Beating Anxiety takes Work and Practice

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Life Coach, anxiety is one of the number one issues that bring clients through my door. For some, the anxiety is severe and is related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or having a ruminating worry-mind that seems to obsess more and more the longer it goes untreated. My clients that fall into the first category that began having intense anxiety after Sept 11 or remembering being sexual assaulted as a child. Their worry no longer focuses exclusively on terrorist attacks or perpetrators, but has globalized into a general feeling of lack of safety and negativity: always thinking people will do them wrong, obsessing about their kids and germs, second guessing every decision they make.

For others, anxiety is situation-related meaning that their worry thoughts increase when a real, external situation has caused them to be concerned. This second category of worriers has increased in numbers dramatically in response to the financial "crisis" that has gotten powerful media attention. For some, this increase in worry can become more than an unsettled feeling and can develop into panic attacks, negative thinking, depression, over-protective parenting, and an increase in poor coping behaviors like alcohol and food.

One such case that comes to mind is a client that came to see me a few months ago to finally gain clarity about ending her 20 year marriage. Maggy (not her real name) has two children under 13 and lives in an affluent part of Long Island and has been feeling anxious all of her life. At a younger age, her anxiety was related to having a mentally ill brother and an alcoholic mother, two conditions that no one in the family actually acknowledged but everyone tip-toed around. She felt unsafe and uncared for and translated that belief into a worry that she wasn't worth much and was unimportant. In her late teens, Maggy married a man that enabled her to feel as invisible and unloved as she did as a youngster, and her own anxiety about not being good enough was repeatedly confirmed back to her by his emotional distance and sometimes scathing criticisms of her. Her anxiety deepened with guilt about not loving him, wanting to leave for all 20 years and regretting not following her own gut to not marry him, and about the pain her children would go through if they did separate. She agonized about why she ever married him, wasting years of self development, whether she tried hard enough to make it work in couples counseling, and how he would cope with her leaving.

After a few weeks of therapy, Maggy began to own her own feelings and decided to do what she had been putting off for half her life at this point- she spoke up and filed for divorce. She stopped blaming her husband for not being loving enough as she became clear about why she chose him as her mate to begin with.

Relief replaced the terrible feeling she had been enduring for years about not following her own inner guidance. Yet, the wonderful feelings she felt for standing up for herself were immediately replaced by the second wave on worry. Questions like would she be more or less alone without him, how the kids would handle everything, and most of all how would she be able to afford being divorced. After all, she had given up her career early in their marriage and only worked a small, part-time job ever since her children were of school age.

In Maggy's case, we have both types of anxiety at play: the kind that has existed for years since her childhood and permeates into all that she does, the kind that finds a way to worry even when there is no immediate problem. Further, she developed anxiety about the real and current dilemma of getting a divorce and the complications this poses. Lastly, she became further anxious as she thought of her financial situation and the poverty that divorce could create.

Maggy's anxiety worsened as the economic crisis became more a part of her media diet. While the economics of divorce could encourage many women to stay with their partners, a worldwide economic "meltdown" threatened to make Maggy worry that she would never be able to leave. How would she find a job when no one is hiring, how would she feed her kids or rent and apartment?

Read on to "Here's What Helped" article for useful and practical tools to help beat anxiety!