Exorcising Anxiety
The Curse of Ulysses’ Sirens
Occasional anxiety is expected when faced with uncertainty or when the situation is perceived to come with consequences such as to handle an examination or interview or in making an important decision. Tension and tense situation management should be guided at early age to cultivate anxiety-resistance or resilience. However, anxiety becomes a disorder when it disturbs our ability to function normally or when the worry or fear becomes longer than expected temporal or when the intensity is affecting our common functional cognition. Anxiety causes us to overweigh the situation, and underestimate our abilities and controls. Composure and confidence are not just emotions, they are coping skills that can be acquired, conditioned and cultivated into our character.
The cues of the emotional strain is when our concerns becomes a distress. Hence, it can become chronic or developed into phobias or wear us down, subjecting us to a more serious condition such as depression. Symptoms can interfere with basic activities and functions in job or academic performance and relationships.
Severe and chronic worrying leads to a sense of hopelessness which is the gateway to depression.
The nature and source of anxiety must be understood. It is not something we can simply `unthink` or `unfeel`, or what the common folks would trivially advised to “just snap out of it” or naively “just do yoga”. The invalidation and dismissal of the clear and present issue can snowball the problem rapidly and create irreparable damage down that path.
We don’t feed anxiety. Anxiety feeds on us. Anxiety is partly natural and partly subconsciously learned. The more frequent, the more chronic. This is chronicity. The more poignant, the more intense. This would be intensity. Their totality is the severity. If we can control how anxiety feeds on, we can contain its growth. In order to do so, we will discuss a series of intervention to help people to work on their anxiety in a more effective way with their medical advisors.
Ataraxia (ἀταραξία, literally, “unperturbedness”, generally translated as “imperturbability”, “equanimity”, or “tranquillity”): Greek term first used in Ancient Greek philosophy by Pyrrho and subsequently Epicurus and the Stoics for a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.
Most `burnt-out` are misnomers. They are not exhaustion but injuries - emotional injuries. You cannot recover an open wound by leaving it to rest. Just as there is no such thing as "rest faster", we need the right treatment before the wounds translate to a fatality. You need the right treatment. In the crux, injuries are to be prevented, not tend to post-mortem. People have to solve the burning from 'removing the wood under the cauldron', not 'shutting their ears to steal the bell'.釜底抽薪 (fǔ dǐ chōu xīn): 'Removing the wood under the cauldron' meaning to solve the problem at its crux and root cause. 掩耳盗铃 (yǎn' ěr dào líng): 'Shutting their ears to steal the bell' meaning a nostrum or questionable solution to self-deceive and delude ourselves from objectivity.
We will also trace the more insidious nature of anxiety based on our observations, and discuss the pathways (refer `Further Notes On T.R.A.P. As The Pathway Towards Depression`) of how it may be affected by or interrelate with further implications with and by other psychological modules, such as trauma, rage, and panic, with hope that we can work on the efficacious intervention deterring debilitating anxiety from progressing into depression.
Armed with the knowledge and know-how, we can prevent such conditions from escalating and developing into more severe paralyzing forms we have seen today. Early effective management as a form of prevention can help us avoid the tragedies of depression.
日有所思, 夜有所梦 (rì yǒu suǒ sī yè yǒu suǒ mèng): What you think it the day, you dream in the night.
As follows, are the basic interventions, i.e. Cognitive Reframing and Cognitive Re-positioning, which can be applied for situational anxiety and extended to 5 major types of more advanced forms of anxiety disorders.
For more advanced method, we introduced the O.A.S.I.S. approach from which the `100 Day Game` and `Code 159` are based on and derived from.
Action is the best antidote to despair. — Anonymous
1. Cognitive Reframing and Cognitive Re-positioning
2. `Gaze` and `Daze` Conditioning
3. O.A.S.I.S.
4. `Flow` Conduction As A Therapy
5. Further Notes On The Observation On Trauma, Rage, Anxiety, And Panic (T.R.A.P.) As The Pathway Towards Depression
6. A Word About The Most Vulnerable Stage — Childhood
There are much details on the inner workings of how this may work in this article, but the bottom-line up front is in Framing, Anchoring and Establishing, and Triggering, however, without conditioning, the intervention cannot become part of the system. There are ways that we may do something unexpected to interrupt the thought patterns to steer it away from the `danger zone`, but the specific details of the methodology are within what this article is trying to deliver.
Cognitive Reframing and Cognitive Re-positioning
Overwhelm fear with happiness — it will be brewed into excitement. — Ursa
Our mind is steered by 2 things — the situation perceived and the stories (past, present, and future anticipated) we associate with it. It is, therefore, a common to use Reframers (a.k.a. Cognitive Reframing) as countermeasures against 5 major types of anxiety disorders that are listed by researchers in the field. Nonetheless, the applications to conduct Cognitive Reframing effectively has to be personalized, calibrated to the person and situation, and guided in accordance.
Bear in mind that, you cannot `unthink` or `unfeel`, you cannot leave a wound unattended. What you should do is to think of it in a different and strategic way. Address and redress the worry and frustration, do not ignore it and let it grow subconsciously into anxiety.
To deal with a subconscious disturbance, we must understand what and when are the triggers, i.e. when one experience sense of insufficiency, inadequacy, or insecurity, being placed in situation where time is lacking or feeling rushed into things, experience clutter, etc. Trace and log those incidents for situational management, and addressed them tactically.
To break out of the labyrinthine torment, one can condition a reflex in respond to the distress. Program a subconscious counter-trigger (refer `Code 159`). The countermeasure, such as a cathartic assurance, can be used as a conditioned `neutral noise damper`. Worries can play like an earwig in the mind. Even at the slightest worry is felt, trigger the response to weed out and break out of the loop by playing the mental assurance drill (refer `Holodeck Technique`).
The distress can come from real situations or merely a conjured one by the mind. In the real distressful situations, that trigger moves the response one step further to react and overcome the ordeal. Like a martial combatant, you have to be conditioned for impact, with reflexes drilled to react and retaliate.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Symptoms: Chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry and tension, even when there is little or nothing to provoke it.
Countermeasures
1. Write down your worries, and anatomized if they have been amplified or magnified. Dispute irrational or maladaptive thoughts with rigor logic. One must never depend on memory. Journaling the events and what goes in the mind provides the critical basis for analysis. Without data, there can be no insight and awareness. Penning thoughts down is also a cathartic approach, it helps us to connect the ineffable subconsciousness to the quantifiable and qualifiable awareness. It is 1 step to get the problem clearly defined and positioned for a well-focused intent and committed posture of `solutioning` to be projected towards. Writing down your thoughts free and spare you from going through the needless pain over and over again. It breaks the loop of redundant and fruitless repetition.
Like any data, your journal only becomes strategically meaningful when it starts to become a proactive plan. Data is engaged and deployed to actions endeavoring for targeted outcomes. This is the vital step from motivation to activation. If there is no output, we cannot even consider further methodologies to directed them to achieve targeted outcome — which is the vital delta to start transforming our circumstances and shifting our fate.
2. Focus on the plan and solutions. Chart the milestones and focus on operative remediation. Worries can developed from critical projects to common traveling anxieties. Instead of letting your mind go into an eternal labyrinth where it will eventually exhaust itself driving the needless, wild desperation, write down the concerns and plan contingencies to manage them. Your mind will keep looping until you write them down and re-organize them to be captured, refined, assured and controlled. Relieve and release yourself from the accursed purgatory through organization and actions.
Do not let the situation overwhelm and confuse you. Disperse the uncertainty by Divide et Impera (break down and conquer) on the scenarios into micro-controls, and refined your measures along the way.
3. Use `Holodeck Technique` to visualize a controlled scenario where you are in control. Having the mental rehearsed and simulate what you can control instead of what can go wrong can gradually put you into a `flow` of control.
4. Re-check and review with yourself what can go wrong. Acknowledge that you have other things more needed to be concerned about, and wasting mental fuel on this is irrational. Once you have the comparative conviction assured, the worry can dwindle away.
5. In the same light, re-check and review with yourself on the problems of people who are worse off than yourself. This draws your mind away from the problems you may be facing as you acknowledge its comparative triviality. Empathy and compassion towards others will also expand and widen your perspective from tunnel visioning into the grabbing fear.
Look at the urgent matters in the past years, no matter how much anxiety there was, they are all over. The anxiety is irrelevant to now. Think of your anxiety forward into the future, and know it too will become a trivial incident of the past, just as those that had come before. However, the ultimate loss at the end of life (others as well as ours) is the last and final loss and final fear. If that is subsumed what fear will there be?
It can also incite oxytocin accompanied by serotonin which will help in the alleviation. Switch from the problem mindset to a solution-seeking one. From then, your anxiety may take that steer into curiosity.
Try overwhelming your anxiety with curiosity.
You feel anxious when you are barren of ideas, but excited with high energy when you are creatively fertile and boiling to produce. Use excitement to overwhelm and overcome anxiety.
6. Understand the relationship of the situation with your own identity. This will help in cognitive re-positioning. Once you disassociate and re-evaluate the meaning of the situation and its implications to yourself, you can re-position yourself in a manageable `emotional stance` on more stable grounds within the emotional terrain or ambience you defined and set for yourself. This will also help you to distinguished between the perceived and constructed reality with the reality that is actually malleable to certain controls we have previously failed to conceived, entertained and act upon.
Recognized that the reality is malleable and subjected to uncertainty itself as you as a resident of fate are, and every action can shift and shape the situation. This cues a possibility of control which you should seek to command instead of further dissipating strategic resources like time and energy on wasteful and wild imagination that only holds you in paralyzing fear. — Ursa
Anxiety, worries and fear are indeed a squander and misuse of imagination. Since it is already wild and untamed, why not push it a bit further on a weirder, humorous and yet constructive direction instead to engineer hope, and if, god willing, … a life-changing miracle instead? — Ursa
7. Using Viktor Frankl’s psychotherapy (meaning-centered), we can also reframe the distressful situation as a gamification for `psychological hormesis`. Using a `low dose stimulation of anxiety` as a distress inoculation to cultivate stoicism.
Hormesis — What does not break you, make you stronger.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Symptoms: Recurrent obsessions that cannot be put out of the mind or focus with repetitive compulsive ritualistic behaviors such as hand washing, counting, checking, or cleaning that are often performed with the hope of obtaining psychological assurance which is usually only a temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety.
Countermeasures
1. Note down all OCD actions. Centralize your ritual with an `assurance trigger`, i.e. using 1 single trigger action or word to `halt, release and dismiss` the other OCDs
Panic Disorder
Symptoms: Sudden, unexpected and recurrent episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms that may include chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, or abdominal distress.
Countermeasures
1. Psychosomatic symptoms are hard to counter. However, if it is event-triggered, removing yourself from the scenario can alleviate them
2. If it is not event-obvious triggered, it may be subtle and not fully overt to the awareness. Introspect on the events within the last 5 days, list the events that could be subconsciously disturbing you
3. Check if you are already physiological affected, e.g. are you able to draw stable consistent breath? Is your heart rate and pressure out of the usual numbers? Yet becareful of not letting your hyperawareness becomes a point of over-consciousness that may worsen your condition. Put down the details of which will come helpful to medical professionals to reference which will guide them to tailor a personalized medical intervention for your case.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Symptoms: This disorder can be developed after exposure to a terrifying experience or ordeal in which grave physical harm was threatened or was afflicted. Relapse can be triggered by association to the traumatic memories which may involve violent assaults or conflicts, or incidents involving dangers either natural or human-caused.
Countermeasures
1. This requires long term conditioning. Refer `100 Day Game` which will lead to `Code 159` as the countermeasure scheme
Social Phobia (or Social Anxiety Disorder)
Symptoms: Overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in common social situations. It can be subjected to situations such as a fear of speaking in formal or informal social interaction situations.
Countermeasures
1. Recognize and realize the following facts:
[a] People do not think about you, especially right now.
[b] If feeling bad will help, go ahead and feel worse.
[c] People don’t remember you or what you did. People tend to be forgetful, especially when they will spend their time thinking about themselves.
[d] Look beyond your fears. Simply tuning of focus from fear to `subjects of yearning`, e.g. `the party after the exams`, can tunes out fear effectively.
[e] Remind your anxiety not to rob you of your limited mortal now. Instead let your joy be cherished that you still have — now.“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca (circa. 4 BC — AD 65)
2. Guide your introspective questions that will set your frame and story.
3. When related to the fear of rejection, acknowledge that the situation is not unique and exclusive. Even if you are not able to obtain social acceptance, understanding or appreciation, it will bound to have another situation where you can reconcile the difference. Nothing is ever lost, not if you give up trying.
4. Be aware that no one is really shy or diffident, we can question why we don’t feel the same when we are with our family or people we trust or bond with. It is the safety we feel when we are with them. Review how we build rapport with the people we are close to, and build your own social support around it.
`Gaze` and `Daze` Conditioning
The mind cannot be thinking of 2 things at the same time, you have to capture the control of what it is focusing on at that very moment of time. — Ursa
`Code 159` creates the scheme for conditioning and gaining the gradual controls on the mind’s `filter` and `focus` mechanisms. The human mind cannot simply `unthink` what it is reflexively thinking, but the schemes create a link to reprogram the reflexive thinking by conducing and inducing reflective thinking or reflections into a new pattern of reflexes to regain back that control.
Becoming aware of how you hold and redirect your focus is the 1st control of your mind’s `filter` and `focus` mechanisms. This can be compounded by cognitive reframing and re-positioning once you have the mind’s attention to start with. Without this, it is very difficult to have any progress. This is likely why most cognitive behavior therapy falls short in.
Understand that anxiety has 2 parts: with anxiety, the body has adrenaline, the mind has cortisol. Defusing body without defusing mind causes stagnant inaction with hyper contemplation. Defusing mind without defusing body causes zombified proactivity with no productivity. Therefore, defusing 1 without the other does not work in effectively containing anxiety. The tension ticks on. For anxiety containment to work, energy has to be redirected and diffused from its former target that is only a spinning loop.
The mind has 2 mental modes — focused mode and defused mode. Focused mode is when we do intensive and deliberate thinking such as logic reasoning. Defused mode is when we do random and random thinking such as daydreaming and creative thinking. The 2 working modes access different parts of the brain. This is the reason why many people found their solution after hard mental labor when they begin to move away from it, and suddenly `see` the solution. The mind enters the `incubation` and activates the other parts of the brain formerly unactivated to work on the solutions subconsciously. However, as we know, without deliberate focused mode, we cannot work out the logical operations.
Anxiety is also a miscoordination of diffused and focused mental faculty or functions. The mind is not focused enough on the crux and over-focused on the mental decoys or cognitive distortions such as exaggerated and amplified fears. The mind is not defused enough for efficient `flow` induction and too defused to work out operative logic that can create progress.
To coordinate the diffused and focused mental modes to contain anxiety, 3 states have to be learned to be conduced, i.e. `Daze`, `Gaze` and `Semi gaze-daze`. The `Daze` conditioning is to defuse and filter the hyper-random focus on the mind seizing anxiety. The `Gaze` conditioning is to redirect the focal steer to the micro-logic operative seems to be working. How these work in tandem, is to create a mental control to intercept and intervene sudden or creeping paralyzing anxieties by setting the mind into a defused mode, i.e. `daze`. The mind learns to stare blankly into a defused mind mode to neutralize the destructive overwhelming of anxiety. This slows down the attack for the next intervention, i.e. `gaze`.
If you do not capture your focus in anxiety, your anxiety will. Anchoring the attention is the first capture you must make. — Ursa
Application:
1. Upon an anxiety episode, the mind is conditioned to be isolated from the anxiety temporally to create the space to capture further controls. Capturing the focus is the 1st vital step you must make. If you do not capture your focus in anxiety, your anxiety will. Anchoring the attention is the first capture you must make.
From there, remove yourself mentally from the concerns of the situation you are in. Given that the situation is not in real clear and present danger, isolate yourself from the rest of the world. Hand over the focus to a diffused mental mode. This is the `daze` is akin a sleep or (day-)dream mode where the mind is switched off and away from further impact. This also buys the space to slow down the tension, and regain psychosomatic runaways like profuse sweating, racing heartbeat, etc.
2. The `gaze` now gains back the reasoning mode from the emotional mode which was previously defused by `daze` for protection. `Gaze` mode redirects the defused mind to focused mode to rationalize the irrational, i.e. magnified fears, thereby, further mitigating the intensity of anxiety.
3. Once charting down the reasoning, the mind is set back to defused mode to think of creative ways to solve the problems. The awareness is expanded and optimism is likely to set in.
4. However, the `gaze` state has to include the focused mode again to work out the working steps proactively within the creativity.
5. Ideas do not become solutions until working principles and workable steps are committed to be worked forward. This puts theory into application. Committed working plans has to be stated clearly. This puts application into operation.
6. We see that the mechanics of control goes from re-capturing the attention from anxiety by
a. anchoring it to a re-assigned focus, then
b. losing it into a `flow` (`Daze`), and
c. back into a controlled focus (`Gaze`).
With the above procedure, this sets the mind in control mode, shifting it to a sense of command and control, and thereby, recapturing the assurance and confidence.
Logging on the progress is important as the methods are mined and calibrated to each individual for optimal performance (refer hunting for `Kairos` in the `100 Day Game`). This may include looking for the most conducive place, time, people and other conditions to enhance the performance.
The recommended method is to mine the `Kairos` to conduct the `flow` in order to regain the control of the mind. Over time, the mind will re-wiring under the conduction and it becomes a hardwired trigger to regain back that control.
O.A.S.I.S.
O.A.S.I.S. is a strategic framework for deriving methods at the operational level. This paradigm can be applied to military or business campaigns, medical work, engineering pursuits, scientific research or any organizational decision making processes to mine and arrive at solutions.
O.A.S.I.S. is a disciplined paradigm of
1. (Observe and) Organize
2. Analysis
3. Synthesis
4. Investigate (and Trial)
5. Supersede
O.A.S.I.S. in this case is deployed for anxiety intensive intervention.
1. (Observe and) Organize
Gather information and mine for decisive insight s— Analyze.
Journaling is a way to give you a panoramic picture, drawing insights and expanding awareness which you had missed in the past. All these can enhance and equip you with empowering faculties which you lacked to handle the situations previously. In the process, you become bigger than your situation, and surmounting your existing fears. You will realize from the new information and insights you corral that your tunnel vision had failed to let you see that you were never alone. There are many people going through the same, and there are ways that people are overcoming them. Being more aware and better equipped, your insight to possibilities waged you new earned confidence.
2. Analysis
Within the situation assessment, find your emotional boundaries, triggers and anchors. Identify your emotional fuels and leaks as part of your vulnerability assessment.
Work towards your desired state with clear objectives and principles. The gap between your current situation and your ideal is your pain. Bridge that gap.
For example, an objective identified may be to build immunity of anxiety through the cultivation of confidence. The antithesis of anxiety may be measured by the acquisition and control of confidence. Therefore, it sets a criteria to build its ascendancy. However, bear in mind that confidence should not be based on a merely self perception. That would not be substantial nor stable. `Fake-feel-good` may provide temporary relief, but it certainly will not last, and it will leave you worse off than before. Confidence requires evidence. It has to be waged from skills acquired. Build the will, acquire the wit and ways to contain the situation would be the principal for a resilient confidence.
3. Synthesis
You could be cultivating fortitude and building contingencies, establishing mental anchors, creating anxiety or fear inoculation and conditioning reflexive countermeasures (refer `Code 159`). Mental anchors are critical for resilience and recovery. Installing mental counter-triggers creates that vital change.
On the application of anxiety / fear inoculation, an example is to simulate controlled shock and getting used to anxiety by training drown-proof (a form of Navy Seals anxiety control conditioning (NSACC)) in cold water under the supervision and watch of a safety officer (Caveat: Bear in mind and document safety at all times). To test the efficacy, during an anxiety episode, we direct the subject to recall and invoke the management with that trained memory.
Fortitude also comes with vigilance. In building contingencies, you will be built and buffered for failure and impact. This is akin a boxer, anticipating and mentally preparing yourself for the blow of impact will mentally buffer you from the shock, and trained to be ready for immediate pre-trained retaliation.
4. Investigate (and Trial)
During the experimentation and observations, you may also realized that thoughts that are based on feelings are latent and subtle. For example, there are cases where people are not able to understand how their anxieties progressed into a sudden panic attack. There are 2 possible causes why people are not able to fathom it. Both of which are subconsciously perturbing them.
The 1st scenario is `latent recency`, which is an event-triggered anxiety that is caused by subliminal and subtly suggested associations. These are subtle events, and they may be expressed within our dreams. We can start retrospecting what happened over the past 5 to 10 days, especially, which may be hinted by our dreams as well.
The 2nd scenario is `latent cumulative`, which occurs over a period of time and the experiences accumulated subtly untill the strain is manifested to a sudden failure. Researchers may term it as `ego depletion`.
List your struggles and organize it to be strategically intervened. The more clearly we capture them, the better we will be able to grasp and grapple with them more comprehensively. We cannot work on what we cannot define and measure. Hence, this step is vital.
5. Supersede
You will be discovering new methods and conditions (e.g. discovering anxiety triggers, and conditioning new counter-triggers against them) on your experimentation and exploration. The more triggers you detect, captured and contained, the more you can contain the anxiety at its root and core.
Tune adjustments and reinforce a different action to change the small outcomes then extend and scale up to other areas to expand the domain of control.
The mental state should be observed to be more efficient and enhanced. Your daily functions should experienced significant improvements.
Further Notes On The Observation On Trauma, Rage, Anxiety, And Panic (T.R.A.P.) As The Pathway Towards Depression
By understanding the physics and mechanics of the psychology of dysfunction, we can refine our prescription of the intervention.
Learning and conditioning how to
1. shift and hold your focus,
2. reframe and project your perspectives, and
3. react and remediate the next steps forward proactively,
are key management to worries, anxiety and frustration. This would be more effective when intervened and guided with a scheme.
The scheme must be designed to come with 4 parts:
1. Detection — This comes with conditioned and disciplined vigilant and non-paranoiac observation and identification of situation and triggers (both explicit and implicit).
2. Reaction (or Response) — The first intervention is usually a mental hold on an assurance that a system is in place. Following, a conditioning will install a trigger to counter the occuring emotions. If the counter trigger is conditioned, installed and ready, the situation will be managed to the mental mode and pre-conditioned modus operandi conditioned for it.
3. Remediate (or Recovery) — Once the situation is captured, it will be contained.
4. Evolve (or Refine)— The reaction will be followed by further learning of the counter trigger by refinement in accordance to the situation experienced.
`Code 159` is part of the Phase 3 and crucible of `100 Day Game` Scheme, however, it cannot be done without the scheme itself. In order to reach the phase to conduct `Code 159`, methods and experience to deal with the situation has to be mined using Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the `100 Day Game`.
As observed from test subjects, the 4 modules — anxiety, rage, trauma and depression are interrelated. One can lead to the others. As well, each can progressed towards and trigger the rest of the modules.
Anger is the mechanism (of evolution) that fights back anxiety as an immune response could be mild or severe, however, if it is PTSD or depression, it would be severe. PTSD severe expressions can manifest itself in different manner from panic attacks, hyper-aggression (relate to module 4), amplified cognitive distortion, reflexive defensive response to danger which may be previously conditioned, or even seizures.
Exasperation is a stage that drives desperation, and desperation leads fatally to severe depression. If we can intercept at the stage of exasperation, we can cut of the pathology towards that critical stage.
The crux of trauma may not be a direct case of emotional affliction, but a series of gradual but persistent `emotional inflammation` leading to a psyche fatigue which will eventually end in a breakdown.
The principle is to create an interception point to check-down and check-on for damage control and recovery before the 4 modules reaching the critical state of depression.
The interception should start by intervening for worries before it scales up the uncertainty to develop and drive fear. Long term chronic fear can conduce the momentum and intensity into a development of a series of mental problems such as paranoia, neurosis, hypochondria, hysteria or clinic panic.
Situational anxiety itself starts from uncertainty. This may be innocuous, however, when it proceeds on and escalates towards the point of feeling threatened, the lack of management can further into more severe stages of `emotional inflammation`. If it is allowed to be left un-address or under-redressed, development of mental dysfunctions of chronic and more enduring types can ensue.
This is following diagram is related to the developing stages of mood to mode (or crossing the threshold to activate the pathological modules). The states before and including getting to anxiety are `emotional inflammation` of various chronicity and intensity. Each pushing towards the individual towards the edge of his/her mental breaking point, i.e. depression and sanity. When anxiety pushes towards the edge of sense of helplessness and hopelessness, it is 1 state away.
(a) intense (compulsive (looping)) worry or more severe form as
(b) panic
→ sense of helplessness and hopelessness (marked cyclic path to-and-fro from PTSD to anxiety (exacerbation cycle) or severe anxiety towards exasperation (refer path 3.5)) → depression
A Word About The Most Vulnerable Stage — Childhood
Situation management, especially situation where tension is involved should be guided at early age to cultivate anxiety-resistance or resilience. Unfortunately, this is a lacking skill and character in most adults themselves.
Worst of, anxieties can arise from trauma, and at the most vulnerable stage of a human life — childhood. As Professor Alice Miller stated:
“Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.” — Alice Miller
“Wherever I look, I see signs of the commandment to honor one’s parents and nowhere of a commandment that calls for the respect of a child.” — Alice Miller
Many mental vulnerabilities of the common people can be traced back to their childhood. Many forms of anxiety or the lack of skills to manage them really point back to their childhood. This can span the implications of the micro-sociology based on psychology of a few individuals to the explaination of the macro-scale on how it affects the society we are living in today.
If we know how a human individual is made into the person s/he became, we can un-make, re-make or make the person to the potential yet to be fulfilled. In the same light, collectively, we can rebuild a better version of the society.
不幸的人一生中都在治愈童年。
— 阿尔弗雷德·阿德勒（1870年2月7日-1937年5月28日）Fortunate people have their whole life protected and healed by their childhood, unfortunate people have to have their whole life protected and healing from their childhood. — Alfred Adler (February 7, 1870 — May 28, 1937)
What worries me is that I see many people’s faces in the face of `Joker`.
— Ob1 to Ob.J., regarding the parable of common tragedyAs said so many times that we see in so many people’s logs, the cure is not biology — it is sociology. Stop blaming gut bacteria and haunted houses. Start building social infrastructure for holistic and all inclusive emotional support.
— Ursa
Next: Preventing Adulthood Trauma And Its Repercussions from Childhood: The Un-making of Monsters