All Emotions Are Normal.
Over the years, the desire to succeed and present an impressive image to others has perhaps led us down the path where acknowledging emotions and experiences that are deeply uncomfortable and painful has become very uncommon. On the occasions where these feelings are acknowledged, they are either conveyed as tokenisms (superficial and not genuinely represented) or are overly exaggerated.
Sadness, worry, doubt, fear, anger, jealousy and despair are all normal emotions and states. To believe that we will not encounter them in our lives if we do things a certain way or avoid factors and situations that we can’t control is a serious and disturbing misconception.
The main issues here are, how do we address and manage these emotions?
How do we help our children learn to respond to these emotions in a mindful way?
How do we manage our own shortcomings when faced with the task of mentoring our young ones?
If we have never been taught to do this for ourselves, will we have the capacity to learn, implement and then teach others?
For this topic, I will only focus on anxiety.
What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety is an emotional state involving the following facets of our personalities: physiological, psychological, cognitive and behavioural.
Majority of the time, people only identify the physiological manifestations eg a rapid heart rate, shallow fast breathing with chest tightness, abdominal discomfort with loose stools or nausea and vomiting, sweating hands and feet, dizziness, pounding head and feeling flushed etc as physical symptoms and signs of anxiety.
Many people choose to manage these presentations by using substances (illicit or prescribed) and hope that they do not last for long.
Some can end up convincing themselves that there is a pathology or disease that is causing those symptoms and signs to present and start the vicious cycle of investigations and searching for a cause, often leading to a condition called health anxiety with a fear of death or disability.
Others might adopt a different approach and start to ‘fake it till they make it!’ However this approach also leads to a deterioration in their well-being because the ‘faking’ is exhausting not to mention how it segues into other maladaptive coping behaviours.
Another problematic attitude is to trivialise these behaviours. An example of that would be: Since everyone is busy, trying to do their best and wearing many hats, it is normal to feel tired and stressed all the time. This trivialisation and social acceptance makes it harder for people to be genuine about how they are coping. They are reluctant to seek help because speaking up in this environment makes them seem weak and inept. This pushes them to feel more and more pressured yet not safe or comfortable to reach out for help or admit that their and society’s expectations are unreasonable and unrealistic. Behaviours and habits that are familiar yet unhelpful and even damaging can then become more ingrained in their personalities such as masking (if I act like all is fine and under control, it will be), smoking, drinking as well as emotionally driven behaviours including eating, exercising, shopping along with other risky behaviours.
Once caught in the mesh of these maladaptive behaviours they lose sight of the need for change and the meaning behind it because the physical, emotional and cognitive exhaustion becomes overwhelming.
Anxiety is a normal emotion unless it impacts our thoughts and behaviours in a way that distances ourselves from our values and how we wish to live and what matters most to us. When it causes such disruption then it needs to be understood and addressed and there are several approaches that work for different people.
Every management approach needs to be tailored to the individual. Some people find debriefing and talking about their experiences helpful to identify the choices they need to make to improve things. Others find lifestyle changes related to their diet, sleep and exercise helpful as they explore their behaviours in context to their relationships and work. Some people find medications helpful and it is imperative to mention where medications can facilitate one’s improvement and emotional well-being, until the committed work is done to understand our ‘journey’ in life, the solutions will often not be sustainable.
Like everything in life, well-being and health needs consistent effort from us if it is to be maintained optimally. We are all ‘works in progress’ and will need to keep up with the work in order to live meaningful and rich lives where we choose to embrace things we find uncomfortable and accept all the variables that are outside of our control.
