When someone has the upper hand

Street drugs can also cause a dependency that can make someone feel the symptoms of an anxiety attack. In the case where drugs or alcohol withdrawal play a factor in anxiety attacks, the condition is usually managed with the use of other drugs and the patient gradually weaned off of medications. Anxiety can also be caused by a thyroid problem. If you go to your doctor with acute anxiety, chances are that he or she will want to test your thyroid for abnormal activity. In most cases, however, the test will reveal nothing is wrong. There is also medical evidence to indicate that heredity can play a role in having anxiety. Many people who suffer from anxiety attacks have close family members who also suffer. Doctors believe that a chemical imbalance in the brain is the physical culprit for many anxiety disorders and will often prescribe drugs that will increase the amount of serotonin in the brain. But it all started with loads and loads of very unpleasant feelings of doubt that I chose to face. II had to constantly deal with phases one and two of fear. My early days of being sober were filled with feelings of extreme sickness from having my fight or flight on overdrive due to fearing I would drink again. I continually battled non-stop negative chatter calling myself all sorts of degrading terms while trying to get me to fail with my goal of remaining sober. By learning how to perceive my biological response as a warning system and not a source of punishment, I was able to get through these trying times with the help of ACT coping skills. You will learn to do the same. Besides avoidance, there are many other undesirable traits that define a coward. For your next challenge, I want you to focus on these three deplorable traits: your avoidance of a non-fearful task, not taking responsibility for your actions, and making excuses. Once again, these other two detestable factors, which are lack of responsibility and making excuses, describe the majority of most weak and cowardly people. Even if you confront your fears, that may not be enough. When I was in my early twenties, a guy I met on a beach volleyball court got me reading the Eastern philosophers and martial-arts masters. I wrestled with the unfamiliar language.

What concepts I could grasp, I had difficulty putting into practice. Even when my doctoral dissertation hooked me up with Robert Nideffer, the world's leading authority on attentional theory, I found that the same gap persisted between academic understanding and clinical practice. I was determined to close that gap. I wrote a piece of writing of my own, but more important, I field-tested my ideas on my clients. I taught them: Presence--how to stay in the moment, and not leap ahead or drift into the past Intensity--how to train 100 percent of their energies on the object or task at hand Duration--how to sustain their focus past external distraction for as long as the task required it This ubiquitous public modesty put my own Western dressing habits in sharp perspective. When we went to see a dance performance, my tank top and Western shorts felt immodest and tarty as I sat down among a crowd of local Sabans, and the skin of my upper arms and thighs offensively overexposed. As we waited for the show to start, I remembered one morning early in my experiment when I'd been dazzled by the graceful way a young woman had carried herself as she crossed a street. I'd noticed her dancer's posture because she'd been dressed in baggy, unattractive clothes with her hair in a floppy ponytail. Now I recognized that if that dancer had been wearing a miniskirt and heeled boots, or even showing as much skin as I was showing right now at the show, the whole positive chain reaction would have been sabotaged. My nasty, sexually competitive inner Voice would have whispered Bitch. Quickly, I picked Hattie up and set her on my lap; as an attention deflector, she rarely failed,* and warm smiles from fellow audience members quickly followed. As John, Hattie, and I went on that day to browse through a local Saban market--all the vendors more modestly concealed than I was--I wondered whether some enterprising female researcher had ever found an increase in female cooperation and goodwill in societies that banned sexy advertisements and enforced (weather-appropriate) modesty or even uniforms. I sort of hoped she had. Many in the medical community believe that a lack of serotonin or loss of this chemical is what causes anxiety and depression. Stress is usually the result of incidents happening in someone's life that are deemed to be stressful.

The more stress the body takes on, the more likely the stress will manifest itself into an anxiety or panic attack. While some of the above are negative stressors, you will note that some are positive stressors. Moving to a new home can be exciting, but it is still a form of stress, even if it is your dream home. Getting married and having a baby are two joyous occasions, but still, are major components of stress because they catapult you out of your comfort zone. At the time that the stressful event is occurring, you may feel in complete control and be able to manage. It is usually after one of these events that you will experience a panic or anxiety attack. If you have experienced any of the above stressors, be aware that they can lead to an anxiety attack. While this is not true in every case, these major stressors usually lead to a general sense of discomfort for some people, for others they can lead to full-blown anxiety or panic attack. If you continue to display avoidance behavior with a simple task, refusal to be accountable for your actions, and blame others for your circumstances, you are still a fucking coward. You hear me? ! I don't give a horse's ass how good you get at tapping into your ability to take action against your fears. If you don't do something about these 3 other factors, these three candy-ass traits will keep you stuck in your cowardly life no matter how proficient you get at going to places that scare you. Let's go back to Antony's case. When he got the nerve to meet up with his landlord, he didn't take responsibility for his carelessness. Anthony refused to see that his lack of action to budget his weekly allowance was his own doing. Instead of admitting that he has a major issue with controlling his money, he refused to find fault in himself. He lied and blamed his job for being late on his paycheck and then accused his bank for not cashing his check on time. Mental quiet--how to remain undistracted by internal noise or imagery Together, these skills comprise focus--the ability to concentrate fully on one person, object, task, feeling, or concept for as long as necessary.

By the end of this piece of writing, you, too, will have learned to concentrate. I'm going to give you a whole tool chest of strategies to get you into the present moment; to get your focus to the level at which you perform best; to sustain that focus past all distraction; and to get past mental noise, past thinking, to that magical place where you are of such single-minded purpose and action that there is no distinction between yourself and the object of your focus. If this sounds like work, it is. But I promise you, the payoff will more than compensate you for your effort. When I met Cammie*, twenty-eight, she had just failed her state medical board for the second time. In the next second, I hoped she hadn't--or wouldn't--until I was fifty and had clearly lost the upper hand. Because I couldn't decide whether I was for liberated exposure of the female body or for cooperative concealment, I did some directed people watching in the airports on our way back to Hong Kong. Clearly, the world's women had not gotten the memo about staying on message with their bodies and clothes; the variety of information they sent about wealth, age, culture, marital status, and religion was staggering: Western shorts and tank tops could bare tantalizing youthful limbs, but they also broadcast aggressive mature concern for comfort over local custom. Salwar kameez concealed youthful South Asian figures, whereas saris exposed ample maternal midriffs in swaths of gold-edged fabric. Muslim caftans and head scarves piously concealed the female shape but sometimes revealed thickly made-up faces and bloodred toenails in jeweled sandals. Then, when we deplaned into the billboard-rich environment of the Hong Kong International Airport, I encountered an array of female bosoms, legs, and shoulders suggesting I buy things. If I did, my own body would become free advertising space for the brands. This system was gangbusters in label-crazy Hong Kong--no one seemed the slightest bit embarrassed to be a walking mannequin. After John, Hattie, and I retrieved our luggage, we boarded the Airport Express train for the trip back to Central. When you can't control yourself when you are faced with different life situations, this means that you will tend to be more hesitant about making certain decisions, or life changes, because your anxiety can block you from reaching your full potential.

When this is coupled with a negative mindset, that is often associated with stress, chances of you succeeding in life are slim. When you suffer from an anxiety disorder, your self-esteem and confidence are typically pretty low since your mind is filled with so many negative thoughts about your value and your abilities. Besides having an effect on your confidence, the constant tension that you always have because of anxiety can often cause you to suffer from severe headaches and muscle tension that worsens over time. While the negative effects of anxiety might be enough to motivate you to overcome your anxiety, knowing some of the benefits of going through the process can help you want to change. For some people who suffer from an anxiety disorder, the physicals symptoms associated with the disease will be much worse than for others. For others, feelings of fear and doom might occur for no reason at all, leaving them feeling scared and unsafe to the point they put up walls around them in order to protect themselves. The problem with anxiety is that the constant worrying about what might happen to lead them to feel overwhelmed by the world around them. Then he accused his roommate for owing him money and not paying his share of the rent. He even blamed his girlfriend for not lending him the cash to cover the bounced checks. Once again, Antony had to call his parents to rescue him, thereby reinforcing his life as a baby and worthless adult. As you can see with Antony not feeling responsible for the predicament he's in and then pointing the finger at everyone else, Antony is still a damn coward in my opinion. By not being accountable and accepting blame, he doesn't learn the lesson from the experience. Instead, he will most likely repeat this behavior pattern, thus continuing his life as a coward like a spoiled and useless infant. There is nothing lower and worse than this awful combination of being a coward while at the same time acting like a baby. Always remember this. If you ever suspect you are living the role of being a pussy that needs to be coddle and pampered, you must do everything you possibly can to break away from this pitiful lifestyle. And I literally mean everything. I had no trouble concentrating on the test, she explained to me. It's the studying that's a problem.