God asks us to believe in hope, and to have faith, and we want to think that we can plan for a happy future.
Anxiety is the opposite to this. Anticipatory Anxiety is like planning disaster. We get a feeling of worry, fear, and our body sweats, our heartbeat speeds up, our mind imagines that bad things will happen. This is like the opposite of hoping for a happy future because the mind seems to be instead planning or fearing disaster in the near future.
If we fear something we can deal with it by hiding, but that means that our life is limited to some degree. For instance if you are scared of snakes you can live in New Zealand where there are few snakes, but to enjoy the rest of the world we need to go to countries that have big snakes and dangerous snakes etc. The fear keeps us locked up in our home.
It is healthy to respect the power of the sea, or the speed and bite and poison of a snake or scorpion, or even the strength and bite of a dog, but it is not healthy to let ourself get so worked up over something that it greatly limits our lifestyle and causes us to take drastic measures to get away or never go near such things.
A person could live in the city and he or she is terrified of dogs, so this person stays locked up inside their apartment most of the time because there are many dogs in the city. Just thinking of leaving the home causes all sorts of images, thoughts, worries and fears to come to mind, and along with them physical feelings and the person refuses to go outside, or when he or she does go outside they see a dog, freak out and run back home.
Often the fear of how he or she will behave causes the person to refuse to leave the home in case they are seen as stupid, foolish, or they embarrass themselves. They become very worried about panic attacks in public places.
One of the reasons that fears should be faced is that one really knows that he or she is over that fear and can now deal with it. It is a nice feeling to be normal again and to do the things that other people do without worries.
If a person worries about what they fear before it happens he or she can ruin the day for themselves or for others. If we fear doing the grocery shopping then we feel guilty because after that we ask someone else to do our chores like grocery shopping, and that just adds to the original fears. It becomes a vicious circle that removes any confidence that we once had and causes us to become more and more depressed about life, living and the future.
There is no feelings of hope for the future if we feel that the future is only going to bring more and more depressed feelings, running form our fears, and being unhappy. There is a strong feeling of hopelessness, they can feel that their part in life is hopeless (even if they are very talented and are admired by others). The family doctor offers hope in medication but that often seems to make matters worse.
A person becomes very confused. One day it seemed that he or she was fine, confident and in charge of their world, and then the next thing they know they feel defeated and afraid to do anything. What happened? they ask themself. That stable feeling that this person may once have had is now gone.
What other people think of them doesn’t matter, it is how they feel about themself that worries them, and how he or she reacts to life.
It takes time to deal with this situation, but the first thing to do is to hope. Other people can cope, you once could cope, you will be able to cope again.
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All the Best from
James M Sandbrook.
6th March 2015.