Loading The Emotional Dice of Anxiety

Generally the same threats that threaten us, threaten others.  Everyone with a heart (which is everyone) could have a heart attack.  Everyone who lives in a house could have a break in or a fire.

However, not everyone chooses to dwell on the possible.  Are they less safe than those who have developed an anxiety disorder about these things?  No.  You might think you are more safe if you never get into a car, but would you choose a fender bender where no one gets hurt or a horrible slip on a puddle in your bathroom where you strike your head and neck and are paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life?


This is our point:  anxious people load the dice of possibility according to their fear, not the likelihood of that fear actually happening.  You may be afraid of a car accident but not about climbing on a chair while you are cooped up at home.  However, it is actually more likely you will fall in your home (possibly causing severe injury) than you will get into a car accident.  You might not be afraid in your home.  But is that reasonable to be less afraid of a "more dangerous" place and to be more afraid of a "less dangerous" place?  No.  You just chose to focus on a fear which made it seem that that fear is  more likely to happen, when really it isn't.

(Technically it is not reasonable to be afraid of anything.  Aware, yes.  Prepared, yes.  Cowering away from it?  No.)

Now, here is something that anyone trying to emerge from anxiety encounters:  that often subconscious fear that the MINUTE they let their guard down, BAM!  Whatever they are afraid of will happen.  Let us just tell you that it does not work that way.

Just because you choose to not be afraid of something, that does not mean it will happen.  Just because you are afraid of something, that does not mean it will not happen.  This sense of fear is just of an imaginary likelihood, not a real one.

We need to understand this. If you are driving and are getting into an accident right now, first of all you know better than to drive and read, but secondly, your fear as your car skids into another is reasonable.

It is not reasonable, though, to have a fear of something that is not going on.  To anticipate pain or loss just wastes valuable time and brain space.  Your mind is too valuable to use it on foolishness, so start using your powerful mind to overcome your lizard brain.

One of your tools you can use is to look around you to what other people fear.  If people are not driving because there is an ice storm, that is reasonable.  If people are driving because it is a normal Tuesday afternoon, then that is also reasonable.  When you cannot depend on your own sense of what is reasonable, you often have to look at the actions of others.

Some pretty tough talk, yes.  We have found, though, that we have to be stern with the emotions but gentle with the spirit and to use the mind to focus the brain.  You know that your fear is unreasonable....we are not telling you anything new :)  And we are not condemning you for it.  But if there is one thing you can find here at TCG is honesty and straight talk.  We value you as a person too much to blow sunshine up your skirt.