High Anxiety

That's a good Mel Brooks movie. Almost all of his films are good, though.

Anyway.

Since I've been on some uncomfortable topics, lately, I decided to include this one. It's not seen a lot only because people go through great pains to conceal it. That leads to more anxiety, of course, so they just can't win.

I'm not a physician or therapist of any kind, so what I post here are merely observances and research and great empathy for those who suffer in any way. I feel not only pity but a need to help when I see anyone in discomfort or pain.

Therefore, I chose anxiety as a topic today.

Our always useful WebMD has a brief note about anxiety and I chose the most general of the information at hand:

"Anxiety is having too much fear and worry. Some people have what's called generalized anxiety disorder. They feel worried and stressed about many things. Often they worry about even small things. Some people also may have panic attacks. A panic attack is a sudden feeling of extreme anxiety.

People who have social anxiety disorder worry that they will do or say the wrong thing and embarrass themselves around others.

Anxiety can cause physical symptoms like a fast heartbeat and sweaty hands. It can make you limit your activities and can make it hard to enjoy your life.
Healthy thinking can help you prevent or control anxiety.

• Negative thoughts can increase your worry or fear.
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a type of therapy that can help you replace negative thoughts with accurate, encouraging ones.
• Changing your thinking will take some time. You need to practice healthy thinking every day. After a while, healthy thinking will come naturally to you.
• Healthy thinking may not be enough to help some people who have worry and anxiety. Call your doctor or therapist if you think you need more help. "

Whenever I think of a fellow human being living like this, it brings a sadness to me, especially considering that many think they can handle it themselves without help, that it may increase in seriousness and prevent them from living happy healthy lives.

The first sentence describing anxiety as having too much fear and worry is what I feel I can actually address. Fear is of the unknown. Worry is of the future. We may feel we have no control over the latter but fear, we can attack head-on. Determining what is causing the fear is first. Is it embarrassment? I already covered that one. Is it a real fear or an imagined one? If someone is threatened, that's a real fear. If you think you will fail, that's an imagined one. Action is required for both.

If it's a real fear, obviously you must fix it, avoid it, have it arrested, leave it, and whatever you need to rid your life of it.

If it's an imagined fear, my opinion is that you must face it directly. Once you know what it is, there is support for it everywhere. People have anxiety about speaking in public. Find a speech class, practice with family or friends. Practice where you feel safe. Picturing everyone in their underwear is a trick I've heard. Mostly, it's realizing that whatever happens, it will never ruin your life. It's what we all feel at times. It's part of living together and growing together. I conquered a fear of singing in public with karaoke. Those are some of the most understanding crowds! Everyone will applaud no matter how bad you may sound. It's great but of course, almost everyone is drinking, too.

Many students face anxieties when testing or if a test is coming up. There are methods taught to manage that and are available online or directly with counselors. Fear of one test ruining your life is unreasonable. Once that is realized, fear lessens. As many types of anxieties that exist, there are that many and more ways to conquer them.

Anxiety about driving, take lessons. Anxiety about a relationship, talk. Anxiety is about being alone, gather more people that care into your life.

It sounds as if I'm oversimplifying this topic. I hope no one thinks I consider these things in a flippant or trivial way. I don't.

Serious anxiety issues can be addressed as it shows above. But, you have to be proactive about it and not fearful of asking for help. It's what we do. We aren't here alone. We have each other.

Close your eyes and listen:  Wanting Qu-Anxiety

Reboot Challenge? Kick the monsters under the bed to the curb and reach out. Peace be with you!

Why Lie?

Five year olds lie.

They lie about if they ate a cookie, if they hit someone, or if they brushed their teeth or washed their hands.

Adults lie. Adults lie about the most ridiculous things.

Adults lie about how much they make, how their relationships are, where they 'are' in the World, having affairs, even about height and weight! It's a bad habit.

Like other things, I believe there is a certain age you learn that lying doesn't help. That age was mentioned before....5 years old. At 5, I told my daughter to consider the consequences of everything she said and did from that point on. And from that point on, most of the time, she did. It was a simple statement made in a way that she, at her age, could understand and relate to it.

Once she knew there was, merely, no 'reason'  to lie, ever, we were on the right track.

You see, she understood that I would not stop loving her if she made a mistake, that she wouldn't drop dead if the Truth were told, and that there were consequences to every one of her actions for which she would be responsible. But, she wouldn't be sent to the guillotine for it!

I'm still trying to figure out why adults lie to me and everyone else. There is truly no reason. Most people will accept the truth and move on. Most people will forgive mistakes. Most people just need the truth from you to determine their next step. Lying makes a faulty foundation in every way.

True Confession time!

Lying is my pet peeve. Yes, I've learned to look at someone with a smile, without comment, and listen while they tell me lie after lie and then I walk away thinking, I can never believe anything they say from now on. That's the consequence. You, as our friends in the East would say, lost face with me. You are no longer honorable or trustworthy until you've proven yourself as otherwise.

That may sound harsh to some. However, when one values the Truth and lives by it, you don't have time for lies. Lies, misconstruing, omissions, whatever you want to call it, distorts not only communication but the connection between us. If we don't see the REAL, we can't see YOU. People who consistently lie can eventually begin to believe their own lies, which can be very harmful. It becomes the Truth to them. Give them a lie detector test and they'll pass it with flying colors! That, to me, is scary. Having a flashback of  George Costanza on Seinfeld saying, "Remember...it's not a lie if you believe it."

Now, that may be your goal. You don't want to be seen for reasons known only to you. That's something personal to work on. What is the fear, the shame, the pride, the anxiety, the past, that keeps a person from showing themselves, as they are, to others?

It's time to be a true grown-up. Lies only result in more lies you have to track and remember. As someone said, you never have to struggle to remember the Truth. OK, I just said it.

The Truth will set you free.

Reboot Challenge? Catch the lie before it leaves your mouth. Be ready to face the consequences. Be a grown-up.

What Do YOU Do When You're Embarrassed?

There has been a time in everyone's life when they've felt the shame of embarrassment.

Let's break it down like this. It's an emotion. It's an emotion like any other. It isn't pleasant. It may stay with you longer than other emotions. It may be harder to rid your mind and heart of it but it's not impossible. It may stay in your memory forever.

Now that I've made your day, let's move on.

This is one of the emotions that we experience that must include another person or persons, or the idea of them, to feel. That other person or persons is a witness, a cause, an active participant, at least in our minds to our embarrassment.

To be embarrassed is defined by good ole Merriam-Webster as:

1

a :  to place in doubt, perplexity, or difficulties

b :  to involve in financial difficulties

c :  to cause to experience a state of self-conscious distress <bawdy stories embarrassed him>

2

a :  to hamper the movement of

b :  hinder, impede

3

:  to make intricate :  complicate

4

:  to impair the activity of (a bodily function) or the function of (a bodily part) <digestion embarrassed by overeating>

Since I didn't intend to discuss bodily functions, we'll leave the last one out of this discussion.

Basically, it's a situation where we are, as it says, placed in doubt or into a state of self-conscious distress. And, we've all been there. Here's the bad news. As long as we are alive, we may experience it again.

Fortunately, it is not an emotion that should cause anyone to not want to live. Oh, we all say, "I could just die of embarrassment!" but we don't and shouldn't really mean that. It's just part of life.

I say that a lot, I realize it. But Life truly throws a lot at us and it's up to us how we will handle it. Will we be continually slammed in the face? Will we dodge what's thrown at us? Will we run off the field? Or will we hit it out of the park? (That's not bad for someone who doesn't watch anything but tennis, occasionally.)

Once we are in that embarrassed 'state', it can paralyze us because of how much we care about what others think of us and what we have worked so hard to portray ourselves as to them. We work HARD on that outside appearance-I've got it all together-I don't need anyone's help-I know everything costume. So a real emotional breakdown can come from being in an embarrassing situation.

So you weren't as prepared as you thought. So you sat in something. So you have something hanging from your nose. So you split your pants. So you didn't realize your breath reeked of garlic. So you said the wrong thing. So your makeup ran. So you had a run in your stocking. So 'they' found out you don't make that much. So they saw what you drive. So they know you don't drive. So you had spinach caught in your teeth. So you started your period. So 'everyone' knows your secret now.

SO WHAT?

That's the phrase that I say, besides, "Oh, well!" because we ALL go through these things. Animals are NEVER embarrassed and they do a lot worse in public. We are human beings and we have human actions, human reactions, human blunders, human physiology, human feelings, human secrets, human needs and wants, and human emotions. This is just one of them.

So. We feel it. If it needs fixing, we fix it. And, we move on.

Yes. You will remember it. You'll remember it and feel that pang in your chest or that sickness in your stomach as if it just happened again. But you'll live. If you remember it and let it pass and forgive yourself or whoever caused it to happen, you'll live even happier. But, you'll live.

Check the History books and Medical Journals and you will never see that anyone actually died from feeling embarrassed. There is a strength and fortitude you must have for this tough world that has to be learned or it will kick your butt 24/7/365.

Sometimes, that embarrassing situation is meant to bring you to a humble place in your life. Humility is a good thing. Letting other see how you handle situations teaches them, makes them wonder how you got past it and where you got that ability to handle it with such grace.

Reboot Challenge? Don't be afraid to be human and if someone else is there, offer them a hand.

Stop. Drop and Roll.

If ever a World needed this advice, it's now.

I was tempted to use this as my answer to Twitter's trending #MakeLifeBetterInThreeWords challenge. I take everything as a challenge, of course. Therefore, this is what came to mind.

It may sound simple. Perhaps, it seems too simplistic. It is and isn't. I use it as reminders every day of how to live my life and hope it clicks with someone else.

STOP...
           Worrying about what others will think of you.
            Thinking others are better or worse than you, especially only due to skin.
            Wasting time on whatever isn't giving you joy or helping someone else.
            Comparing what you have or don't have to others. It's just 'stuff'.
            Being ready to fight instead of listening and talking. Pick your battles.
            Being unkind to your body, mind, and spirit. Build and strengthen them.
            Using your body, mind and spirit as a trash can for the World.
            Stop blaming others, including parents, for your life as an adult.

DROP...
             Whatever you are doing that is causing you pain.
             Whoever you are with that is causing you pain.
             The things that take up most of your time away from God.
             The habit that makes you feel ashamed of yourself.
             Thoughts of harming yourself.
             Thoughts that take you away from Love and Charity and Peace.
             The idea that your life must be the same as everyone else's. It's not.
                It's YOURS.
            
ROLL...
             With the punches Life will inevitably give you.
             Away from what you know is harmful.
             Toward what you know is beneficial to you and others.
             Out of the way when you sense trouble is on the horizon.
             Up your time and effort to benefit others and yourself.
             Out the Welcome Mat for strangers who need to be acknowledged, i.e. SMILE!
             Around laughing. If there's a kid around doing it, join them! If you know them!

What I'm saying isn't the Meaning of Life, won't cure cancer, and doesn't guarantee a pain-free life. It's a start to thinking of our lives in a different manner that may or may not result in a perceived good life. It's a way of thinking of being better, having better, and doing better with our lives that is followed by action. It's not rocket-surgery.

There's a young lady who is doing some soul-searching, learning and trying to help others in the same way on YouTube who is shifting her channel from strictly make-up and hair to more of the above. She is now reaching out to others to help answer questions she, herself, may have already answered.

Her name is Brittney Gray (@BrittneyGray) and she recently posted her intent to do this. I hope it gives her and her followers a glance at the control they actually do have over parts of their lives and acceptance of those they don't. All of that brings a Peace I pray for everyone. Check it out at:

Choose Your Vibe

Reboot Challenge? Choose YOUR vibe today. Dig deep.

Thanks, Brittney, and may God bless your efforts.