Does it Help to Focus on Anxiety?

[dtak59]

Hi everyone, I am new to these forums and I have SA. I have noticed that every time I try to make fixing my SA a priority, it tends to make it worse. Almost all reliable sources to treating SA have all acknowledged the first step of treatment as acknowledging the problem and working with it instead of trying to avoid it. However in my experience the opposite has been true. When I am given concrete specific tasks to focus on to direct my attention away from anything related to myself, I often manage to "forget" my anxiety and this leads to a temporary remission, where I can talk to almost anybody and deal with any situation with little or no anxiety. The moment there is any peace or calm in my life though, any breathing room to do any kind of thinking, the SA returns right away. Living with constant distractions can be exhilarating and freeing, but also exhausting. Basically, I have to be always living in the present and focusing on reality, otherwise the SA comes back. I feel I may be treading a dangerous and counter-productive path by not dealing with my problems directly, but at the same time, focusing on my anxiety, even if in a productive way, tends to make it worse.

 So, as you can see, I am pulled by two opposing paths. Does anyone have any suggestion?

Thank you 🙂

[AGrace]

Hi dtak59,

Welcome to the forums. I think you pose a question and answer that many of us think about.

For me dealing with anxiety looks similar to your approach, which if you're not familiar with Narrative Therapy, it falls into this form of treatment. The first step is acknowledging the problem, the second is to see the problem as separate to yourself, thirdly to identify exceptions to the problem (or times when you've been able to do things without the presence of the problem), to draw on these exceptions and to create a new story (hence "Narrative").

So not every form of therapy takes the approach that you must meditate or breathe in order to treat anxiety, in fact Narrative Therapy is about living a quality of life despite the problem. By being present in the moment you are also practicing mindfulness based therapy. This is a really important skill to practice, as it avoids you getting hooked on thoughts that might prevent you from doing what you want/need to do.

In my opinion, I don't think there's anything wrong with your approach, You might like to do some research on Narrative therapy.

I hope this helps.

AGrace