“The Best Use of Creativity is Imagination. The Worst Use of Creativity is Anxiety” Deepak Chopra
This quote resonates with me because my anxiety is often about the worst-case scenarios that my imagination can create. It is so important to look at our thinking and how it fuels anxiety. But anxiety isn’t just faulty thinking: it can be a response to complex triggers and trauma. Perhaps the two single most important things about addressing fear and anxiety are understanding where they are coming from, and finding a process to work with them.
Fear and anxiety are at the root of my mental illness and I continue today to work on understanding, and finding ways to work with them both. Psychosis, in my experience, is a state of such incredible fear, so I think it is relevant to include it with the topic of anxiety and fear.
Fear, anxiety and anxiety disorders are related but have distinct meanings. Fear is an emotional response to something threatening, which activates the stress response in the body (Ankrom, 2023). When afraid, the amygdala initiates this stress response and heart rate increases, the brain becomes hyperalert, pupils dilate, breathing accelerates, and blood pressure rises (Ankrom, 2023). Stress hormones flood your body (Ankrom, 2023). Anxiety produces the same stress response but there isn’t necessarily a defined threat (Ankrom, 2023). For example, if I had been bitten by a dog as a child and developed a fear of all dogs, seeing a large dog might initiate an anxiety response even if this dog isn’t aggressive. Fear and anxiety can become more persistent and more frequent, evolving into an anxiety disorder.
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Your comment about the unfurling of your map reminds me of the nature of boundaries as the edge between the known and the unknown, between safety and risk. Defining a boundary as “a change point — a moment in space and time when what was no longer is, and a new state is emerging,” Allen writes:
Being alive in any meaningful sense is a balance of feeling and staying safe, and taking and overcoming risks. In safety, we have a vital place to rest, be comfortable and build the foundations of a life, and through risk we are expanded and grown… It is through taking risks that we expand our safety – widening the boundaries and limitations of our existence into ever-broadening and rich terrains… In therapy… pushing our psychological and emotional limits in creative ways. Real and effective trauma work is about carefully restoring the inner grounds of self-trust and trust-in-world, increasing our capacity for risk, not striving to make the world safe.”
~Ru
Hi Ru,
Thanks for the very thoughtful comment. I love the what Allen writes, “In therapy…pushing our psychological and emotional limits in creative ways. Real and effective trauma work is about carefully restoring our inner grounds of self-trust and trust-in-world, increasing our capacity for risk, not striving to make the world safe.” I see this in my own therapy process, this growing of this inner safety which allows me to navigate the unpredictable nature of living. It allows me to extend a little more, knowing that I have a the capacity to navigate new experiences without being paralized by fear.