn’t have to be a real or immediate danger – if you’re afraid of it, that’s enough for your brain.

3)      Your brain/body then gear up to either run or defend you – hence the name Flight or Fight.  And it is truly an impressive response system that we have!  Your brain shuts down blood flow to non-crisis functions like digestion or very often your higher thinking functions (VERY important for later in these conversations), your heartbeat elevates to cope with the need for extra oxygen in your bloodstream, you sweat to dump excessive heat that your body starts to generate, your focus narrows (i.e., your options simplify – run or fight?), your brain rapidly scans past experience to find relevant information to deal with this perceived threat – and all of this happens very, very quickly. 

4)      In that rapid response system you experience the following:

1. Feelings – like fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, worry, and panic – the list is pretty extensive.
2. Thinking responses – confusion, disorientation, loss of focus, and others.

5)      To make this even more intense you have developed a safety system, Flight or Fight that tends to default to Flight first.  Which makes perfect sense – if you run, and get away, hey, you’re uninjured and you’re safe!  We tend to only turn and fight if we feel trapped, can’t see a way to run.  Even the big cats like tigers and lions, if frightened suddenly, will turn and run rather than fight first.

6)      This system didn’t develop to keep up for a long period of time.  It is designed to get you AWAY from danger, NOW, either by running from the danger or getting rid of the danger by fighting.  You’re not supposed to experience this for hours or days or weeks – more like minutes. 

There is a LOT to digest in this information about the Flight or Fight Response.  The key things to take away at this point is

1)       If you’re afraid you’re going to activate the response – period.  Doesn’t make any difference how real or immediate the danger is – you’re afraid, and that’s enough.

2)      You’re hardwired to that response – you’re going to go through some of the F or F experiences, very quickly, no matter what.

3)      The WHOLE GOAL is to get you away from the danger.  That’s where your brain and body are driving you. 

So how is this useful to you as you think about what your fears are, and why you feel anxious?  Because unless you’re dealing with a real, immediate, actual physical danger (like a tiger or a car accident about to happen) you’re, without being aware of it, attempting to solve a problem like a crisis.  And this is where our fears and anxieties begin to take root and grow. 

Next post – how the Flight or Fight Response develops into chronic anxiety and fear, and the first in a series of “keys” to help you get free of fear and anxiety.

Plan for blogging/website

I have intended for over a year to start a blog about my thinking and experience with mastering fear and anxiety.  It is ironic that the principal reason I’ve delayed starting is my concern that I wouldn’t be able to articulate clearly enough, communicate effectively enough all that I’ve been thinking about around these topics.

Well, to quote Susan Jeffers, I’m feeling the fear and doing it anyway.  It’s time to get this show on the road!  It is my simple goal to gather together the volumes of good thinking and writing around fear and anxiety into a clear, unified, accessible framework that anyone can use.  When I was moving through therapy for chronic panic attacks in 1995 I promised myself that I would work to help other people move through and past their fear.  This blog is a first step in that direction.

There are a number of key elements to understanding and mastering fear, and I intend in this blog to address each of them in detail.  I also intend to build a website around this blog as a clearinghouse for such information, and to design basic study programs that anyone can work through to master their anxiety and fear. As this site develops my hope is to build a community of people to strengthen and further this work.

I read during my recovery from panic attacks (and have it heard since) that something like 1 in 10 Americans fights panic attacks.  And it seems clear that many other people who don’t fight that problem are nevertheless gripped by chronic fears about a wide range of topics – the economy, job loss, relationship problems, aging, illness, you name it.  It is heartbreaking to see how much fear and anxiety wreaks havoc on people’s lives when there is such good information available on how to overcome and move past fear. 

Next blog post – the origins of fear and anxiety.

Mastering Fear and Anxiety

 It is amazing to me how much mis-information is in the world about the nature of anxiety and fear.  Perhaps the most harmful one is the notion that fear and anxiety are a kind of personal weakness – a failure of character or will on the part of an individual.  I suspect a number of things spring from that assumption.  One of them is our tendency to NOT share with other people, even those we trust and love, our fears and deepest worries.  Another is to assume that seeking help for those fears is a kind of personal failure.   And still another is that if we just buck up and tough it out we’ll somehow tough our way through fear.  The last is not entirely without merit – there are times when that makes a great deal of sense. 

But fear and anxiety are not in fact failures of will or character.  Fear and anxiety are part of what it means to be human, and as such are supposed to serve useful purposes for our lives.  One of the big secrets about fear and anxiety is that they are actually allies of ours, friends who are here to help us make good decisions and live healthy lives.  That they often spiral out of control, or take over our thinking, doesn’t take away from the fact that fear is something we can learn to harness and use to our advantage.

The simple goal of this blog (and the website that is being developed around it) is to give anyone who wants it the tools and techniques to turn fear and anxiety into the friends they should be – to master our fears.

One of the first steps towards that goal is beginning to understand the narrative or story we tell ourselves about our fears.  Everyone in the world has a set of stories about their life and what they experience in that life.  Those stories are very, very powerful filters that  strongly influence what that individual experiences in any given moment.  Becoming conscious of the stories we tell ourselves about our fears and anxieties is a crucial step on the road to mastering our fear. 

Which takes me back to the beginning of this entry!  What is the story you tell yourself about what it means to be afraid or anxious?  Do you see that as a personal failing of some kind, a weakness of character that you have to mask or keep hidden?  Do you tell yourself that other people are not afraid, frightened, paralyzed by their fear?  Can you conceive of a life in which fear is a servant and an ally, rather than an enemy?