Mindfulness Based Anxiety Reduction: MBAR

Anxiety is a fear based emotion.  It is a physiological, emotional, and conceptual response to a sense of danger. It is provided by nature; it supports survival, and it is innately impersonal. It is a cosmic provision.  Anxiety dissuades us from follies of all kinds, and alerts us to hazards that we may not have fully acknowledged. It is a gift that we certainly do not want to be without. On the other hand, anxiety has the potential to become highly problematic, becoming active in situations that have little or nothing to do with any real hazard. It can be like a bad dream -- a disturbance.  It follows that the way to treat disordered anxiety, rather than get rid of it, is to return it to its original purpose.

The task, then, is to reorganize the way we interpret and react to life events. Meeting someone you admire, saying no to an unreasonable request, or riding on a subway may be distressing events to some of us; however, these events are not inherently dangerous. They are potential events in everybody's dream.  Inappropriate fears form as cognitive distortions, in which danger is imagined. Adjusting the imagined worldview is, then, clearly part of the healing process.  However, wanting to believe differently does not elicit a shift in our perspective.  

Liberation from psychological suffering requires exposure to a healing perspective. We must see, feel and witness differently, to be different. The mind requires evidence or persuasion before it adjusts to new norms. The desire alone to change, does not elicit an adjustment. Psychological change occurs organically, rather than willfully. Thus, Mindfulness-based Anxiety reduction relies on therapeutic exposures to heal our psychological wounds. 

Nature in her infinite wisdom has made human imaginings as powerful as facts— feelings, memories and conceptions compel us to action, as if they were as concrete as a falling tree. This powerful imagination has its benefits and its costs. For example, the memories of our past misfortunes equip us with the savvy to survive; yet these same recollections confound us, when we are unable to disengage from their bleak suggestions.

When feeling recurrently irritated, for example, we tend to look for offenses that justify our feeling. Putting too much milk in your coffee, or remembering how inconsiderate someone was last week, makes the frustration or anger appear as reasonable. It is actually not “reasonable.” The feeling actually preceded the fact. It is often the same with anxiety.  

Anxiety triggered by memory will tend to seek justification in current circumstances. The mental impressions of past misfortunes are subject to thinking errors like  over-personalizing, emotional reasoning, jumping to conclusions, and over-generalizing. These perceptual distortions lead us to associate past situations with present realities. We will look closely at thinking errors as well as maladjusted modes of coping, as we evaluate some of the types of emotional wounds that have the capacity to disorient us.

Lingering mental impressions from past misfortunes sometimes die hard. The mind can hold fast to misfortune and so can the body.  It is understandable to recognize that patterned feelings, memories and conceptions have a neurological and hormonal equivalent. The body-mind complex has been conditioned by our experiences. Both positive and negative experiences are paralleled in the brain circuitry and hormonal systems, which determine our mental states. 

We evolve into and out of conditioned states of mind.  Contemporary science has confirmed that both the brain, and the body are continuously adapting in a use-dependent manner.  So, current life expriences, not only our memories,  are writing the book of our lives.  Accordingly,  Mindfulness-based Anxiety Reduction seek to adopt disciplines that expose us to ongoing beneficial conditions -- healing realities.  Mindfulness, which is a particular way of paying attention, is such a discipline.  Liberation from psychological suffering occurs from exposure to healing experiences. This suggests that healing occurs organically, rather than willfully. Thus, we venture into our consious awareness, oriented and equipped by contemplative practices, to utilize exposure therapy to heal our unwarrented anxieties. 

Medical Doctors should be consulted when your mental health dramatically changes.

In cases of anxiety there may be evidence that there are genetically determined leanings towards being fearful, or developing anxiety disorders. Recent research has identified peculiarities in the brain structures of some people with chronic anxious symptoms. Medications can certainly be helpful at times. However, the idea that pharmaceuticals are the sole answer to biologically determined anxiousness is misguided. Research has confirmed that the brain forms in response to input—both harmful as in trauma, and helpful as in psychotherapy and meditation. Medications are not a substitute for the wisdom that leads us towards peace of mind. Fortunately, medications and therapeutic practices are not mutually exclusive. They readily integrate.

It is important to note that disordered anxiety does not always result from psychological sources, and we need to be alert for that. Medical conditions like hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen to the organs, hypoglycemia, which is low blood- sugar and mitral valve prolapse, which is when blood seeps back when the heart pumps, also trigger anxiety. Lyme disease, thyroid conditions, temporal lobe epilepsy and cancers can, likewise, cause anxious symptoms. Over ingestion of toxins like lead, aluminum, and manganese change mental states. Vincent Van Gogh’s episodes of madness, for instance, may have been attributable to his practice of wetting his lead-based paintbrush with his tongue. Lastly, drug interactions are also a major source of episodic anxiety.

Medical doctors and psychiatrists should be consulted when your mental status dramatically changes. If, however, your excessive-anxiety is not driven by biological factors, exposure to toxins, a drug reaction, or a medical condition, you would be wise to suppose that it is the result of an emotional complex. That is, you are likely enduring the presence of core fears and outmoded ways of coping with them.

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and Jeffrey Young's Schema Theory

Psychologically formed anxiety disorders have similar structures: There is a core fear and a maladjusted coping mode that fails to promote healing and recovery. The trouble generally starts in childhood when a key need is not met. Psychological theorist Abraham Maslow suggests that needs organize in a hierarchical manner—the most critical needs providing for more refined needs. He listed them in ascending order as:

(1) Physiological Needs

(2) Safety Needs

(3) Belonging Needs

(4) Self-Esteem Needs

These four, he characterizes as the essential needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests human priorities. We would, for example, lessen the value of Esteem Needs when basic Physiological Needs are not being met. In addition, Maslow’s Hierarchy suggests a developmental model of needs.

Generally speaking, a child progresses best through the stages of development under favorable conditions, where essential needs are being met. Maslow thought that a deficit in satisfying any one of these needs would tend to cause a fixation at the same stage of development when the need was frustrated. For example, when a five-year old boy conceives that his divorced mother resents him, because she feels stuck caring for him, an emotional wound forms.

If the notion of being a burden were progressively reinforced, it eventually could obstruct a person's capacity to maintain a stable sense of self-worth. Maslow suggests that it is the fixation on past negative events, rather than the events themselves, that cause the problem.  Thus, he proposes that incidences of early heartbreak and even trauma can be treated therapeutically.   Maslow suggests that by identifying and modifying belief systems we can free our mind from the bondage of dysfunctional assumptions. Jeffrey Young's Schema Therapy resonates with Maslow's conceptualization in key ways.

Schema Therapy recognizes that the frustration of essential needs create lingering impressions that may form as troubling assumptions about who we are.  All assumptions about ourselves and the world may be understood as schemas.  Here, schemas are characterized as deep beliefs.  Yet, all forms of knowledge are schemas.  An apple is not a schema, however the knowledge of an apple is.  You and I are not schemas, however our self-conception is.  

Mindfulness-based Anxiety Reduction is particularly interested in schemas that undermind as well as support mental health.  Most schemas are functional representations that help us navigate our world.  Recognizing a spoon as a tool to help us eat is a useful schema. You do not need to relearn what a spoon is every time you see one. In the same way, we learn to identify favorable and unfavorable situations. Schemas are used to interpret and understand our ongoing life events.  

Coping Styles

Paralleling Maslow’s theories, Schema Therapy recognizes that schemas that are formed from early life events may readily form as fixations, becoming maladjustments. These include memories of emotional deprivation, abandonment, or the notion of being defective.  

The schemas of our emotional wounds become maladjusted and troublesome when they are consistently coped with in a non-adaptive fashion.  Non-adaptive coping sustains psychological suffering.  Thus, the goal of the therapy is to interrupt and relinquish maladjusted modes of coping in order to recover. The implicit theory here is that nature will move us towards health, when the barriers to healing are lessened.

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