[[Rollo May]] [[Anxiety]] [[Books Index]] Related Notes: 1. [[Book - The Birth and Death of Meaning An Interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man]] 2. [[Book Self Under Siege]] # The Meaning of Anxiety. By Rollo May ## Chapter 11 Methods of dealing with Anxiety [[14-01-2023]] My Takeaways: - **Anxiety is like fever. When you have fever, it's a signal that your body is fighting off infection. When you experience anxiety; there is a conflict of value and threat.** - " anxiety has been said to have the prognostic value of a fever: it is a sign of struggle going on within the personality and an indication that serious disintegration has not yet occurred" - **Kierkegaard (i paraphrase): Anxiety is a better teacher then Reality because one can avoid reality but cannot avoid anxiety without harming personality. When we try to avoid facing anxiety (avoiding/defences) then we also cut off our self.** - " Kierkegaard called anxiety a better teacher than reality, for while reality situations may be temporarily evaded, anxiety is an inner function which cannot be escaped short of constriction of the personality. Kierkegaard writes that only he who has been educated in the “school of anxiety”—i.e., has confronted and worked through previous anxiety experiences—is able to meet present and future anxiety experiences without being overwhelmed." - There is neurotic anxiety - That present in compulsion, illness, mental illness. - There is normal anxiety: As long as we live there will be anxiety. It is not realistic to have live without anxiety. - A child, despite fear of falling, will continue to try to learn to walk. (The value of growth). - A general who does not have anxiety going into war put his men in danger. - **When there is anxiety; figure out, what is in conflict. What value is being threaten. That way, we broaden our conscious awareness. Then we can reassess our values.** - "In regard to the methods of resolving the problem causing the anxiety, two processes are held in common by the various schools of psychotherapy. These have a logical relation to our study of anxiety. One is an expansion of awareness: the person sees what value is threatened, and becomes aware of the conflicts between his goals and how these conflicts developed. The second is re-education: the person restructures his goals, makes a choice of values, and proceeds toward the attainment of these values responsibly and realistically. Obviously these processes are never achieved perfectly—nor would it be good if they were; they indicate, rather, the general aims of the therapeutic process." - [[Kierkegaard]] - "*Despite social misunderstanding, conflict, and a very great isolation and anxiety.....*" people pursue what they do (because of their values - that value is subjective and personal) - That's moral courage. - "*courage consists not of the absence of fear and anxiety but of the capacity to move ahead even though one is afraid*" - " *A person is subjectively prepared to confront unavoidable anxiety constructively when he is convinced (consciously or unconsciously) that the values to be gained in moving ahead are greater than those to be gained by escape.*" ---- Book Notes: - The purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence - Anxiety is the reaction when a person faces some kind of destruction of his existence or that which he identifies with it. - **some anxiety is due to ability, takes time to mature the ability, while some are due to just being human, underlying existence, knowing that we will die** - Anxiety cannot be avoided, but it can be reduced. - We may be anxious because we are not profession, or skilled yet.. Anxiety can be resolved only by the maturation of abilities. Then we become more confident. ### Destructive ways in managing anxiety - Basically, any methods when we try to avoid, not face it - "*negative methods consist of allaying or avoiding the anxiety without resolving the conflict which underlies it. Or, in other words, evading the danger situation rather than resolving it.*" - The behavior that we use to cope become compulsive. (Alcoholism and compulsive sexual activities) - "*The motivation is no longer the activity but the external effect of it*" - "*when a person goes into psychosis, the anxiety may vanish*" (Interesting, psychodynamic perspective; function of illness) - Ultimate source of anxiety - Death. Our mortality. - Society copes by being obsessed with Sex, Youth. Anything that can help us feel "alive". - **Rigidity of thinking** ( a borderline characteristic) - Is a way to protect self from threat. While it offer safety and structure, but inflexible to adept to change. - **Belief in fate** - " Kierkegaard adds that the belief in fate or necessity, like the belief in superstition, is a method of avoiding full responsibility for one’s conflicts. One can thus circumvent anxiety but at the price of loss of creativity." As method to cope with stress become more complex, they involve Repression and Symptom Formation. - (1) " there was a direct relation between the presence of anxiety and the presence of behavior patterns for avoiding the anxiety-creating situation." - " in neurotic anxiety the purpose of the defense mechanisms, symptoms, etc., is to keep the inner conflict from being activated." - We asked about the function of symptoms or illness, or secondary gains. ![[Book - The Birth and Death of Meaning An Interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man#^8c68f9]] - (2) " there is an inverse relation between conscious anxiety and the presence of the symptoms." - When we can be conscious and aware of WHY we are anxious, symptoms can reduce. - (3) "conscious anxiety is more painful but it is available also to use in the service of integration of the self" - It is painful to be aware of WHY / WHAT caused our anxieties, then we have to face our self, or past.. to work through past trauma - **Intellectualisation** - Trying to explain away anxiety. but the act of trying to rationalise it away means that there is something there. (A general said there is no war, but simultaneously sending his troops to battle.) - **Use of Anxiety as a Defence of Anxiety** - By behaving and showing others that you are helpless and anxious, hope that others will not attack you, forsake or expect too much from you. - "neurotic anxiety is the result of the failure to cope with the previous anxiety situations in one’s experiences." ### Constructive ways - Anxiety indicates the presence of a contradiction within a person’s value system - What personal beliefs/value do I hold that give me courage to confront life's challenges? - " In the long run, the confronting of normal anxiety depends on what one regards as of value in himself and his existence." --- ## Chapter 12 Anxiety and The Development of the Self **Anxiety and the Impoverishment of Personality** - Sometimes, in the attempt to protect self from anxiety, people choose, or feel forced to choose to limit their personality; build a wall around themselves. Don't feel. Don't think. The cost is high! - "*Constriction and impoverishment of personality make it possible to avoid subjective conflict and concomitant anxiety. But the person’s freedom, originality, capacity for independent love, as well as his other possibilities for expansion and development as an autonomous personality are renounced in the same process. By accepting impoverishment of personality, one can buy temporary freedom from anxiety, to be sure. But the price for this “bargain” is the loss of those unique and most precious characteristics of the human self.*" ^80d995 Related to [[Patients who are not in touch of their emotions]] **Creativity, Intelligence and Anxiety** - He kind of said that more creative and intelligent people are the ones who confront more situations of possibility, hence they are more often in anxiety-creating situations. They are not in their "comfort zone" more often.. Possibly. - The more intelligent persons presumably have also developed more effective ways to manage and control their anxiety. - "the results are on the side of the hypothesis that personalities of higher intelligence, originality, and level of differentiation likewise have more anxiety. As Liddell put it, “anxiety accompanies intellectual activity as its shadow.”5 In proportion to the intellect, I add, there will be anxiety present." - "Students who do especially well in their studies and are, presumably, particularly gifted, have more anxiety, i.e., respond to all types of stress with anxiety. Students who are less competitive blame themselves or others for their poor performance, relieving them of anxiety.7" - [[Adolescence]] [[Book - Adolescent Psychiatry in Clinical Practice edited by Simon G Gowers]] - This reminded me of young patients who are gifted academically with anxiety, depression. - Anxiety, at a little amount help performance. But when too much, it is debilitating. It kills creativity and performance. - " anxiety can either inhibit or facilitate performance, depending on its strength and the individual’s creative potential. Highly creative individuals perform cognitive tasks under stress better than those who are less creative.8 Many psychologists believe that anxiety facilitates performance up to a point, then as the anxiety rises and tends to become overwhelming, it is debilitating." [[15-01-2023]] ### Expectations and Reality - There is always this gap between expectations and reality. - The neurotic anxiety experience this gap as impossible to bridge, so they distort reality. They experience it a contradiction. - The capacity to bridge this gap between expectations and reality is a creative endeavour. Like an artist painting an image in his mind.. or a scientist bringing his hypothesis upon reality. To resolve anxiety requires Creativity. And to reframe the gaps as "possibilities" ### The Realisation of Self - There are two definitions of Self - (1) The sum total of the individual capacities - (2) The capacity to be consciously aware of its activities, and through this awareness, to exercise a measure of freedom to direct these activities. - Anxiety is involve in development of self in both definitions. **Self Realisation can occur only as individual confronts and moves through anxiety-creating experiences.** - How much the freedom he have depend on how much he confront and overcome potential threats to his existence. - Reversely: If constrict, and limit self to avoid danger, then you lose that freedom. **With much power comes much responsibilities, and that brings more anxiety** - "*The emergence of individual freedom is very closely connected with anxiety; indeed, the possibility of freedom always arouses anxiety, and how the anxiety is met will determine whether the freedom is affirmed or sacrificed by the individual. The child’s need to break the original ties of dependence on its parents always involves anxiety. In the healthy child this anxiety is overcome by new relatedness to his parents and others on the basis of a larger degree of self-direction and autonomy. But if independence from parents brings with it an insupportable degree of anxiety (as in the case of the child of hostile or excessively anxious parents), and if the price in increased feelings of helplessness and isolation is too great, the child retreats into new forms of dependency*" ".. in anxiety experiences in the young child that the self comes into being." - A threat arouses the anxiety within. It gives a boundary to sense of self. - "The self comes into being to preserve the individual's security, to protect him from anxiety" In [[Book - The Birth and Death of Meaning An Interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man]] ![[Book - The Birth and Death of Meaning An Interdisciplinary perspective on the problem of man#^e29c03]] **By understanding what arouse anxiety within, which part of personality feels anxious. Remove those constrictions, and there will be growth** - Sullivan also indicates—pointing toward the constructive use of anxiety—that the areas in the personality marked by anxiety often become the areas of significant growth when, as in psychotherapy or favorable human relationships, the individual can deal with his anxiety constructively. **An enlarged self-awareness brings new possibilities, and that brings anxieties.** - An enlarging of self-awareness occurs whenever one confronts and moves through new possibilities. Whereas the first anxiety of the infant is without content, a change occurs in the child after the emergence of self-awareness. Kierkegaard terms this emergence of self-awareness a “qualitative leap”; it is described in a different context in modern dynamic psychology as the emergence of the ego. Now the child becomes aware that freedom involves responsibility. The responsibility is to “be one’s self” as well as to be responsible to others. The converse side of this responsibility is guilt feeling. **Even though you feel anxious, you have to venture forth and overcome it. Because the other way is losing your freedom and self.** - To the extent that individuals seek to avoid anxiety, responsibility, and guilt feeling by refusing to avail themselves of their new possibilities, by refusing to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar, they sacrifice their freedom and constrict autonomy and self-awareness. ==*“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose oneself,*” Kierkegaard puts it pithily.== Availing oneself of possibilities, confronting the anxiety, and accepting the responsibility and guilt feeling involved result in increased self-awareness, freedom, and enlarged spheres of creativity. - So it is too that in the eyes of the world it is dangerous to venture. And why? Because one may lose. But not to venture is shrewd. And yet, by not venturing, it is so dreadfully easy to lose that which it would be difficult to lose in even the most venturesome venture, and in any case never so easily, so completely as if it were nothing—one’s self. For if I have ventured amiss—very well, then life helps me by its punishment. But if I have not ventured at all—who then helps me? And, moreover, if by not venturing at all in the highest sense (and to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of oneself) I have gained all earthly advantages . . . and lose my self! What of that? - The more creative the individual, the more possibilities he or she has and the more they are confronted with anxiety and its concomitant responsibility and guilt feeling. Or, as Kierkegaard again phrases it: “The more consciousness, the more self.” Increased self-awareness means increased selfhood. We conclude: the positive aspects of selfhood develop as the individual confronts, moves through, and overcomes anxiety-creating experiences.