BEYOND SHYNESS
Page 11
AS A CHILD, I MADE A MISTAKE, WHICH WAS:
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WHICH CAUSED FEELINGS OF CONFUSION BECAUSE:
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WHICH CAUSED FEELINGS OF REJECTION BECAUSE:
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FEAR BEGAN TO BUILD IN THIS WAY:
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WHICH LED TO AVOIDANCE OF THE THREATENING SITUATION. I AVOIDED THE SITUATION IN THIS WAY:
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THIS LOWERED MY SELF-CONFIDENCE BECAUSE:
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THIS IN TURN DECREASED THE CHANCES OF SUCCESS BECAUSE:
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THIS CREATED MORE POTENTIAL FOR CONFUSION AND REJECTION, CAUSING ME TO FEEL:
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ULTIMATELY, THIS INCREASED MY ANXIETY AND LACK OF FULFILLMENT, WHICH MADE ME FEEL:
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There were probably situations throughout your childhood and adolescence that made you uncomfortable, situations that you now understand made you feel embarrassed or rejected. When you experienced these situations, you began to realize that if you avoided similar ones in the future, you would not experience the pain of failure.
Countless clients have described to me their memories of teachers calling on them in the classroom, usually in elementary school, and how a humiliating episode resulted in patterns of avoidance. Others recall being embarrassed in front of their peers in free-play situations, or feeling humiliated by a parent in front of others.
When avoidance becomes pervasive, it is known as phobia. Phobias develop in different ways. A phobic reaction is one in which a person feels his environment has let him down. An essential component is a perceived loss of control. One of the first clients I ever worked with was Anne, a married woman of twenty-five who had developed a phobia of trains. When she traced the development of her problem, she vividly remembered her first trauma. During a train trip, her hemorrhoid condition began to bleed, the blood seeping through her pants. Mortified, she ran from the train, experiencing a desperate sense of losing control. This was the start of her phobia.
Another person remembers being mortified as a nine-year-old gifted child. After completing a challenging homework assignment, the girl joined her classmates in school. Because she was known to be a gifted student, the other kids teased her about being a “smartypants” and a “know-it-all.” When the teacher had corrected all the papers, she made an announcement that was intended as praise. “Katie, you can go outside to play. Everyone else will have to stay in to do this assignment again. Katie was the only one to do it correctly.” By itself, the event might not have been traumatic; but taken together with other, similar responses, a pattern developed that included headaches and a tendency to avoid making friends. Outside of the structured classroom situation, in spontaneous free-play situations with her peers, she had trouble interacting, which only increased her anxiety. Katie tended to be a loner, because she became so afraid of being identified as “different.” By the time the child had become an adult, she chose to avoid many situations—in school, at work, or socially—that might cause her to feel singled out.
Eventually, both Anne and Katie learned to confront their fears; although they continued to feel anxious, they began to manage that anxiety. You too are learning to approach—slowly but surely—the threatening situations that you tend to avoid. As you identify these situations, and project ahead to a time when you have mastered them, you will use them as part of your map for change.
If you identified with the dependency issues in the last chapter, think about whether you depend on other people in a negative manner to do things that you really could or should do for yourself. Obviously, depending on others can be a healthy part of friendship and intimacy. But unhealthy dependence robs you of self-esteem and allows you to avoid those situations that make you anxious, thereby intensifying your overall problem. In this chapter, we are further examining the negative aspects of dependence, the ways in which it holds you back, keeps you from living the life that you want. The key determinant is whether you would be healthier if you handled these aspects of your life on your own.
List three ways that you depend negatively on other people:
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What effect does this dependence have specifically and generally on your life? Consider:
• The psychological manipulation involved in dependence. Do you make excuses to justify your dependence? “It’s not that much trouble for my colleague to return some of my phone calls for me.” “My lab partner really likes to make the oral reports—I’ll stick to the written stuff.”
• The way your anxiety increases the more you continue to be inappropriately dependent. The less familiar you are with certain tasks and situations, the more you fear them, and the more likely you are to avoid them.
• The loss your dependence causes: loss of gratification, success, lack of intimacy. Are you held back in your job or career because you are unable to take on responsibility yourself?
• The way dependence robs you of self-esteem and self-confidence. Do you secretly feel like a failure because you are unable or unwilling to attend to the responsibilities in your life?
Write down your feelings about the effects of negative dependence:
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While you weren’t “born shy,” you were born dependent. As an infant, you relied on your parents for all your personal care. But as you grew older, the natural progression was toward independence, toward the separateness of adulthood. If you are experiencing problems with dependence now, it is in part because the people you depend on are enabling you to depend on them. You ask for their help, consciously or unconsciously, and they give it to you. They may tell themselves it’s easier to do something for you than to risk your negative, even agitated, response at being denied. They play into your own denial of the problem by rationalizing their objections. Just as you maintain that it’s not that big a deal for your lab partner to handle the oral report, your lab partner, knowing you get anxious when you have to address large groups, may tell herself the same thing.
/> Think about how you might have learned dependence. Did your parents exhibit a willingness to rescue you from new or stressful situations? Do you remember your response? If your parents taught you to avoid stress and anxiety because they would “take care of it,” you began to believe it was easier to rely on them than to risk failure on your own.
At twenty-two, Jim was an A student at college. Despite a learning disability, he has succeeded in school and entered graduate studies in library science. A few years earlier, at the time he had started my program, he had no social life. Except for his academics, Jim depended totally on his parents. He did not drive. He did not take the bus or train alone. He had extreme difficulty making phone calls. He did not even know how to do his own laundry. As we delved through layers and layers of dependence, it became clear that Jim felt an extraordinary degree of social anxiety. Having relied on his parents to such a great extent, he had no social self-confidence and had learned to avoid most social situations.
Let’s now consider the physical sensations that make you feel uncomfortable, the negative stress responses. These are actual feelings that have allowed anxiety to control you. In Chapter 1, you identified the specific symptoms that anxiety causes you to experience. Now that you understand avoidance, it should be clear to you that the more you avoid, the less you experience your symptoms of anxiety. If your goal is to stop experiencing symptoms, then you are succeeding. If your goal is to be able to interact successfully on both the social and career fronts, you have a long way to go. Goal-setting can help. How? By providing a map for change.
All too often, an individual who comes to me for help with anxiety is preoccupied with the symptoms themselves. Do you think about your sweaty palms, wonder whether everyone can see that you’re blushing? You exaggerate the symptoms in your mind, just as your body is exaggerating the emotional response to stress. You have learned to somatize your response to stress—in other words, your emotions are repressed and are now manifesting themselves in your body.
How does somatization occur? A thirty-three-year-old woman sought my help for her panic attacks, which consisted of common symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, fear of passing out (the thought was a lot stronger than the likelihood that the event would occur), and an overall fear of losing control. In counseling, she became aware that her communication with her husband was not good. She was not assertive or even expressive. Instead, she kept most of her feelings in. These unexpressed feelings led to a backup of energy internally. The result? Her body would say what her voice could not. As she learned a healthy way to express herself, the symptoms diminished.
Anxiety is a natural part of life, and anxiety symptoms apply to everybody. Reflecting back on your physical symptoms and thought patterns can give you a valuable history to draw from. To gain further insight into your own anxiety symptoms, use imagery to recall the following:
1. When was the first time you experienced the symptoms that now control you?
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2. Where were you, and with whom?
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3. What happened after you experienced the symptoms?
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4. What was going on in your life at this time? Were you experiencing change (in home life, work, or school)? What major issues were you addressing?
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If there was no organic or physical cause for these symptoms, they were the result of stress. To control your symptoms, you must learn to manage stress. In the next chapter, we will explore stress management in depth. For the time being, understand that a very important component of your map is to be able to control the symptoms so that you do not live in fear of them. Once you gain control, you will find it much easier to confront the situations you fear.
THE TEMPER TANTRUM
One way I explain the exaggerated physical response to stress is to call it a temper tantrum. We’ve all seen children become enraged and throw screaming, sobbing fits at inappropriate times, usually much to the embarrassment of their helpless mothers and fathers. But anxiety reactions in adults can include temper tantrums, too. You may recognize this in a boss who rages when something goes wrong, or in contrast, the boss who gives employees the silent treatment for days after a project goes awry. Both reactions are temper tantrums, or what is sometimes called acting-out behavior: The child inside is upset. What is the “child” inside of you? It is a part of your personality, a specific ego state. The child within is where your emotions are located. Part of diffusing the tantrum is nurturing that child, addressing its fears and concerns, and becoming allied against the offending stress—not by running from it, but by confronting it.
How can you nurture yourself? The same way you would nurture someone else. Growth and self-actualization involve confronting fear and anxiety, and nurturing yourself—supporting yourself as you address your stressors—is the only way to get there. Here are some guidelines for nurturing:
1. Acknowledge the fear objectively—without judging whether it is rational or not.
Say to yourself: “I know I’m afraid to:
… ask for a raise.”
… meet this authority figure.”
… give this speech.”
… go on a date.”
2. Look realistically at the problem. Is this something you could do if you had the courage?
3. Take responsibility for the problem. No matter where it all started, it’s yours now, and it’s up to you to perpetuate it or discard it through anxiety control.
4. Understand the emotional conflict that gives rise to the exaggerated feelings and the resulting physical symptoms.
5. Learn how to control these feelings and symptoms by confronting the problem.
6. Learn relaxation or internal self-regulation.
7. Learn to use healthy communication and self-expression.
8. Apply these attitudes and skills.
As part of goal-setting, list the three symptoms that you would most like to gain control of. If you like, refer back to Chapter 1 to help refresh your memory.
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Gaining insight or awareness is an important part of the getting-well process. Chapter 7 offers several exercises in self-awareness, designed to put you in touch with your strong points and help to clarify your goals further. People vary in their ability to become aware, and, once they have gained insight, in their ability to use this information effectively. And—this warning comes from my years of practice as a psychotherapist—beware the “I-Don’t-Know” disease!
When people seek help, part of the goal is to change the negative balance that exists in their lives. Much of this unhealthy balance has arisen because of a lack of awareness, and a tendency not to take responsibility for various aspects of their lives. Self-awareness can be a difficult thing to attain, and the learned reflex—the answer to any even vaguely threatening question—is “I don’t know.” But “I don’t know” is not a brick wall. It is a door to be opened. Find out what’s behind it. If you’re having trouble, keep knocking until you get an answer.
The sociability profile has provided you with a
more concrete understanding of your social strengths and deficits. Using this profile, along with the symptom profile and the avoidance and dependence profiles, get ready to clarify your objectives.
As you set your goals, remember to break them down into short term, intermediate, and long term. Don’t start out with “Goal: to become completely comfortable in every social situation.” That is not possible—yet. Breaking it down into a step-by-step process is crucial to your success. Often, the failure to achieve stems from having unrealistic expectations. Don’t do that to yourself! Don’t let impatience get in your way. Start small and work steadily. Think of your own social success program as a staircase. Start at the bottom and, using this book as your handrail, work your way to the top, one step at a time. Keep your eyes on the top of the stairs, but don’t try to get ahead of yourself. That goal is not going anywhere, so take your time.
Alan, whose public speaking anxiety I mentioned earlier, was good at identifying his objectives, and that is what helped him to achieve a rewarding social life. How did he set his goals? He had two basic objectives: the short-term goal of controlling his fear enough to take the required public speaking class, and the long-term goal of moving out of his parents’ house, an important step in becoming an independent adult. With the help of his therapist, Alan created a sequence of steps. It went like this:
Short-Term Goal: To feel comfortable with public speaking.
Step 1: Talk about your fears.
Step 2: Learn to relax.
Step 3: Rehearse.
Step 4: Stop manipulating to avoid the situation.
Step 5: Do it. Put yourself in the situation.
Step 6: Keep doing it!
The sequence for the longer-term goal of moving out of the house was as follows:
Long-Term Goal: To live independently.