by Liz B | Mar 26, 2022 | Anxiety, Fear, Mental Health, Q&A
Question: What is the difference between clinical anxiety and apprehensiveness?
Answer: There’s a few different classifications we can look at:
For apprehensiveness, this can come from a number of different things such as a personality trait or a bad experience. It can cause just an overall timid attitude, paranoia, or it could potentially lead to anxiety, but generally, the difference between anxiety and apprehensiveness would lie in the degree of intensity.
With anxiety itself I would classify it in a couple of different ways:
There is anxiety that is caused by the environment in one way or another. So this could also be a bad experience that causes a certain trigger for anxiety, or it could be childhood upbringing that didn’t allow the person to develop a strong sense of self or perhaps instilled fears toward certain things, and so anxiety developed as a result of that.
Then there is anxiety that comes from a biological/biochemical cause (which is what I have). In this case there are no specific situational elements that have caused anxiety to develop, but rather the brain maybe generally has an overactive fight or flight response to anything that your mind wants to perceive as a threat. In this case, the mind tends to easily lean towards an anxious worldview, and so even if anxiety symptoms aren’t manifesting, the person will notice that their mind’s activity tends to go that way and it can be controlled from there before it spirals.
Of course then someone can have a mix of both causes of anxiety which only amplifies it more.
In another case, apprehensiveness could be a personality trait that comes as a result of someone with anxiety (with a biological cause for anxiety especially).
Overall, apprehensiveness and anxiety can be related or cause each other. But it could be looked at as though apprehensiveness is maybe suspecting a potential threat while anxiety is actually directly perceiving a threat in one way or another.
by Liz B | Dec 7, 2021 | Depression, Mental Health, Q&A
Question: How can I get rid of depression when I have failed in my career for years and I do not have a good financial situation?
My Answer: There isn’t an easy or short answer to this (without really getting to know you and your situation), but I will first say that while these situations you are dealing with are objectively difficult, depression isn’t necessarily a direct result of external situations. It certainly can trigger it, but there are many people in horrible situations and even if they are sad, they may still have that glimmer of hope that it will get better, and begin working toward it. That in itself may not immediately change their circumstances, but it will help the reaction to the circumstances so that they aren’t feeding the negativity of the external situation with their internal state.
So, even if depression was triggered by your situation, I would ask you to think of them separately. This will help you target the core of the issue and to not allow depression to continue to paralyze you or keep you in a negative spiral, since that only adds another issue on top of your circumstantial issues.
Next you’ll want to begin to identify things that you can do to change your life. You may or may not have done this already, but you have to try to look at the whole thing in a new light. Try to see it as a challenge that is going to only make you incredibly strong if you can overcome it. This is where knowing more about your situation and what specific limitations there are would be helpful.
But, difficult situations like this are often real opportunities to become creative and figure out what you may be able to do, even if it feels impossible in the moment. The more you look at it as a potential blessing in disguise, the easier it’ll be to deal with your depression.
I’m not sure what you mean by failing in your career for years – as in, what exactly that entails – but that would be a good thing to explore in terms of why you’ve failed, if it’s the right career for you, and what needs to be changed there as well.
Every situation in life can be seen as a test or a puzzle that you can put your mind to work on how to overcome it. You want to tackle your mind state first before anything else, because that will dictate your outer world. This is exactly what I do when I get a very bad bout of anxiety.
It feels horrible and destructive in the moment, but I make it a point to become a student of the anxiety and see how I might be able to use the difficult circumstances to develop myself in some way further.
by Liz B | Oct 25, 2021 | Q&A
Note: These are questions originally asked to me on our Quora space. If you have a question you’d like to ask, contact me or go ahead and post on the Quora space 🙂
Question: I’m a 15 yr old girl. I’m in such a bad mindset. I’m constantly breaking down, having panic attacks, and extremely overwhelmed. I don’t want to be here anymore. My parents aren’t supportive and likely won’t get me help. What can I do?
Answer: Hi! First of all, I’m so sorry to hear about what you’re going through. I know from experience how difficult it is, but parents not being supportive makes this insanely MORE difficult.
The good news is, there is a lot you can do to manage this on your own, and you will learn a lot that way as well. I have an anxiety disorder, and the most I have learned from having anxiety is honestly just dealing with it on my own and learning the mental “tricks” and general activities I needed to do to make it manageable. This is easier said than done. But I want to empower you to know that you don’t necessarily have to rely entirely on outside help — that developing the confidence that there’s a lot you can do to defuse the anxiety yourself is important, even if definitely feels more difficult.
In fact, you will want to be able to rely primarily on yourself because that is the core thing that will get you through all of this. That is not to say you won’t NEED outside help sometimes. You might. But it’s not something to become dependent on (this can actually worsen anxiety in the long run!).
One thing you can absolutely do is seek out support groups online. These would typically be in the form of forums, anxiety websites, and Facebook groups. One of these websites is Anxiety Space. There are also support groups on meetup.com that very often have anxiety & depression groups that meet up. This will be more likely if you live in a bigger city.
The most important thing on top of seeking support in this way is going to be developing the right mindset toward your anxiety. You need to approach it in the way of not really fighting or rejecting it (because this can actually FEED it), but rather, asking the question, “what can I do to master this? how can I become a student of my own mind and of anxiety itself so I can manage this for the rest of my life?” And set out to do whatever it takes.
Anxiety is a mindset game, which means it’s extremely easy for the anxiety to feed itself (in fact, that’s usually what it does and how it even becomes escalated). It is much easier to control anxiety before it gets out of control than it is when you are already at panic level. So, you’ll want to become very good at noticing the kinds of thoughts you have that tend to make the anxiety worse. This will be often be “what if” thoughts and negative feelings that pop up that the anxiety itself produces.
You can also seek out “CBT workbooks” or just books on CBT in general that will help you identify how your mind escalates your anxiety and will help you become better at then controlling them.
Also look up “breathing exercises for anxiety.” Taking repeated deep breaths during anxiety and panic is super important. Breathing deeply essentially tells your body that there is no imminent threat and that it can calm down, in the very least to some degree.
I would also look for podcasts you can listen to on mastering anxiety.
Once you are already at panic level, often the best thing to do is keep yourself busy with something physical, or alternatively, something that easily absorbs your mind. This could be playing a computer game (I used to play WoW). For a time in my life, my anxiety was so bad I could rarely sit still, so I used to work in my mom’s garden for hours. This helped because not only was I doing something physical, it was something I could focus on outside of just my mind’s activity. So I would get in the habit of figuring out something you can do that is physical that you can also focus your mind on (i.e. not just taking a walk, but maybe listening to a podcast while you’re on that walk so you’re not left alone with your thoughts).
Lastly I would be curious to look into what is causing your anxiety. There could be multiple factors at play and sometimes it’s worse when you can’t exactly identify what’s causing it, but it’s important regardless of the cause to get a handle on being able to properly manage it. But, it’ll be helpful to know what elements in your life are making you feel this way as well. Sometimes it can be things you’re not necessarily identifying or realizing are contributing. Such as family issues or general instability in some other way in your life.
by Liz B | Oct 25, 2021 | Q&A
Question: What’s the most effective psychotherapy for excessive stress, anxiety, and depression?
Answer: I’m not yet as educated as I could be in different psychotherapy methods for excessive stress, anxiety, and depression. But I do think it is highly dependent on the person and the reason they’re experiencing these things.
CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) has been shown to be incredibly effective for stress, anxiety and potentially depression, and may have been shown to have the highest general efficacy. But I also realize that sometimes people need a variety of different treatments in their life, especially if the source of their anxiety and/or depression is related to trauma.
It also depends on if they have some other underlying or related mental illness such as borderline personality disorder, or even a physical illness that’s causing it.
I do think CBT in all cases can be beneficial in offering the practice of becoming more aware of what your mind is doing and how it snowballs anxious or depressive and unwanted thoughts. It’s just simply that certain cases may need more than just that to help manage their anxiety/depression.
Then there are certain things, depending on how the individual’s brain works, that may lead them to be more receptive to one type of treatment than another. I definitely don’t like to look at any treatment as a one-size-fits-all deal even if their symptoms or issues appear to be perfect for that specific treatment. I am all for individualized solutions which may include one or another type of psychotherapy.
No matter what though, getting the basics covered is important. Exercise, eating well, breathing exercises, tools on how to de-escalate anxiety, proper sleep, making one’s life as stable as possible, helping them feel grounded; these are all important in ANY case.
by Liz B | Apr 2, 2021 | Buddhism, Q&A, Spirituality
Lately I have taken to answering questions regarding spirituality, anxiety, and depression. I thought I would share one of the latest questions I answered as I think it covers some of the common misinterpretations I see of Buddhism.
The question was basically along the lines of, “I just hate that Buddhism makes me depressed and doubtful these times. It does make me feel half-dead these days due to my past mental issues. What are your thoughts?“
They elaborated more with a long comment that I will spare the details of here. However they primarily stated that they do not like religion — especially Buddhism — because it restrains how one thinks to a large extent with peace-loving and kindness-spreading doctrines, and that one should only believe in science, etc.
They felt that Buddhism uses this goodness-spreading ideology to make us believe in the supernatural (which he references reincarnation and far-fetched ideas of karma).
Here was my response:
It sounds to me that this is more the way you are interpreting Buddhism than Buddhism itself. I’ve noticed that there is a big misinterpretation for one thing about what Buddhism means regarding transcending desire and the ego, in turn hopefully alleviating suffering that is self-caused (which then leads to you being more naturally “good” and peaceful).
The truth is, we are human and we will always have an ego and desires. We won’t always be peaceful internally or externally. Getting rid of either of those things or suppressing them is not the point. The point is to use meditation and mindfulness as a tool to strengthen the “observer” part of your mind so that desires and your ego do not control you to such an extent.
In other words, so that you can become better at simply watching the noise of your mind and your desires and therefore you are not strung around by them without any awareness or willpower. This premise in itself is very logical.
Reincarnation and karma are complicated subjects. It is really difficult to know whether reincarnation is real, obviously, but in my opinion it is not necessary to believe in that to grasp the core teachings of the Buddha.
Karma at its most fundamental level is simply cause and effect. Why it gets so complicated though is that with our human mind, we can only understand a certain level of karma that’s happening at any given time. For example we can clearly see: “I talked shit about this person and someone revealed it, and now they think poorly of me.” What we don’t always know are the more subtler levels of karma; for example karma happening even with our thoughts. If your mind is constantly negative, your life will reflect that externally in a myriad of ways that you may not see.
Again, meditation and mindfulness are a way to be able to enhance your awareness of this.
And then we have science which is still (and probably will always be) trying to grasp at the layers of “karma” of the universe itself. How one thing causes another, and another, and another.
Throw in the idea that our soul may possibly be an energy that is not destroyed after our body dies, and we can start to try to understand where karma could potentially be woven through a timeline longer than our currently Earthly identity (however again, it is not necessary to actually think about this for the mental wellness and freedom of mind that core Buddhism is trying to teach).
Karma however on its very fundamental level is crucial to understand. We have to be able to tune in and understand cause and effect, and the more aware we are of it, the more control we have over ourselves, our mental states, and our lives. Period.
In the world of humans, there will be a million different interpretations and practices of what they think Buddhism is or should be.
This applies to science as well. Anything in the world can only go so far as the human mind and technology has allowed for it. An unwavering faith in certain scientific explanations could potentially be just as bad as an unwavering faith in religious concepts. There is still much we do not understand and we must leave room for that no matter the subject.
The point is you don’t want to cling too tightly onto belief of any sort, and Buddhism does not condone doing so even if people have taken to different ways of interpreting its core message.
I believe your own self should always be your guide. But you will always be lost if you are clinging too firmly to a belief of any sort. The best way to strengthen your inner guide is by becoming more reflective. Learn to listen to yourself, your inner voice. You have one, believe me. Meditation is a great tool for doing that, and Buddhism can be a guide if it is interpreted properly.
