5 Creative ways to overcome your Anxiety

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer

According to research, Anxiety disorders affect more than 3 million of us in the UK alone.  That is apart from those individuals who suffer from some kind of mild anxiety who haven’t sought treatment or advice from a health professional.  Unfortunately, the numbers of those diagnosed with an Anxiety Disorder are only set to rise.

Anxiety can take many guises- for some it is triggered by specific situations like driving, or it may be a more generalized feeling of Anxiousness or worry which in normal circumstances you could cope with. If you feel you might be suffering from an Anxiety Disorder read this guide online for more information: http://www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/anxiety.asp

GP’s are often at a loss at how to treat those with Anxiety aside from prescribing Anti depressant or Anti Anxiolytic drugs like Beta Blockers that are often just a short term ‘fix’.  CBT is then recommended as a way of managing the Anxiety symptoms better which in my experience, can be very effective.  For a slightly different approach, here’s 5 creative ways to overcome your Anxiety immediately:

1.    Change the Anxious self talk: Rick Carson, author of ‘Taming your Gremlin’ says we all have an inner ‘gremlin’ that talks us down and makes us feel negative about ourselves and the world.  He suggests tackling it first of all by just being aware of that voice and learning to be more detached from it.  I’d suggest adding a dose of humour in there too as the best way to diffuse fear is usually to laugh at what makes us scared.  What kind of voice would you rather have- a comedian you like? Your best friend who makes you laugh?  Changing the associations with that negative voice might well help.

2.    Add a happy soundtrack: Often our mind not only tells us what could go wrong in a never ending audio loop.  Often it is great at ramping up the fear with visual images of our fears too.  When this happens, try picturing the image of the fear on the cinema screen and try playing the image with a happy/funny soundtrack to again mix up the fearful associations with amusing ones.  See how you feel…If your fear is more generalized, ask yourself ‘what’s the worst thing that could happen?’ and you’ll probably get an image or thought come up to work on.

3.    Neutralise the fear: Another way of diffusing fear is to use Cognitive Diffusion techniques which allow the mind to start neutralizing the connections to the Anxiety.  For example, the words ‘Anxiety’ and ‘Fear’ are often loaded with well a lot of negativity unsurprisingly!  Try using a neutral word like ‘orange’ or ‘banana’ instead when you feel that way. It might well make you smile!

4.    Let go of the Anxious identity: Through my experience of working with hundreds of clients with Anxiety over the years is that they have a strong sense of identity connected to being anxious.  ‘I’m an anxious person’ they say, ‘I’m always anxious’.  Telling their mind they are anxious is pretty much saying, ‘this is me, I can’t get over it’.  Pretty limiting wouldn’t you say?!  Whereas anxiety, like any other emotion is just a state we are experiencing at the time- like anger, sadness or happiness and doesn’t define who we are.  Next time you get a thought like that come up challenge it and see what it feels like!

5.    Create a pattern interrupt.  In a way, all the above are techniques for interrupting the patterns of anxiety and fearful thinking. Another one I like to use with children and adults alike is using a positive anchor word that you can use whenever you feel anxious to ‘break the state’.  Think about either what makes you feel happy or calm? Could it be playing football on a Sunday, seeing your friends, reading in bed?  Whatever it is, allow yourself to be immersed in the memory of doing this thing and get into the positive state and think of an anchor word.  Practise using that word whenever you start to feel anxious and keep reconnecting your mind to that feeling.  

Looking out for Men's Mental Health

“If you add loneliness to depression, you really are in a world of… appalling pain.” – Stephen Fry

Men are beginning to seek more help through their GP's and visit therapists more than they were before.  A stigma still remains however around admitting to suffering from a mental health problem which creates further isolation and often a sense of hopelessness and despair. Suicide rates have shown that men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide than women.  We need to consider why that is, and what we can do to address it.

Possible reasons for higher rates of male suicide include: 

•     Men are less likely than women to talk about their feelings – they tend to isolate themselves.

• Men are less likely to seek professional help (e.g. counselling, therapy, medication) than women.

• Men have higher rates of drug and alcohol misuse than women, and are much more likely to use this to mask their symptoms of depression.

• They demonstrate their feelings externally (e.g. shouting, getting angry) and close things off internally (e.g. “I’m fine”)

And, above all:

• Social ideals and pressures of masculinity demands that men “Stay strong” or, here’s a good one, “man up”.

It must be recognised and understood that men too are victims of domestic violence, sexual violence such as rape, and violence and abuse from other men. It is all too overlooked; as a society we often think of women as being more vulnerable to these things, especially the domestic and sexual violence, but this is not the case. It is possible that men simply do not report the incidents as often, because they are maybe embarrassed or ashamed. 

What can we do about this?

Men’s Minds Matter is an organisation that hopes to better raise awareness of male problems and mental health issues, and also to provide support for those and the families of those who are affected. They have been “working closely with other psychologists, professionals and organisations to develop ideas on how to improve the psychological wellbeing of men and boys” says the Director of Men’s Minds Matter, Dr Luke Sullivan. Through this, they have begun The Men’s Institute, which as well as being very useful is another step to recognising that men need this support, as well as women do. 

If would like more information about this matter or no someone who might benefit from it, visit http://www.mensmindsmatter.com/ or http://www.mensmindsmatter.com/the-mens-institute.html for resources and support.

Other organisations such as Mind http://www.mind.org.uk/ and Time to Change http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/ will also be useful, and also Terry Real’s book, “I don't Want to Talk About it: The Secret Legacy of Male Depression” is a very good and helpful read.

Considering visiting your GP or speaking to a Therapist might also help you to start resolving some of your underlying issues and gain more support.  For more information on our services, visit www.lotus-therapeutics.com.

Anti Depressants- do they really work?

“Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.”  Colson Whitehead, Zone One

There is currently a debate around whether Anti depressants are being overused for treating Depression and if there is really a strong enough evidence base for them.

Statistics show that at least 1 in 10 people in the UK suffer from depression, it’s prevalence being slightly higher in women, with 1 in 20 of sufferers being as a result of clinical depression.  Anti depressant prescriptions in the UK have increased by 9.6% in 2011, to 46 million prescriptions and continue to rise.

There is no question that most people with Depression report a reduction in their symptoms though research shows that improvement appears to be due to psychological factors, i.e., the placebo effect.  Evidence is currently inconclusive about how much the Placebo effect is involved. We could ask, how much of the effectiveness of medication is due to the active ingredients and the non Placebo effect?

From my own experiences of working with hundreds of clients with Depression, both Clinical (i.e. from a chemical Serotonin imbalance) and ‘Reactive’ (as a result of a response to an event or stressor), Anti Depressants do have their place.  Many initially report an improvement using Anti Depressants though often, alone they aren’t enough to resolve the underlying factors that cause it in the first place and that help maintain it.  For instance, taking a pill when experiencing work stress may buffer against some of the negative emotional effects though unless the underlying triggers are addressed, things may not change long term. With some clients, Anti Depressants have little effect or in some cases, cause a worsening of symptoms as a result of unpleasant side effects.

Dr Ian Reid, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Aberdeen, says "Antidepressants are but one element available in the treatment of depression, not a panacea,"…they can have harmful side effects, and they certainly don't help everyone with the disorder. But they are not overprescribed. Careless reportage has demonised them in the public eye, adding to the stigmatisation of mental illness, and erecting unnecessary barriers to effective care." 

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines doesn’t promote the use of Anti depressants as a first port of call for treating moderate depression though instead advocates talking therapies such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Interpersonal Therapy initially. Often however, long NHS waiting lists prevent individuals accessing services.  GP’s only option then is to prescribe medication to patients when there are few alternatives available.

Posing my question at the beginning, is there enough evidence to support the widespread use of Anti Depressants; one might argue, if it makes people feel better, why worry about how that happens? Perhaps the individual’s belief in the pill as well as the scientific base causes the improvement.  Often, the therapeutic benefit of talking about our problems and expressing our feelings to a professional such as a GP is part of the healing effect;  ‘It’s good to talk’ as BT says.

The promotion of medication alone however, dismisses the wider implications of creating a culture of ‘pill popping’ rather than addressing underlying causes and socioeconomic factors.   We should be asking why has depression become endemic, not only in the UK but worldwide and how can we change it? In our modern ‘quick fix’ society, we are prone to avoiding the real issues when we need to take a move in the direction of change and start doing something differently.