Getting past the symptoms and isolating the anxiety itself

The way to attack this final frontier is to isolate the anxiety itself and attack it at the core. It’s similar to when a patient is rushed into the ER, covered in blood. It’s easy for the doctor to panic and start cleaning the blood and treating each wound. But the way to treat the patient is to take a step back and analyze the patient, isolate the symptoms and identify the core issue and then treat it. Or like when a person comes to the doctor complaining of headaches, congestion, chest pains, and pain when swallowing. The doctor can treat the individual symptoms, but it would still not solve anything because the underlying illness that is causing the diverse symptoms was not identified and treated, thus treating all of the symptoms with it.

So a good doctor takes a step back and analyzes the symptoms and identifies the underlying issue. And that’s what I’m going to do. You see, the brain thinks that it could use thoughts as its weapon of last resort because who can argue with thoughts? But someone can. And that person is me. I am the only one in my own head who knows me best and who knows the truth about things. Only I can look myself in the eye, figuratively speaking of course, and assure myself of the one thing that no one else can. I am my own worst enemy, but I am also my own best chance at confronting this enemy. And I’m getting good at it, so I know I’m going to overcome this one as well. And it will empower me to self-assure with everything and anything else.

Let’s first touch on something that I told my wife yesterday because it think it is so fundamental and encouraging: Life has 3 types of situations:

• Where there is nothing wrong and no reason for medical attention or emergency services

• Where there is a non-emergency medical issue that requires a visit to a doctor

• Where there is a medical emergency that requires emergency medical services

In the first instance, there is nothing wrong, so you do nothing. In the second instance, you visit a doctor who determines that you have a virus or infection, prescribes medication or refers the patient to a specialist. And in the third instance, the person calls 911 and receives the help they need.

Panic and anxiety – including and especially about issues of health and mental illness – comes when:

• There is in fact nothing wrong

• The brain perceives that something is or might go wrong

• Since there is nothing wrong in fact, there is no doctor to visit or emergency service to call

• As a result, the brain feels trapped, thinking that something is or might go wrong, but there is no one to call

• It goes so far, to the point where it actually forgets that if something were in fact wrong, there are medical and emergency services to call, so it feels even more trapped

• Panic ensues at the brain feels like something is wrong but there is nothing it can do.

• The fact, however, is that there is nothing wrong, and that’s why there is nothing to do.

• And the fact is that if there were something wrong there would be no questions about it, and there are plenty of resources to call who would respond at a moment’s notice.

• It is the cognitive dissonance between the illusion that “something is or might go terribly wrong and there’s nothing I can do”, and the reality that “there is nothing wrong and that’s why there’s nothing I am doing or can do, (and that if there were something really wrong there is plenty that can be done as has been done in the past during real emergency situations)

That said, instead of panicking over the feeling of being trapped by being unable to do anything about a serious situation, the focus needs to shift to the fact that there is no emergency situation and therefore there is nothing to do. And the proof that there is nothing to do is that you are not actually doing anything, because there is plenty to do in a true emergency or even a non-emergency, and your lack of action is because there is no action to take because there is no situation to react to.