josephb

We all love a good fairy tale. Mythical lands, strange and exotic creatures, and magical powers that can solve every problem from the mundane to the severe. But imagination, with all its sparkle and shine, can actually be to your detriment when you have anxiety. Anxiety is sometimes hard to understand or communicate because it doesn’t usually come from what can be physically confirmed. In other words, it doesn’t stem from what is actually happening or what others can readily see or understand. Most of the time, anxiety comes from what could happen in the future. Anxiety leverages your God-given creativity and sends you into an imaginary land of extreme and negative future outcomes that is convincingly real. An Overachieving Imagination People with anxiety are often highly perceptive, creative, emotionally aware, and future-oriented thinkers. Anxiety hijacks your brain’s natural warning system and wreaks confusion. The same inventive mental ability that allows someone to envision possibilities is also pretty creative when it comes to conjuring up future catastrophes. You’ve heard the idiom “too much of a good thing.” This can be said about your imagination, too. Your God-given creativity is a blessing most of the time. But your ability to think about the future in realistic detail can make things tricky. When paired with your imagination, which is capable of complex thinking and multilayered scenarios, this creativity can feel like it is working against you if you suffer from anxiety. As your anxiety creates fictitious future scenarios, your brain begins to react to them as if they’re real, which starts a chain reaction. When your brain doesn’t accept these images and ideas as creative works of fiction but as authentic and urgent warnings, a process begins. Your brain signals your body to be on high alert. Muscles begin to tighten, the [...]

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a turbulent situation? It might have been a literal storm or a challenging situation that made it nearly impossible to go about life as usual. One common challenge that many people face is anxiety. This is not only the everyday anxiety that affects us all, but crippling anxiety that makes it hard to function. Taking self-care for anxiety seriously is one way to cope well with anxiety in its many forms. When you’re feeling anxious, it can feel like you’re in the middle of a storm, tossed about by racing thoughts, a pounding heart, carrying the feeling of dread, and a knot in your stomach. Anxiety is a common struggle, but it is one that’s often misunderstood and not attended to properly. Through effective support, you can bring your anxiety under control. You’re not alone in your anxiety Being anxious is a deeply human experience. We’ve all felt anxious at one point or another, and there’s a place for anxiety in our lives. Being anxious is a physiological response to danger, and that response can be lifesaving in certain circumstances. When you feel anxious about your first day at work or school, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it helps you prepare adequately. Anxiety can even help you as you do something simple like cross a busy street. Many folks experience anxiety of the kind I’ve described above. It’s one of the many mechanisms in our bodies that allow us to navigate our world successfully. It is helpful to a point as it keeps you alert to your environment and enables you to prepare. However, anxiety can often become something more. Instead of being a help, anxiety can become a burden, keeping you up at night as your mind [...]

There’s a phenomenon in psychology called psychological responsibility that describes the situation that you might be in right now. If you’re a woman in a heterosexual relationship, chances are that you’re the partner who carries the majority of the mental baggage in the relationship. Research shows that in traditional families, the wife or woman is the one who is in charge of the logistics of the household. Our society has universally accepted that fact for generations. This responsibility, while it’s culturally acceptable, can lead to overwhelming anxiety. Historical Context of Overwhelming Anxiety A few decades ago, this model of the woman being the overseer of the home worked more seamlessly than it does today. While women did work outside of the home back in the 1970s and before, their numbers were much lower than they are today. It’s amazing and noble that women have fought and are continuing to fight for equal rights in the workplace and political spectrum, but there’s still a disconnect when it comes to home life. Many women today are taking on dual roles. While women are working just as many hours in the workplace as their husbands or male counterparts, they’re disproportionately responsible for the home life, too. Cultural attitudes about women being in charge of housework, cooking, and managing schedules haven’t updated with labor laws. Many women in our modern culture are tasked with working outside the home and also carrying a heavy workload once they’re done with their full-time job. Psychological Responsibility In addition to doing chores and working a full-time job, women often carry the psychological responsibility for multiple people in their lives. Their mental responsibility is complex and generally consists of three exhausting phases. Phase 1: Anticipation As a woman, you’re likely the one who sees your family’s needs before anyone [...]