The Fear and Anxiety Solution (4 page)

Have you ever become lost on a hike or while visiting a new city? If so, you can probably appreciate how useful a map is. A map shows you how you became lost and how you can get yourself back on track. Fear and anxiety can appear as unfriendly territories in which you somehow became lost and are unable to find your way out of. These emotions can seem so irrational and erratic that you experience them as something outside of you, your understanding, and your control.

Bill, a client of mine, is a good example of someone who got lost in these emotions. He was a very successful executive who had extremely high expectations of himself. As soon as he’d succeeded at one challenge, he was already focusing on the next, larger one. While he considered taking a lucrative offer from another company, he received a promotion from his current employer that went beyond his wildest expectations. Bill truly felt he’d arrived. He was in his early forties and had reached all the goals he’d set out for himself.

Then something happened that he didn’t expect. At one of Bill’s first business presentations in his new role, he completely blanked out in front of his peers and employees. At first he blamed his lapse on lack of sleep or something he’d eaten. However, after experiencing two similar embarrassing episodes during other talks, he became seriously concerned. Something was not right. His physical check-up turned out to be completely normal, and his doctor suggested that he probably had suffered panic attacks.

This diagnosis came as a shock to Bill. “Anxiety? Me? Why now?” he thought. It didn’t make any sense because just a few months earlier he had single-handedly taken on and solved the biggest challenge his company ever faced. And during that demanding time, he had felt completely calm and confident. So what had changed, and why now? Not knowing made him feel even
more stressed and insecure. Not knowing when the next panic attack might happen or how much worse this anxiety could get was as difficult to endure as not knowing what to do about it.

One of the first steps I worked on with Bill was helping him become aware of how his mind worked and how he created fear and anxiety. He quickly realized that his new position and the way he acquired it had triggered his anxiety. In the past, he’d always rightfully earned any success or promotion through hard work and 120-percent commitment. But this time he felt he had been ushered into the new position by his boss, the CEO, who didn’t want to lose him to another company. A part of Bill subconsciously had started to feel insecure and to believe that he now was at the mercy of his boss and could no longer rely solely on his own efforts and contributions. What if he should fall from grace one day? Without consciously noticing he’d done so, he’d given his power to someone else.

Bill became aware of a deep-seated belief of not being good enough, which was rooted in his childhood. This insecurity was a life-long subconscious driving force for him. By overachieving, he’d been constantly trying to outrun the part of himself that suffered from feeling unworthy. He’d hoped through his great accomplishments to eventually establish a new, confident identity. But no matter how impressive his successes, none of them was ever good enough. When Bill felt championed by his CEO, the fear of being found out as a fraud surged from the depth of his subconscious to the surface and created these seemingly irrational panic attacks.

After Bill became aware of the inner map of his emotions and beliefs and how certain people and events of the past had led to limiting subconscious programs and patterns, he felt immensely relieved. The anxiety no longer appeared like an ominous beast that could jump him at any time. After all, we can solve a problem only if we’re aware that we have one and how it became one. Knowing the deeper reasons and root causes of his fears gave Bill the comforting awareness that, from then on, he could proactively take steps to overcome these anxieties and insecurities, build real confidence based on who he was as a person, and reclaim his power.

A word of caution: becoming aware of how and why you’ve been dealing with patterns of fear and anxiety is not about blaming yourself for having created or held onto such negative emotions. Nor is it about blaming others, including your parents, siblings, or teachers. Many situations and events in your past
might explain why you’re prone to feeling fear and anxiety. Although you may have seen yourself as a victim of past circumstances, you do not need to identify yourself as a victim for the rest of your life. Instead, you have an opportunity to have more understanding and compassion for yourself, while at the same time owning your emotions and your beliefs.

As you continue your healing journey with this book as your guide, you will become aware of your inner map and recognize how and why you create fear and anxiety and how to move and evolve beyond these perceived blocks.

Flexibility is one of the most important qualities any being possesses to ensure its survival. Evolution is based on the principle of “the survival of the fittest,” meaning the survival of those who can adapt to the demands of an ever-changing environment. This principle could just as well be called “the survival of the most flexible.” Flexibility is an innate ability that we all make use of from the earliest stages of our development. At the time when we were the most physically flexible, as infants and toddlers, our mental and emotional fluidity was one of our strongest attributes, one we depended on every day. This flexibility allowed us to adjust from comfortably floating inside the womb to dealing with gravity, feeding schedules, day and night, and having to communicate our needs to those giants around us.

Someone once said that from the time of birth to the time we take the first unsteady steps, we pass through a million years of evolution. That’s adaptability, don’t you think? Not that we didn’t complain about it, but we never gave up. We tried to walk until we fell, then we got up and tried again, with some adjustments. But no matter how far we got, we didn’t become discouraged or defeated. When and why do we lose or forget the power of this amazing flexibility?

One reason is the ongoing conflict between exploring who we are and complying with the demands of society to integrate and fit into its structure. As we grow up, meeting expectations and conforming to various rules and regulations appear increasingly important to ensuring success and our rightful place in society. Many of us eventually stop wondering whether our decisions and opinions are still based upon who we are and what we really want or believe in. We can gradually become entangled in a rather rigid internal and external framework of pressures, obligations, and conditional acceptance of ourselves. This imposed reality can become
our
reality and leave us little room to think
or act in a flexible, self-empowered manner. At some point, it may simply feel more comfortable and familiar to tread in the old grooves, stay in a rut, and tell ourselves that it’s too late to change and make a difference in our lives. Complacency destroys flexibility. But by the mere fact that you’re holding this book in your hands, you’ve proven to yourself that your desire to change and grow is greater than the need to remain in a continuously shrinking comfort zone. In other words, your ability to be flexible is still alive and well.

When I was five years old, I felt the dire consequences of others being inflexible. My parents took me shopping in Stuttgart, the big city in our region of Germany. It felt light years away from the small town where I grew up. At that age, my enthusiasm for shopping was nonexistent, and while my parents became more and more excited by the fascinating variety of treasures that was available, I roamed the aisles, scouring the shelves to find anything that might spark my interest.

All of a sudden I realized I was alone. My parents were nowhere in sight. I ran through the maze of aisles trying to remember where I’d started, but everything looked completely unfamiliar and more and more daunting. I was lost. I panicked and started to cry. What if I never found my parents again? What if I never got back home?

Finally a friendly store employee noticed me. She came up to me and asked, “Are you lost?”

I could only nod my little head.

“What’s your name?”

Sniffling and sobbing at the same time, I exploded, “I am Friedemann Julius Walter Schaub.”

All my savior could understand was
Walter,
because
Friedemann
is a very unusual name even in Germany.

She went to her microphone and announced, “Little Walter, wearing a gray poncho, is looking for his parents.” Then she reassured me that my parents would come to pick me up any minute.

A minute or two passed, and many more followed, without my parents showing up. I don’t really remember what I was thinking at that point, but I’m sure it wasn’t uplifting.

In the meantime, my mom and my dad had separated to pursue their own shopping agendas. For some reason, each of them believed that I was with the other one (or at least that’s what they told me later). So when they heard the
announcement for the third time, they both thought that poor Walter must be really scared. They wondered what was wrong with his parents and why they weren’t looking for him. Then at some point, my mom realized that “little Walter” was her son and that she and my father were those “terrible” parents who didn’t pick him up. With a bit more flexibility in their thinking, they would have remembered my middle name and that I was wearing a gray poncho.

But who am I to talk? I have vast experience with my own lack of flexibility. I have remained stuck in comfortable relationships partly because I didn’t believe that I was good enough to find real love. For many years, I held onto the belief that taking a day off during the working week meant that people were lazy, unemployed, or both. When I actually had a day off, I often felt uncomfortable leaving the house because I thought I might be seen by somebody who knew me and who naturally (I assumed) would believe that I had lost my job or that I was slacking off. So instead of doing something fun, I preferred to stay at home and work in my office. While I told myself that this belief was just a good dose of the German work ethic, I was simply too inflexible to realize that I was stuck in my own insecurities.

Lack of flexibility is one of the biggest obstacles you face when dealing with fear and anxiety, because it limits your options for perceiving and responding to internal or external stimuli and thus keeps you stuck. For example, whenever you see your boss in the hallway, you become nervous. As soon as you think about a specific event in the past or future, anxiety overwhelms you. Or when you face a new task, you immediately feel defeated and that you’re not good enough. Even at times when everything is calm and stable, you wonder, “Do I still have anxiety? Do I still worry?” Once your mind becomes rigid, you react automatically, seemingly without choice and power.

When you believe that you’re an anxious and insecure person or that the world is a scary and unfriendly place, you subconsciously look for evidence to corroborate these limiting ideas. This is why limiting beliefs eventually become self-fulfilling prophecies; sooner or later, your reality will match your beliefs. You feel trapped. But all you need is a greater degree of flexibility in your thinking and feeling to reclaim your power and freedom.

In yoga there is a saying: “The age of a person is not determined by his years but by his flexibility.” This saying applies to more than just physical agility; it applies to emotional and mental agility, as well. With a flexible mind, you can unmask and look beyond the assumptions and projections you’ve (mis)taken as
reality. You’re open to seeing yourself and the situations you’re dealing with from various angles, analyzing the details, and then taking another look at the bigger picture or from a higher perspective. Flexibility increases your range of emotional and mental responses, allows you to move more quickly through feelings that are not supportive, and empowers you to consciously see and take advantage of the opportunities in every situation. You can find answers in problems, understanding in confusion, and possibilities in limitations. Thus, flexibility is crucial not only to survival but to thriving and experiencing happiness.

It’s never too late to start improving your mental and emotional flexibility. So let’s start rewinding the clock to those early years when you were extremely flexible!

On your journey from fear and anxiety to internal peace and self-empowerment, awareness provides the map of your inner territory. Flexibility allows you to analyze your position from various angles and points of view and to identify alternative routes. However, increased awareness and flexibility are not enough to gain the momentum to move forward. You can stare at a map for a long time and examine all the different options and possibilities, but you don’t get anywhere unless you choose your destination—and which route you want to take to reach it. Only the act of choosing enables you to be truly free and self-empowered.

Making a choice can be one of the greatest yet most difficult steps to take. It is a great step because the moment you consciously choose, you’re moving from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat, from the “effect” side of the equation to the “cause” side. You’re reclaiming your right to create your own reality. Making a choice can be difficult because it often leads to change, and as you know, change can be scary. What if you make the wrong choice? What if you don’t have what it takes to change?

Every choice is also a statement about who you are and makes you take responsibility for your actions and their outcome. You can no longer blame others. Although making a choice appears like a big step, the truth is, you always choose. Even when you’re remaining stuck, continuing as a passenger in your life, you’re making a choice, although it may appear to you that you’re powerless.

You might be thinking, “Easy for him to say. I’m really stuck and trapped here, and I’m certainly not choosing it.” I completely understand what you’re
feeling, because I was there myself. I felt trapped during my residency at a high-powered cardiology department, mainly because I let the expectations and pressures from my superiors get to me. I often woke up at night wondering how I could endure the next thirty years of working under conditions I really had started to dislike. But because I’d already invested so much time and energy in that career and couldn’t imagine any alternatives, I was afraid to let it all go.