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anxiety : page 1........
> also see.... anxiety relief : sites.......articles : anxiety......books: anxiety relief
 Clay Aiken on his panic attacks
According to ABC News,
Clay Aiken moved back home to Raleigh: "I need to get out of
Hollywood," he told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America." He was bullied by his
classmates, experienced the trauma of his sister's suicide and has
worried about his brother, a Marine now fighting in Iraq. He often felt like he was going to have a heart attack when he would make public appearances. So, Aiken decided to talk to his doctor, who said that he was experiencing symptoms of panic attacks. |
"When I am in the room, the walls are
closing in on me and my heart
races, and I didn't understand it," Aiken said. "I would look back and
say, 'Why are your, why are your palms sweaty? What's the problem?'" Aiken never had stage fright or nervousness when performing. He tried a series of medications, but the one that worked was a drug for depression and anxiety, Paxil. Doctors say panic attacks are often complex and a bit mysterious. Aiken said he had his first panic attack when his stepfather, Ray Parker, died several years ago. Aiken was taken to the hospital. Aiken, who said he was not a fan of medicine, is not worried about getting addicted to Paxil, as he had been in the past about other anti-anxiety drugs. "Nobody who I know, first of all, in North Carolina goes to see anybody [for therapy]," he said. "Everybody who I know in LA goes to see somebody. I mean, I don't want to do that." [Excerpted from abcnews.go.com story, Sep 2006]
photo from www.clayaiken.com Clay Aiken's new album is A Thousand Different Ways available from <Amazon.com> and <iTunes> |
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Amanda Peet on stage fright
I came in [to act in the play "This Is How It Goes"] six days before we opened for previews! I imagine it is what people feel like when they jump off a plane....
I called my agent and said I need to do another play but really quickly. I am feeling that I am just getting over my stage fright, so I want to go back really quickly.
I don't want to relearn how not to be self-conscious.
[Did your stage fright abide because you had to go into this play so fast?]
Yes … but I think also it was this idea that everyone would have really low expectations of my performance.
It was sort of this feeling that I had kind of an excuse -- this built-in excuse -- and I think that liberated me.
> from article: It's a lot like success - by Susan King, LA Times April 24, 2005 / photo by Theo Wargo, WireImage
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 The times in which
we live are difficult, more difficult than a lot of people seem willing
to admit.There is an abiding sense of collective anxiety, understandable but not always easy to talk about. When things aren't going well for you in your personal life, perhaps you call a friend or family member or go to a therapist or support group to process your pain. Yet when your feelings of upset are based on larger social realities, it's hard to know how to talk about them and to whom. When you're afraid because you don't know where your next paycheck is going to come from, it's easy to articulate; when you're worried about whether the human race is going to survive the next century, it feels odd to mention it at lunch. And so, I think, there is a collective depression among us, not so much dealt with as glossed over and suppressed. |
Each
of us, as individual actors in a larger drama, carries an imprint of a
larger despair. We are coping with intense amounts of chaos and fear,
both
personally and together.
We are all being challenged, in one form or another, to recreate our lives. /// Today, we can stand in the midst of the great illusions of the world and by our very presence dispel them. As we cross the bridge to a more loving orientation-as we learn the lessons of spiritual transformation and apply them in our personal lives-we will become agents of change on a tremendous scale. By learning the lessons of change, internally and externally, each of us can participate in the great collective process in which the people of the world, riding a wave of enlightened understanding, see the human race on a destructive course and turn it around in time. >
from book The
Gift of Change : |
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You can begin to deepen your understanding of how fear may be affecting you by becoming mindful of the four levels of alertness in your body and mind.
..
..First is the normal state of alertness you experience walking down the street, driving, or being at work.
You are awake to change in the environment. If you suddenly perceive a possible danger, the body-mind switches to the second level of alertness, vigilance. This is natural and healthy, and the vigilance ends once the danger passes. The next level occurs when there's a prolonged sense of anxiety or fear. The bodymind goes into hypervigilance and stays there ready to fight, flee, or freeze in place until the trauma passes.
Hypervigilance creates a tunnel-vision effect in which you primarily experience life through the lens of fear or anxiety.
> from article Living in an Age of Fear -
By Phillip Moffitt [Life Balance Institute]
---Phillip Moffitt is a co-author of The Power To Heal :
Ancient Arts & Modern Medicine
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We're all anxious and it's a good thing that we are. At its optimum level, anxiety can help you formulate possibilities and imagine yourself in the future. When you ask yourself, Can I perform at the best level? you're having an anxious thought, but it's leading you to strive toward something. Richard Restak, M.D.
If it's true that we live in an age of anxiety, says Restak, a neuropsychiatrist and professor at George Washington University Medical Center, then our best defense is to learn as much as we can about anxiety and what causes it.
Restak (Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot) examines anxiety from both a cultural and physiological point of view. Unlike fear, which is based on a real, external threat, anxiety is an emotion of tension or dread originating from within. Restak details research conducted with animals and, in some cases, humans that reveals the workings of various brain parts involved in the creation of anxious feelings. [Publishers Weekly]
on Our Brains and Our Culture - by Richard Restak, M.D.
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I've had panic attacks since I was 19, when I tried LSD -- my one and only time trying LSD. I didn't like it very much. About a week later, I started having panic attacks. I didn't know what they were. Now I'm fine. Every now and then, I'll have too much caffeine, be stressed out about work and be in a relationship that's not going well, and it will happen again.
[How do you get yourself out of it?]
Patience. I just tell myself, listen, I've dealt with this a thousand times before, it always ends. There's a part of you that always feels like this is never going to end. But then it does.
musician Moby ... [Psychology Today, Oct 2004] / photo from moby.com
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To venture causes anxiety,
but not to venture is to lose one's self.Soren Kierkegaard [1813-1855]
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 .. .. Aspartame -- Not So Sweet After All The next time you reach for a diet soda, low-fat cookies, or over 9000 other products containing aspartame (e.g. NutraSweet, Equal), think again. Growing evidence indicates that the cumulative effects of consuming aspartame might endanger your health and result in a wide range of symptoms. And what's even more surprising is that many of these symptoms are identical to anxiety symptoms. Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener used in more than 90 countries worldwide. If so many people consume aspartame, it must be safe, right? |
Not
necessarily.
Since its introduction as a food additive in 1981, aspartame has accounted for more than 75% of all complaints reported to the FDA's Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS). Over 92 different adverse reactions from aspartame have been reported -- ranging from panic attacks, to headaches, to chronic fatigue and even death. If you consume aspartame, it may be causing many of your symptoms, or at a bare minimum aggravating them. // If a product label says: "sugar free" or "no added sugar," typically it has been artificially sweetened with aspartame. Aspartame can show up in the most unlikely products. For example, I have even seen aspartame in some bottled waters and vitamins! Read the label to ensure the products you consume are aspartame-free. from
article by Deanne Repich, Director of the from ConquerAnxiety.com
- |
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* Isaac
Asimov (author) * Donny Osmond
(entertainer) * Kim Basinger
(actress) from ConquerAnxiety.com - Tools for Creating a Healthy, Anxiety-Free Life |
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....
| It's
a classic
Catch-22. You cannot truly create something great unless you are
willing
to share your tenderest, most vulnerable thoughts and feelings. Yet,
once
you do that, you may be racked with self-doubt and fear.
Few artists are able to accurately assess just how valuable and great their work is -- or how much it will be appreciated by its audience. In other words, insecurity is the name of the game. Suzanne Falter-Barns from article: Coaching Creativity: 7 Lessons from Artists - from her site HowMuchJoy.com
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Do you often :
have a powerful, ongoing fear of social situations involving people you don't know well?
feel overwhelmed or "stressed out"?
have unrealistically high expectations of yourself?
feel unable to control your anxious feelings?
generally feel worried, and have you felt this way for six months or more?
worry about disappointing or not pleasing others?
feel trapped in or avoid social situations where it might be difficult to escape if you wanted to..
have an ongoing fear of a specific object or situation, such as spiders, flying, heights, etc.
find it difficult to express undesirable emotions such as anger?
complete quiz on site: ConquerAnxiety.com
Tools for Creating a Healthy, Anxiety-Free Life
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|
the anxiety that we're feeling. We have our little linguistic tricks that help us avoid the experience of anxiety, but those same linguistic tricks keep us from doing the work that we hope to do and prevent us from achieving our goals. Here
are ten common linguistic tricks we pull
* "I'm not ready."
* "I don't feel like it."
* "I don't feel well."
* "I can't think straight."
* "I can't do it."
* "I don't know what to say."
* "I can't see the point."
* "It feels too difficult."
* "What's happening here?"
* "I do better with * "
* "Yes, but - " |
You'll
gain better control of your life and the situations that arise in your
life if you bravely stop to notice how your language works to "protect"
you from the experience of anxiety.
One active way to practice self-awareness is to use the following little exercise on a regular basis. You name an issue, name some of the fears that arise in you with respect to that issue, remind yourself why you don't want to give in to those fears, name some concrete strategies you mean to employ to deal with the issue, and announce what steps you'll take "in the world" to handle the issue. The following is an example of how this exercise might work. Issue: Finding the Courage to be an Artist Fears Reminders Strategies To
Do in the World Give this little exercise a try. It can reveal a lot and help you a lot. Eric
Maisel, PhD -
from his Creativity Newsletter #38, > see his
site: ericmaisel.com books : Performance Anxiety : A Workbook for Actors, Musicians, Dancers and Anyone Else Who Performs in Public Fearless
Presenting : A Self-Help Workbook for Anyone The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance |
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