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Researchers have found that folk who eat more fermented foods (which contain gut healing probiotics) have fewer symptoms of social anxiety.
anxiety is the sixth leading cause of disability in the world.
No technique has been established that can determine the line in the sand where normal stress and fear becomes neurotic anxiety, or at what point your whirring thoughts can be explained as a chemical flaw in the brain instead of a character flaw (the former, of course, being far more ‘forgivable’ and, of course, ‘fixable’).
DSM’s diagnostic guidelines have found that when two different psychiatrists used the same edition of the DSM to diagnose the same patient, they get a consistent result only 32–42 per cent of the time.
there are no biological markers for anxiety disorders.
Nicely, the word diagnosis itself comes from the Greek diagnosi, which means ‘to know through’.
happiness literally derives from the Middle English word ‘hap’, meaning chance or good luck (thus ‘happenstance’ or ‘perhaps’).
Whippman refers to stacks of studies that show that the more relentlessly we value and pursue happiness, the more likely we are to be depressed, anxious and lonely.
read The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Overcoming Anxiety by cognitive therapist Dennis D. Tirch, a founding voice in the compassion-focused therapy movement. Tirch tells us that our ‘flight or fight’ threat detection system evolved as an essential part of our survival and that some of us are born with more sensitive detection switches than others. It’s not our fault if we drew this straw; it’s simply where the evolutionary tide landed us.
Like the fight or flight response, the comfort system is also automatic and will do its job in toning down anxiety … if we learn to trigger it. Studies show that one of the best ways to trigger the comfort system is to practise self-compassion.
Talk to a kid Here’s a good way to trick yourself into some self-compassion when you tend to be more of a self-loathing type.
Do the anxiety. Then leave it there. This is our challenge.
When you’re an anxious type, meditation is non-negotiable.
You can be crap at meditation and it still works. The mere intention to sit with yourself is an act of self-care as far as our brains are concerned,
Even knowing it’s okay to be crap at meditation is comforting. And don’t forget – anxiety is a head thing.
‘Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain only has so much power to focus its attention.
Anxiety has been found to have the same DNA pathways as abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes and various autoimmune diseases. Either way, the correlation is there.
But to heal and thrive – both with autoimmune disease and anxiety – the only salve is slowing down, taking care of yourself, living cleanly and getting gentle and kind.
I breathe in for three steps – left, right, left – and out for four steps, like my deep belly breathing, but in motion. I count and breathe. I focus on drawing energy up from the earth, through my feet and up to the top of my head (two, three) and then I push the beige buzziness back down again through my legs, my shoes, into the earth (two, three, four). I breathe the energy in a loop, over and over. I move slowly and rhythmically like this.
Studies show any movement, but particularly walking, will ease anxiety when we’re in the middle of a stress hormone surge. Indeed, the studies show that a mere 20–30 minute walk, five times a week, will make people less anxious, as effectively as antidepressants. Even better, the effect is immediate – serotonin, dopamine and endorphins all
Frederick Nietzsche and Charles Darwin did the same. They both hiked every single day, until old age. Both had anxiety. Both credit walking with taming their heads enough to be able to sort problems and bring their inspired ideas to fruition. ‘Only thoughts reached by walking have value,’ wrote Nietzsche.
salivary cortisol levels in people who gazed on forest scenery for twenty minutes were 13.4 per cent lower than those who did the same in urban settings.
Malouf writes that a big part of contemporary unease comes from having so much of our life occurring at a speed that our bodies are not aligned with.
Sehnsucht: (noun) An intense yearning for something far-off and indefinable.
Studies (albeit on rats) are finding that the most basic biological processes involved in the stress response differ markedly between males and females, such that females respond to stress much faster. It generally takes twenty-one days to increase anxiety behaviours in male mice but only six days in females. The researchers speculate that females evolved this way since a heightened state of alertness and awareness best served them to protect their young.
In A First-Rate Madness, Dr Nassir Ghaemi argues that the best crisis leaders in history have had anxiety.
As Nietzsche said, ‘He who has a why can endure any how.’
‘The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful.’
Thomas Jefferson and Gandhi both suffered social phobia.
When faced with options, our two decision-making-centres – the prehistoric limbic system (which makes impulsive choices) and the neo-cortex (which can look ahead to the future consequences of such choices) – are having a go-nowhere tug-of-war.
Zerrissenheit: (noun) disunity, separateness, inner conflict; an internal fragmenting or ‘torn-to-pieces-hood’ from toggling so many choices.
Henry David Thoreau once wrote: ‘Our life is frittered away by detail … Simplify, simplify.’
Benjamin Franklin always woke at 5am to ‘rise, wash and address “powerful goodness”, contrive the day’s business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast’. Each morning he’d ask himself: ‘What good shall I do this day?’
Verschlimmbessern: (verb) To make something worse in the very act of trying to improve
in the UK some boffins bothered to tally the mood-boosting value of receiving one smile. If the smile is from a friend, it’s equal to the feel-good brain stimulation of 200 chocolate bars; if it comes from a baby it equates to 2000 bars!
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
This is the new barometer of success, wellness and happiness: how well can you create your own ways to shut down the distractions, reduce the toggling, stem the tide of frazzling data, carve out space in your week for reflection and stillness.
Charles Darwin, who suffered crippling panic attacks, similarly – and conveniently – claimed that to fret about the future (that is, to be anxious) is to be highly evolved. Kierkegaard, however, adds this clincher to his bold claim, which makes my fluttery heart settle a little as I read it: ‘He therefore who has learned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing.’
