I learned today that the goal is to be able to live with the anxiety, not for it to necessarily go away. This is disheartening.
Yes the goal is to be able to live with it, but by doing so, it will weaken. Anxiety will never totally go away because it's built into us as humans. It's been important for our survival throughout all of evolution. However, we CAN regulate the frequency and intensity of the anxiety. The key is by not resisting it, which is what you practice when practicing things like meditation and ERP. When you allow anxiety to run its course naturally, you will see that it comes and goes on its own. When you try to resist it and get rid of it through compulsive behavior, it stays around longer and gets more intense. It's like fanning the flames. What you will learn over time is that you can handle anxiety much better than you think. Because we assume that anxiety is the problem, but it isn't. Our resistance of it is the problem, and holds us in that overly anxious state that is so uncomfortable.
@djflorio So just let it all happen? My hearts pounding should I try to slow it down or just let it go?
@MarinoTime - I would say it depends on the situation. But in general, what you want to practice is acknowledging the physical symptoms of anxiety and turning towards them rather than away from them. If you are completely besides yourself with panic and a pounding heart, then you can focus your attention on your breath. Notice what your breathing pattern is like, and then gently try to deepen your inhales and slow down your exhales. When you exhale slowly, you signal to your nervous system that you are safe. This will deactivate the sympathetic nervous system and activate the parasympathetic. This will at least take the edge off. But you will likely still FEEL anxious, and that's where surrendering to the anxiety comes into play. Bring your attention to where you actually feel the anxiety, and notice it with curiosity rather than judgement. Pretend you're an alien creature that just inhabited your human body, and are learning what anxiety feels like for the first time. Just scan the body and see what you can find. How does your chest feel? Hot? Tight? Tingly? How about your stomach? Are your shoulders tense? Is your jaw clenched? The point is that you aren't trying to get rid of anything here, you only want to notice. Normally our thoughts tack on a bunch of extra information to what we're feeling, and we get caught in the loop. We feel anxious and latch onto thoughts like, "This is terrible! Why do I feel like this? Something really bad is going to happen to me! I need to get rid of this feeling!," etc. What you want to do is allow those thoughts to be there while not latching onto them. You don't have to get rid of them, just like you don't have to get rid of the anxiety. By training ourselves to turn towards the physical sensations, we train ourselves to get out of our heads and actually feel what the body wants to feel. You'll find that anxiety is nothing but a collection of slightly uncomfortable physical feelings. Once you can identify what is physically happening, you can then start adjusting things to see what happens. Maybe you relax your shoulders, unclench your jaw, or place your hand over your chest. Then you simply continue to notice; does anything change? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Again, you aren't trying to force anything to happen, you are only noticing and learning. If you continue to feel a lot of anxiety, just say, "I'm aware of this anxiety." So long story short, I think the answer to your question is somewhere in the middle. You don't want to force anything to change, and at the same time you don't want to ignore it. My favorite analogy is to treat anxiety as if it's your inner child. When a child is in hysterics, you don't want to get angry or forceful with them, and you also don't want to ignore them. You want to acknowledge their emotions and validate them.
OP here. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond with such helpful info. I greatly appreciated the information you provided to the other commenter too. This is all such a learning experience. It takes take to learn it, and then to consistently apply it. You experience and knowledge is helpful.
@Anonymous - No problem at all. I know I tend to dump a lot in my responses, so don't mind me 😅. It's all based on my own experience, so feel free to practice what works for you, and ignore the rest. I'm also learning. If it helps give you more hope, I can say that anxiety used to run my life, and now it simply doesn't. I'm at the point where most of the time I don't feel like I'm any more anxious than the average person. It has taken me a lot of practice and a few perspective shifts to get here, but comparing my life to maybe 4 or 5 years ago is like night and day.
I can understand why it’d be disheartening but learning to be able to be OK with your OCD really changed my life because I don’t have to fear OCD anymore. It used to terrify me every second of the day so for me it was a massive miracle.
Yeah I have no idea how to live with this if only the anxiety goes away. I can’t imagine going another 5 years with this.
Here is what I say to people: I wish I could make it stop. I really do. I also wish I could stop tinnitus. What is tinnitus, you may ask? Well, have you ever gone to a loud concert and after it had a ringing in your ears. Or, in movies when a loud explosion hears, first it is often muffled, and then there is a very loud ringing sound. Well, I have hear that sound for over 30 years. Turns out the medications I took as a kid for allergies and all the antibiotics I was on for Strep had a side effect for some people - tinnitus - that sound that I have heard every decade, year, month, day, hour, and second, for the past 30 years. I have learned to live with it. As I type this, it is REALLY loud, because I am paying attention to it. But, in a few minutes it will fade into the background, and, while I will hear it, I will not pay much attention to it, and therefore I will go on with my night. I will listen to music, practice my story for the MOTH radio hour, and work out. I will clean up the kitchen and load the dishwasher, and I will eventually get ready for bed. I will go to bed hearing that sound, and fall asleep for a few hours until tomorrow morning when I start the day all over again. I cannot make the sound stop. There is nothing to do for it - no surgery or medication. Just learning to live with it, and that is what I have done. It is the thing that I hate the most in my life, and, if granted three wishes, it would be the first thing to change. For now, as I have for 30 years, I will live with it, and I will ask you to live with your noises in your head - the thoughts, the images, and the urges, and we will practice together accepting that things are not always as we want them, but we can handle that. We got this.
I feel like every day I try to sit with uncertainty, but it just feels never ending. Like I receive a little bit of hope and get to the top of one hill and feel like things may get better in a while, there's another hill right in front of me that feels more frightening. It's really frustrating. I know it's the nature of this disorder but ughhhhh
Is this even a possibility? I'm not even sure if it's an OCD issue, GAD, or maybe a lack of something else, but I'm just constantly feeling off. Even if I'm not getting constant intrusive thoughts, I just feel on edge all the time? Is there anyone who's been able to overcome this? It bothers me so much 😭
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