The Science of Anxiety Disorders Part 3

What is known about the psychological science of Anxiety Disorders?

There are several types of Anxiety Disorders including, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, Phobic-Specific Disorders, Selective Mutism, Medication-Induced Anxiety Disorder. While anxiety in its organic purpose is not an illness this well-meaning system of clicks and switches that are designed to alert and motivate us to solve survival maintenance and fear-based problems does at times become disordered.

The psychology of Anxiety Disorders surrounds our relationship with our natural or healthy anxiety episodes. Understanding that the body was designed to follow the mind anxiety disorders may largely be created by specific messages that our minds are sending to our body’s anxiety generator. This suggests that we learn to take a pristine anxiety system and re-task that system with software programmed to change the organic weights and measures of the original design. This re-tasking is seen in our relationship development in the following areas including our

• Relationship with Core Beliefs and Compensatory Thinking System
• Relationship with the Notion of Control-
• Relationship with Expectations-
• Relationship with the External Universe of Stressors-
• Relationship with worry/doubt/fear-
• Relationship with Trauma
• Relationship with Adrenalin

How does our relationship with our Core Belief and Compensatory

Thinking System contribute to disordered anxiety?

There are moments throughout our day when it seems that our thoughts surrounding our identity and worth are random, sometimes coincidental, and other times downright bizarre. Who is running that thought machine we might think, what could they be thinking? In truth however thoughts are much more ordered than we might think and surprisingly not even a single thought is random. Thoughts are much like foot soldiers marching to the orders issued by belief generals. This rank and file surrounding the order of our thoughts tends to be systemic. These systems of thought are programmed around specific agendas. Perfectionism for example is a system of thought that demands perpetual improvement on the highest standards of perpetual excellence. Under this single thinking system program, we can identify 13- separate belief generals targeting 13-different perfection pursuits including Order, Organization, Cleanliness, Spot, Shape, Correctness, Appearance, Performance, Achievement, Size, Weight, Competency, and Beauty. Under the command of each general are columns of thought soldiers ready to issue demands to the host. This suggests that our minds are run by psyche software that contains interconnected thinking systems.

If we could wire you up with electrodes and press a button that reads THINKING SYSTEM we would see a map of thinking systems appear on the screen. We might be surprised to find that there are 2- primary thinking system platforms in the psyche. These systems which surround the pursuit of identity and worth definition include the Core-Belief Platform and the Compensatory-Belief Platform.

Core-Beliefs

The core belief platform consists of identity and worth beliefs that we have adopted from significant others throughout our developmental years. Whether negative or positive these core beliefs eventually become a system of beliefs from which we seek to claim independence. This is true because we eventually discover free will and our organic need to define ourselves. The core belief system is constructed with identity and worth definition beliefs that like trees in a forest take root in those early years. These core belief trees were assigned to us by others who from our youthful point of view were authorities on our purpose and worth. Having little choice, we believed in their conclusions about us with the blind faith of a child.

One day we all discover that we wish we did have a choice, we wish we could claim independence from those authorities who define us. Maybe, we think, it is time to rebel against those authority definitions or if I embrace those characterizations maybe it is time to make those meanings my own. How, we might wonder, do I free my sense of self and my acceptance of myself from these conditions set forth by these authorities. If only there were a friendly neighborhood Belief-Mart where I could go and purchase my own set of beliefs. If only I could find beliefs that could compensate for any deficits in my core belief system while at the same time compensating for the fact that my core beliefs hold identity and worth definitions that are not my own. That’s it, that’s what I need a compensatory thinking system.

Compensatory-Beliefs

The psychology of compensatory thinking systems surrounds the belief that we can free ourselves from our core belief definitions. This belief proposes that this independence can be achieved by proving that we are better or different from the core belief definition. This proof comes in the form of a compensatory thinking system that is adopted by individuals in the singular pursuit of core belief independence. This system of thought compensates by improving core-belief deficits and by altering pre-determined identity and worth definitions. The compensatory thinking system is employed to generate alterations and/or improvements that will give us the freedom to re-define ourselves. There are 12-primary compensatory pathways that we might employ to do the work of providing us with some form of conditional acceptance. These compensatory pathways include, Reward – Suffering – Work – Perfectionism – Righteousness – Persecution – Power – Control – Justice – Punishment – Possession – Dependence. Each pathway is comprised of tasking agendas that direct the focus of the individual who has adopted and employed that particular pathway. These agendas focus individual attention on specific tasks that serve the goals of that particular pathway. Righteousness for example is served by tasks surrounding correctness, moral obedience, fairness, care-giving, legal obedience, superior intelligence, superior principles, ethical obedience, superior compliance, superior knowledge of rules, superior judgment. Individuals who employ the Righteousness Compensatory Pathway will spend much of their time and energy on these tasks. In return for their efforts they will receive conditional acceptance and temporary reprieve from their core belief definitions.

It is important to note that the efforts and behaviors found within these compensatory pathways are in and of themselves benign. The behavior of cleaning and spending time on caring for your appearance for example are logical, worthy and even necessary human behaviors. However when these routine behaviors are contracted to solve the problem of worthiness things may go awry. If a perfectionist who is focused on appearance is checking on their look in the mirror numerous times throughout the day and judging what they see by a standard of excellence within their mind then the behavior of appearance caretaking is no longer organic. It has instead become a compensatory master, a mentor who helps us fight back against those peers who called us ugly when we were in the fourth grade.

These compensatory belief pathways are modeled to disprove core beliefs and are constructed to repel each core belief tree in the forest. The construction plans in our Compensatory System is to erect a building in response to every core belief tree until we have an entire city devoted to compensating. This compensatory city becomes a system of thought that demands Herculean standards of achievement, productivity and maintenance. These achievement and productivity demands are engaged to generate excessive expectations in areas such as work levels, perfectionism standards, performance excellence, correctness constancy, cleanliness consistency, persistent order, securing righteousness, pursuing reward and silent suffering. These excessive standards of excellence push back against core belief definitions giving us the impression that we are progressing towards overcoming our core-beliefs. In the midst of our efforting however, we become servants to our compensatory masters. We wake up one day to find that there seems to be no way to get off this compensatory treadmill. The compensatory machine that we once employed is now employing us and in the process we are requiring increasing quantities of adrenalin to keep the machine going. This might lead us to wonder I wish there were another way, a different way to free ourselves from our core belief oppression. It would be nice to find an approach that does not require becoming a slave to a thinking system that demands so much day after day. How weary we have become of this treadmill methodology. If only there were another choice. Some way to free our minds so that we might walk the path of life without the burden of this conditional acceptance which turns out to be a machine designed to generate anxiety.

There is a way, it’s called the Quest for Authenticity. The Quest begins with the understanding that the beliefs residing in both the Core Belief Forest and the Compensatory City are all based on illusion. This is true because the vision of those others in the external universe who instructed you on your core beliefs is blurred and distorted by their own conditional acceptance. This means that they cannot see you which is to say they cannot tell you who you are. So, if your core beliefs cannot tell you who you are, how is it that your compensatory beliefs based in the myths like perfectionism, and workaholism could do any better. The compensatory thinking system only serves to fight off illusion with illusion. This suggests that in order to find the truth about ourselves we must surrender our illusions. This however is a difficult task primarily because we have, for the majority of our lives been immersed in the grand illusion of control.

How does our relationship with the illusion of control impact our sympathetic nervous system?

Considering our developed dependence on the notion of control we find that our determined pursuit of this illusion places pervasive and persistent strain on the sympathetic nervous system. The messages that we send our anxiety generators surrounding the idea of control suggest that we expect our bodies to deliver on standards and outcomes that will compensate for psychological deficits and/or excesses regarding our identity and worth. The psychological term for this is conditional acceptance. The idea is that we contract our bodies to perform certain functions and achievements before we might deem ourselves worthy of acceptance. This suggests that we expect that the achievement of these standards and outcomes that are weighed and measured in the external universe, might be able to fix what is broken in us, that it might fill up that empty crevice, that it could somehow improve all those things within us that seem substandard. This means that we must achieve specific outcomes in the external universe in order, to accomplish these conditions that make or break our self-acceptance. This process places tremendous pressure on outcomes and outcome predictability. Thus, If we could determine outcomes and the external universe cooperated with our wishes, then our life would be so much better or so we believe. The problem with this equation is that control is required to produce these conditional acceptance standards and/or self-improvement outcomes. The Idea is that if we just had more money, more beauty, more intelligence if we just had, well.., more, life would be so grand. If things could just go according to our plan life would be wonderful. Thus, we chase outcomes, while worrying about disappointments surrounding failed expectations, believing all the while that control is the solution to our troubled existence. So, we work, and we worry, and we worry, and we work and then we wonder why we can’t slow down. We wonder why our thoughts seem to race around, like a school-house full of unruly children. This suggests that control may well be more of the problem than it is the solution.  It may also suggest that control is a way that we create our own suffering and that we have lost sight of what control actually means.

Control implies the ability to independently determine a desired outcome at will. The notion of control suggests that humans have the ability to will the external universe to deliver their needs and wants on tap. Control means thinking in terms of outcomes rather than being in each step of the process that produces the outcome. Control means being in the future rather than the present. Control also means that we expect our anxiety generator to help us do the impossible which is to change things that are beyond our regulatory scope.

Strangely at the same time we take great pride in our courtship with this false belief. We believe that we can be superman/super woman. Even if we fail at least we tried, at least we believed. How much energy we might wonder do we spend believing in something that is so transparently false? How much energy does it take to make something without substance real? Where would we find such energy?

One thing that we may not be tracking surrounding our reliance on control is that a parallel track is developing regarding our fear of the loss of control. Thus, we can see that if we buy into the false hope of control the false fear of the loss of control will also be included in this illusion package. We might also note that it does seem a bit silly to be afraid of losing something that never existed in the first place.

What we also may not be aware of is the enormous pressure that our control illusions are placing upon our anxiety generators. In order to deliver on our supersized outcome expectations, we place enormous energy demands upon our sympathetic nervous system. This means that our control psychology is placing exaggerated demands on our organic anxiety generators. This suggests that we are normalizing distorted levels of adrenalin. Normalizing high adrenalin lifestyles may then lead to adrenalin addiction and the pursuit of self-medication with drugs and alcohol to slow down our high-volume adrenalin generators. This suggests that our relationship with control is a major contributing factor surrounding the process by which the order of our healthy anxiety processes become disordered. One thing that we may not be tracking surrounding our reliance on control is that a parallel track is developing regarding the loss of control. Thus, we can see that if we buy into the false hope of control the false fear of the loss of control will also be included in this illusion package. We might also note that it does seem a bit silly to be afraid of losing something that never existed in the first place.