The Human Problem of Anxiety
If there is one problem that I deal with the most in my private counseling practice it is this problem of human anxiety.
Many times a client comes to see me and talks about having anxiety attacks or panic attacks. The medical world often provides a drug call Ativan and people are told to slip one of these pills under their tongues when they feel an attack coming on and, for a short time, one is released from the pressure. It saddens me to see that so many people believe that their problem is outside of their control and some brain chemical problem. If there is a genocide today that is going unnoticed, it is the millions of people that are on psychotropic medication, for a mental illness. Psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies have teamed up to give human beings their greatest excuse for not being responsible for their lives. This approach is one in which the authority of psychiatry and drug companies is killing part of us that is creative. If you destroy a person’s creative system it is killing their humanity. Out of the creative system comes all our folly but also all of our triumph. The creative system within a human being is the thing that separates us from the animals. It allows us to behave in ways animals can’t and allows us to have domain over the earth. To give authority over to psychiatrists, who are the priests of the modern age, is to conform through very damaging measures, as these drugs do physical damage to the brain.
Most of the anxiety people suffer from is the direct result of their inability to face their self-centered and thought-created existence. Ponder this for a moment: all anxiety is rooted in fear, and when that fear is alive in your mind you are in a state of panic. Panic attacks are the result of your self coming to terms with all the lies you have created about yourself, your life and others in it. These attacks are like the true part of yourself which, for some reason, can’t hold back your own self deception.
Often religious people who are fundamentalist and/or strong believers try to force other people to believe what they do. These people have every answer based on the religious books they read which, according to them, is the word of God and, of course, the right way to live. They have some hotline to heaven or some guru they worship because that belief system offers them some sort of psychological security. Anxiety is the demand for psychological security, and an indication that what you have built in your mind is nothing but a bunch of sophisticated lies and deceptions put together cleverly because you can’t face the basic human truth that we just don’t know.
People have tried to be secure and therefore attached themselves to all kinds of things: their name, their body, sex, money, their country etc. We are one world, one planet, one people. And every act we do is about connecting or disconnecting from people. Disconnecting because someone has different beliefs from you and of course because you think they are wrong – well not wrong just mislead – is one of the attitudes of anxiety in human beings. When people are told to live their life according to someone else’s standards or dreams, and they follow this because of the need for approval, eventually they will disconnect from these people and anxiety is again fueled. As these people age, they become more and more afraid of death, a true sign that what you have attached your self to is all based on illusion. You are not your money, or the house you own, or your respectability, your religion, or political beliefs, the car you drive or the big shot people you know. How you define yourself creates your anxiety. Whatever you identify with or however you define yourself will in fact cripple you, and will be the source of your anxiety.
Most people who I deal with that suffer from anxiety are attached to some belief system and self-seeking or self-centered activity and know it is destructive and can’t live without it – or so they think! It is like the smoker who is caught by trying to give up smoking. The more they picture giving it up smoking the more anxiety they feel and therefore smoke more because of their anxiety of being without the thing that covers up the pain of loneliness. They seldom or never look at the truth of what is really going on. Smoking is something they are attached to and this attachment is the result of the pain of not being able to be genuine and stay connected to people they want and need, often first when they were beginning adolescence.
Anxiety is something that is in us for a good reason: it is a clue that our life is off track, that something is wrong with what we are doing, or thinking. The feeling of anxiety, like all other feelings, has a purpose and that purpose is to let us know that what is going on in our life is not working well. Anxiety is giving us a clue and asking us to look at the state we are in and do some honest self evaluation.
This of course is miles away from most psychiatry because most people want to be evaluated by the shrink or therapist, who is supposed to activate the creative system and evaluate you. Think of it for just a moment and you will see the truth of the core of anxiety: You are troubled and our conditioning is to go to some expert and have them evaluate you. If you’re the one with the problem, don’t you think it is wise to evaluate yourself? If we have a good friend, is this not part of the reason they are our good friend, because when we have a problem they don’t evaluate us, they listen? Our friend is not the one who needs to be creative and solve what their anxiety is trying to teach them.
So many people today have these psychological problems called mental illness that their creative systems have produced because that is what creative systems do. If we can’t remain close to the people we want and need in our lives or we can’t control other people we want to because controlling other people is a way to feel powerful and connected (even though it is a false connection and damaging connection), we often cover our anxiety through depression. Depression is having no energy for anything. It is a total and powerful way of shutting down. It is so powerful in fact that people come running to the person’s aid and again the illusion starts to slowly build up again. They are people who are so anxious that they control the workplace with all their ailments, their “bi-polarness”, or some other mental illness. It’s epidemic – these poor people who have given their lives over to drugs and experts, to avoid self evaluation.
Even in our schools, where kids needs are not met because parents have little education on how to have a relationship with there child, they have produced a mental disorder called ADHD. You see the kid is wild, full of anxiety because his needs are not met. He feels unloved, and parents can’t set limits because they are so anxious themselves from their own attachments and poor relationships. And the school can’t teach them because the material is more important than the child, so again more confirmation that the child has the problem, not our ability to connect with him. So the school and the parents says they are not the problem and we get the kid on meds. Wow, giving kids Ritalin, which is ‘Speed’, because the kid has a brain problem – what a pack of lies! Parents and professionals giving drugs to kids because of their inability to look after there own child because of their own self-centered anxiety.
People are so anxious today that smoking a joint and ‘chilling’, which is just self-medicating, is a huge way many people deal with anxiety, from what I hear. Well, I think that life and our potential is something wonderful and people can smoke all the joints they want. I feel that for a human being to be whole, he or she must be free. That wholeness can not be satisfied by thought or anything that thinking puts together. Thinking is at the very root of anxiety and therefore action that is about breaking the illusions about how we are living is the call from anxiety. The more you are not listening to the truth in you, the more you feel anxiety. Happiness is a state of mind that is a product of freedom. To be free we must look at ourselves and remove what is false. Anything is false that demands that someone should be living according to someone else’s standards or live someone else’s dream. The false is knowing what is best for other people. The false is thinking you’re the car you drive or the job you have. The false is being so attached to people that you can’t live without them. The false is mistreating people, thinking you’re better than they are. The false is having what we have, while others have not.
Anxiety is something we all have because we are so full of ourselves and do not do enough for others unless of course they put up a plaque and say this was donated by so and so. We do the good thing and then have bragging rights, not seeing the value of just giving and not getting anything back. Anxiety is what you get back when your life is all about you and your own inability to grow as a person. Growth you choose often is not growth. Growth that happens because you forget yourself and get close to a person and love without demands is part of freedom. In that freedom, anxiety is not!
Coach bri