Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today’s topic–anxiety.

What brought me to write about it? Well, recently I published a post titled, “The Nature of Depression and Melancholy” (see HERE). Shortly afterwards, one of my readers commented that rather than depression or melancholy, he is more likely to experience anxiety, and therefore, wondered if I might write a post on it. Since how people handle anxiety can influence their degree of self-respect, I decided the topic was relevant to this blog.

As I took up the task, it soon became apparent that it would not be possible to explain the nature of anxiety without integrating it with what we know about depression and melancholy. After all, each share six similar characteristics, and in the same episode of depression or melancholy, people can have waves of anxiety. Additionally, at times all three states of being (depression, melancholy, and anxiety) blend together.

So, we begin today with a brief summary of the six common characteristics of depression, melancholy, and anxiety. Afterwards, I’ll describe how all three states of being differ from one another.

Brief Summary of The Six Common Characteristics of Depression, Melancholy, and Anxiety.

Depression and melancholy, as I explained more fully in a previous post, share six characteristics. Anxiety also shares these as well.

All three are usefully viewed as a type of memory. Its function is to remind you that you have concerns that need to be addressed.

This memory can be visualized as a bucket. When it is only slightly filled, each time the memory warns you that you have some work to do in order to deal with your various concerns, you can, if you so choose, easily put off dealing with them until a more convenient time by shifting your attention so you can carry out some other task.

As the bucket gets more and more filled by more concerns, or particularly big concerns, the warnings become more frequent. They also feel more intense, and it becomes harder and harder to shift attention to other tasks. If your concern memory bucket becomes filled to the top, putting off dealing with at least some of your concerns is no longer possible.

As the concerns become more frequent, or feel more intense, some medical doctors, particularly psychiatrists, will be eager to classify your experience as a symptom of a mental disorder and prescribe drugs to deal with this. It is a lucrative business model, but in my opinion, this causes more harm than good. One way or another, concerns have to be addressed, and masking them with substances that have a variety of harmful side effects will only lead to more concerns in the long run.

The amount of concerns and degree of seriousness of concerns that one has in their concern memory provides two of the reasons why people vary when it comes to how often, and how intense their concerns are experienced. Another reason for this variation is that people inherently have different capacities for putting off addressing their concerns until a more convenient time. We can visualize this as being born with either a large, average, or small concern memory bucket. For those who are born with a relatively large concern bucket, they can hold more concerns and larger, more serious concerns before their bucket begins to become filled than an average person. Thus, they can go for longer periods before they begin to have more and more difficulty shifting their attention away from their concerns. Others who are born with smaller buckets find that it takes less time than the average person for it to begin to fill up. Thus, even when facing relatively few and minor concerns than the average person, they nevertheless begin to have more and more difficulty shifting their attention away from their concerns.

Another characteristic that depression, melancholy, and anxiety share is that there are various ways to decrease the contents in our concern memory bucket before we begin to have trouble postponing dealing with our concerns. For example, meditating once or twice a day provides an opportunity to spend time addressing concerns with little distractions. Although as we enter into meditation, we don’t do so with the intent to address concerns, they naturally bubble up from the relatively peaceful state, and our minds spend time working through our various concerns in a natural manner.

Taking a walk, journal writing about concerns, speaking to a counselor, or watching a sporting event like baseball that provides significant down time to mull over our concerns, can also be very helpful. By working through our concerns in these ways allow us some control over when we have to deal with a full blown experience that might otherwise occur at very inconvenient times, or feel so intense that they begin to feel painful.

In today’s world, there are an incredible number of opportunities to distract us from addressing our concerns, from entertaining TV shows, movies, the ease of calling friends, and engaging on social media platforms. Methods that free us from so many distractions for periods of time can be enormously helpful in avoiding reaching what some have described as a nervous breakdown.

So, the six common characteristics of depression, melancholy, and anxiety I want to bring to your attention are, 1. the concern memory system serves as a warning sign, 2. we can delay attending to these warnings for a limited period of time, 3. when we put off dealing with our concerns, they don’t just go away, they come back again and again until they are adequately addressed, 4.despite our efforts at putting them off, as our concerns begin to accumulate without being fully addressed, it becomes harder to delay dealing with them, and our memory begins to remind us of them more frequently and more intensely, until we reach a point at which we must attend to them, like it or not, 5. people vary on how many and how serious their concerns must become before they no longer can divert their attention from their concerns, and 6. we can decrease the period of time before our concerns start to reach extremely frequent, strong, intense experiences by putting aside each day some time to reduce external distractions so we can more smoothly and comfortably address our concerns.

How Are Depression, Melancholy, and Anxiety Different From One Another?

We experience desires, aspirations, strivings, wishes, and longings. For convenience sake, let’s just use the word desire to represent all of these experiences.

As we experience desires, several emotions can spring to our attention. Sometimes we experience the emotion of renewed hope because something we did, someone else did, or some change in the environment signaled that our desire is more likely to be fulfilled. When a desire is fulfilled, we experience a wave of an emotion we call happiness. Whenever we interpret a situation as interfering with achieving a desire, we experience a wave of frustration. And whenever we interpret a situation as indicating a desire is no longer achievable, we grieve for a period. When we recall situations in our life, this can lead to re-experiencing the emotions that had occurred in the original situation.

One desire people have is to avoid harm. Whenever we perceive situations in which we may be harmed either physically or psychologically, we experience fear. If we perceive a tiger rushing toward us, we would experience fear that would immediately fill up our concern bucket, and our attention would be completely on this event. During this time, you would not be thinking about what TV show you want to watch later that evening. Instead, your body would go into a state of flight or fight, your heart would be pounding, and adrenalin would begin to circulate in your blood, giving you added strength.

Not all fear experiences are as intense. For example, observing a doctor coming toward you to give you an injection might produce just a mild degree of fear. At such time, you might decide to divert your attention to a pleasant image, and find you can do this.

Now, there is a type of fear that arises when we anticipate that there is a real possibility that we will be facing some harmful event some time in the future. For example, a woman might have plans to traverse a path in a jungle next week having heard that tigers have attacked people on that path. Each time she thinks about this, she is very likely to experience some fear.

When we are not immediately facing the fearful event, it is a somewhat different experience than one in which we are immediately facing it. We typically distinguish this type of fear by calling it anxiety, or we say we are worrying about the upcoming event.

Not everyone makes this distinction. For some people, when experiencing frustration, grief, an immediately occurring fearful situation, or anxiety as I have just defined them, they may use words like being upset, anxious, depressed, and melancholy to refer loosely to all of these emotional states. There is some justification for doing so, because when we look at specific examples of people having these types of experience, we find that all three emotions can blend together, and it is not always easy to say which emotion is most apt for describing what is actually being experienced. Let’s look at some examples to show you what I mean by this.

Some Examples

Rob’s Desire To Get Home

After a hard day at work, Rob desires to get home so he can relax. As he is driving home, suddenly he hits a traffic jam, slowing his car almost to a stop. He initially experiences frustration. As he assesses the situation, he sees there is some road construction blocking one of the lanes. Then he sees that just up ahead, once cars pass the construction, traffic picks up to normal. This five-minute delay is no big deal, and his mind passes to some song playing on his radio.

Parable Discussion

This is a simple example of a person experiencing frustration, and it soon passes without other emotions arising. This type of experience occurs to all of us quite frequently.

Shanice’s Recipe Concern

Shanice desires to be viewed by her family as an excellent cook, and her family of four love that she takes charge of the evening meal. One day, as Shanice is working around her house, a concern arises within. She thinks to herself, “What should I make for supper?” When she can’t think of anything, she feels frustrated. Over the past few days, she has gone through her main classics, and now she doesn’t want to make something she views as “the same old, same old.”

Suddenly the phone rings, and because Shanice is in the midst of experiencing her frustration over this issue, she pauses before answering, thinking she wants to get her supper plans settled. But then she says, “I guess I could put this supper stuff off for a few minutes,” and she decides to answer her phone.

After a nice chat, Shanice writes a condolence letter to a friend who recently lost her mother to cancer. Then her concern memory reminds her that she still doesn’t know what to make for supper. Again, feeling frustrated, her attention fully focuses on this issue, and then she remembers she has, back in one of her draws, a red folder with recipes that she has saved over the years. As she remembers this, she experiences a wave of hope.

As Shanice flips through these recipes, her eyes fall upon one for sesame pasta. “Oh,” she says, “the last time I made this, everyone raved about it. I haven’t made it in a long time. I bet this might be a perfect choice, and she is now even more hopeful.”

She then calls out to the rest of her family, asking them what they think about this. They all express delight. So now Shanice can take this dinner concern out of her concern memory bucket, and a wave of happiness is experienced.

It just so happens, that Shanice’s son, Daniel, is in a counseling graduate program and one of his classes is focused on emotions. So, Daniel asks Shanice what she was experiencing as she went through addressing her concern.

“I was just frustrated because I really couldn’t think of what to make,” she replies.

“Did you experience any anxiety or worry as you went through the experience?”

“Well, I felt a little anxiety each time my mind went to the thought that my family is going to start thinking I’m losing my touch for being a great cook.”

Parable Discussion

This little story is designed to help us see that people can feel mainly frustrated as they deal with a concern, but thoughts that lead to hope, happiness, and anxiety can be part of the the total emotional experience. It also illustrates that being reminded of our concerns can be helpful for achieving our desires. If Shanice had completely forgotten about her concern once she became distracted by a phone call, she would not have come up with an approach that fulfilled her desire. Recalling our concerns don’t guarantee that all of our desires will be fulfilled, but it often helps.

In this Shanice example, the whole incident passes by in a fairly brief period. Let’s take a look at another example, but this one lasting several months.

Fred’s Employment Concern

Fred, an assistant manager in his firm, desires to get a promotion. When his annual review comes, it is excellent, and his hopes soar. One day the firms owner calls him into her office. He thinks to himself, “Maybe she’s going to tell me I’ve been promoted,” and once again his hope soars. Instead of a promotion, she fires Fred, explaining that the firm was just bought out by a big conglomerate, and they are bringing in their own personnel leadership.

Upon hearing this, Fred is very frustrated.

When he gets home, for several days waves of frustration frequently blend with periods of grieving each time his mind falls on the fact that seeing several people he loved working with on a daily basis has come to an end. It has not been easy for him to continue to do several of his daily obligations, such as picking up the kids after team practices, participating in a charity organization, and emotionally supporting each member of his family as their concerns arise, but for the most part, he struggles through this.

The next week, at one point he finds it is so hard to attend to what they are saying, his mind drifting to what he has to do to land a new job, that he excuses himself and goes for a long walk.

During the walk, as he recalls moments of his firing and the loss of seeing his coworkers, powerful emotions arise within, and he sits on a park bench and begins to cry.

It lasts for a few minutes, and then he gets up and resumes his walk. A half mile further along, a plan begins to take form. He has to make some calls to get recommendations, and his resume has to be polished up. Then, all of a sudden, he realizes that some of the firms he was thinking of applying to would require long commutes. He had bought his current house so he could walk to work because he hates dealing with the awful traffic in his city. Now the fear of having a daily commute is experienced as a powerful bout with anxiety.

As Fred continues his walk, an idea comes to him. I’ll first just apply to the three firms within a twenty minute drive.

It’s a month later. He is grieving because he has received rejection letters from two of the nearby firms. He also finds that when he wakes up every morning he has a bout of anxiety, fearing the letter carrier will bring another rejection letter.

Finally, one morning Fred gets a letter from the third nearby firm that he had applied to. With great fear, he opens it. To his delight, it invites him to come for an interview the following week. Reading this, his hope soars. But then, later in the letter, it explains that part of the interview involves making a presentation in front of the interviewers. This produces a wave of anxiety. He has a good deal of experience making presentations, but this one will be in front of people he doesn’t know, and his whole chance of getting this job will largely depend on how well he carries this off.

The anxiety proves to be productive. It motivates Fred to put off any other plans he has for the week, so he can work on the presentation. In the end, he really puts together something he has confidence in.

The story has a happy ending. Fred lands the job.

Parable Discussion

Here we see an example of someone experiencing, during a period of months, strong feelings of hope, frustration, anxiety, grief, fear, and happiness. There are times Fred has trouble concentrating on the usual family matters and community obligations. Still, many of the important tasks of life that don’t involve looking for a job manages to get done by Fred. But, at one point, he does excuse himself so he can eliminate distractions, fully experience his emotions, and formulate some plans.

As in our previous example, the plans Fred comes up with do not guarantee success. Nevertheless, the alternative of doing things that continually distract himself are likely to lead to his concern memory bucket reaching an overflowing state, and then many of his daily obligations may end up suffering. He could have also turned to heavy drinking of alcohol or some other drugs to suppress his emotions. The side effect of this approach may have added to his already challenging concern.

Janet’s Anxiety Concerns

Janet has just graduated from a Mental Health Counseling masters program. She now has thousands of dollars in college loans, but her husband makes just enough money so their living expenses are just barely being met.

For Janet to start making any significant money as a counselor, she has to pass the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination. So, she pays to take the exam which is only given twice a year. If she fails, she would have to pay the fee again and wait another six months until she can take it again.

The test is coming up in a few months. To prepare for the test, she pays for a set of computer based instructions, which also provides practice tests. The cost to take the test, and the instructional material has really stretched her budget to the ultimate limit.

Janet has long desired to have a child, but put off starting a family because of her studies. Now she has reached an age at which putting off having a child becomes increasingly risky. So, at the same time that she is preparing for the test, she has decided to see if she can have a baby.

As she begins to prepare for the test, she meets Al, a guy who recently failed the same test she has been studying for, and he tells her that he knows others who studied a great deal, and also failed. Janet experiences, upon hearing this, a wave of anxiety. At the same time, she decides to increase the amount of time each week for studying.

After studying for a few weeks, she takes a practice test, and fails. Anxiety comes flooding into her whole being.

The next week, Janet discovers she is pregnant, and the hope of having a child soars. This lasts for a few days, and then, in addition to having anxiety every time she thinks about possibly failing her test, she also finds herself thinking about what would happen if she has a miscarriage, or has a child with serious medical problems. Her anxiety becomes more frequent and dramatically more intense. At the same time, she begins to take greater care of what she eats, does research on what other habits can be altered to reduce risks to her developing baby, and decides to reduce her alcohol consumption.

As time goes on, there are times when she fails a practice test, and a mixture of frustration and anxiety is experienced. There are also times when she passes a practice test and hope is experienced. Hope also occurs when an exam by her obstetrician indicates her baby is developing well.

Anxiety, frustration, hope, continue throughout this period of her life.

Parable Discussion

In this example, if Janet was asked to describe her emotional experience during this period of her life, she may very well say that she was mainly feeling a great deal of anxiety. The combined fear of failing her test, having to take the test over, maybe failing it again, having a miscarriage or having a baby with serious medical problems, we can imagine, could have overshadowed her other emotions.

In this little story, I tried to give the reader a sense that anxiety can spur one to better address concerns. Thus, concerns about failing a practice test did not just lead to experiencing anxiety, it also spurred Janet to increase her study time. Her anxiety associated with thoughts about her pregnancy led her to take steps to reduce risks.

Anxiety, Depression, Frustration, Grief, and Melancholy

To understand the nature of anxiety, we must understand how it is related to four other emotional experiences. The above four examples seeks to help us see these relationships.

All of these experiences begin with desires. Ron desired to get home so he can relax. Shanice desired to be viewed by her family as an outstanding cook. Fred desired to get promoted, and then, to get a new job that didn’t require a long commute. Janet desired to pass her test and have a healthy baby.

When we perceive that something is getting in the way of achieving our desire, at first we feel frustrated, and then we quickly begin to assess the frustration to see what can be done to overcome it. Sometimes the assessment can lead to one or more other emotional experiences, though not always.

Rob, in our example, while driving home and suddenly finding himself in a traffic jam, experiences frustration. Upon assessing the situation, he sees this will be a mere five minute delay, and the frustration passes away.

However, in the Shanice example, she mostly experiences frustration when she can’t come up with a supper idea. However, upon questioning, she realizes that as she was assessing what to do about this, her mind fell on the thought that her family might lose respect for her if she keeps making the same old, same old. With that thought, she experienced some anxiety. It was rather mild, and she was able to put off addressing her concern for a few minutes so she could respond to her phone call. After the phone call, at one point her concern memory warned her that she still had not adequately addressed her concern.

In the Fred example, he becomes frustrated when he finds out that his desire to be promoted is not going to be achieved, and instead he is fired. As he assesses this, at some point the frustration begins to include periods of grief and anxiety. The concerns that lead to these emotions are pretty major, and he finds that at times he is having difficulty shifting his attention away from his concerns.

In the Janet example, she becomes frustrated when she realizes that her desire to advance her mental health counseling career requires that she take an expensive and very hard to pass test. She also desires to have a healthy baby, and experiences frustration when ideas come to her that she could have a miscarriage or give birth to a baby with serious medical problems. These frustrating thoughts almost instantly shift to anxiety.

Now, when we have frustration along with grieving experiences or anxiety, many of us begin to insult ourselves. We might say, things like, “Why am I acting like a baby,” “I’m acting crazy,” “What an idiot I am,” “I’m mentally ill,” “I’m hopeless and helpless,” “This is a horrible experience, and it’s all my fault,” “I hate myself,” “I deserve to die,” etc.  Those who go to war with themselves in this manner, add a whole additional serious concern to what they are already facing because people have an inherent desire to respect themselves. Creating the impression with these insulting attitudes that they are not worthy of respect frustrates this desire.

So, here we see two alternative experiences, one in which frustration and grieving gets mixed together with insulting, and one in which frustration and anxiety gets mixed together with insulting. When we experience frustration and grieving, and are also insulting ourselves, we might want to refer to this as depression.

Because depression is often used in too vague a manner, when that word comes up, I seek to explore what meaning is intended, looking specifically to see if the person using the word depression means frustration, grieving, and insulting oneself, or some other experience.

For a similar reason, when someone uses the word anxiety, I like to see if the experience being referred to includes personal insults.

As I pointed out in my post titled, “Depression and Melancholy,”  melancholy offers us a third alternative.

Consider how musician and song writer Joni Mitchell described melancholy in her beautiful song, “Hijira.”

There is comfort in melancholy where there is no need to explain, it’s just as natural as the weather in this moody sky today.

In melancholy, the person practices self-compassion and views the experiences of frustration, grieving, and anxiety as a natural helpful process we all must go through from time to time. Melancholy provides a richer, and more powerful approach for addressing our concerns, even the most challenging ones. It doesn’t waste time with all of the insults, though, because of old habits, some may still leap into consciousness. When they do, individuals in a melancholy state of being can observe them without believing they are true. Rather, they recognize them as old unhelpful habits, allow themselves to experience the physical sensations that come with them, and then, when those sensations pass in their own good time, they move on to other work that needs to be done.

For those individuals who haven’t been utilizing the melancholy experience, this is perfectly understandable. In our society, it is so common to observe family members, friends, and acquaintances frequently insulting others when a mistake is made. TV shows, movies, and politics portray people constantly blaming others in a hateful manner for all the problems that they see in the world. So, this style of dealing even with our own concerns is something that we pick up like mud on our shoes after strolling through an unpaved path after a storm.

To just read a post such as this can help a few people begin the process of transforming their war against themselves to a more melancholy approach without any additional assistance from anyone else. Most people, however, having learned the habit over many years of dealing with the situations that bring on grief and anxiety by insulting themselves will require entering into a process lasting for several months in a more systematic, guided manner.

One way to participate in such a process, and won’t cost any money, is to start reading my blog, beginning with the first post (see HERE). This can be paced depending on one’s comfort level, but I think that putting aside at least fifteen minutes on this process each week is the minimal necessary commitment to expect real positive change.

Additionally, my three novels provide an entertaining way to learn to develop self respect (see HERE). There is a modest cost to purchasing them, but the ebook versions are very inexpensive.

Though most personal counselors are stuck in the medical model that pathologizes the experiences we discussed today, more and more are turning to an alternative approach that values enhancing self-compassion. Naturally my two favorites of these are my son, Jack Star Rubin, and his talented wife, Emily Whyte Rubin. You can learn about their services, which are available online, by clicking HERE. They rely on a variety of wisdom traditions that have demonstrated research support, and they listen deeply and compassionately as their clients express concerns. In this way, with the help of modeling, their clients come to adopt this way of listening deeply and compassionately as they, themselves, deal with their own concerns even when their counselor is not present.

Well, that’s my post for today. I hope you found some nourishing food for thought. Stay safe out there, and please join us again right here at From Insults to Respect.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on.  This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence.  To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

AnxietyAnxiety DisorderDepression