Interrupting Being Judgmental, Entitled, and Fixing Others
What is irrational anxiety and how are we going to treat it?
Anxiety is a form of fear provided by nature to enhance our ability to survive and flourish. It is a gift that we certainly do not want to be without. However, anxiety can become disordered. It can, for instance, become active in situations that have little or nothing to do with any real danger or hazard. The disordered anxious response may best be understood as an inappropriate survival response. Consequently, the way to treat the disorder is not to get rid of anxiety, but to return it to its natural order. What is required to do this is explained in this section of the site.
It is in the comprehension of how disordered anxiety is manifests, sustains itself, and how it is successfully treated that we reach a viable strategy. It will be necessary to make some broad statements about anxiety as a whole to present a framework for this critical understanding.
Biological Factors
There is little doubt that there are biological factors in many cases of disordered anxiety. Inborn temperaments or psychiatric illnesses for some people may be critical elements in addressing the reduction of disordered anxiety. Inborn temperaments influence behavior. Some people are more prone to the fear response in the same way as some are inclined to be too confident. Biological temperaments make a difference. However, our temperaments are neither solely blessings nor afflictions. Temperaments generally lead us to professional choices and ultimately enrich the tribe or community in which we live.
Children who are temperamentally more anxious or emotionally sensitive are more prone to endure the misfortune of being misunderstood. In other words a youngster with special emotional needs requires special treatment and may end up deprived of that consideration. The unsuspecting parent or caregiver might misguidedly judge that the uniquely disposed child is overly needy, or even incompetent. Unfortunately, children with special emotional needs or dispositions that seem foreign to a parent may fail to be recognized and may receive harsh criticism. Diverse temperments contibute to the scope of a family, or a community.
Misfortune May Result in a Maladjusted Schema
Chronic anxiety in adulthood is most often engendered by an earlier response to an unfortunate and significant deficit of safety, nurturance, or empathy. The response to these earlier misfortunes set the wheels in motion. These misfortunes can be longstanding events like being raised by a disturbed parent, being abused, or being the object of prejudice. In the event of an isolated trauma like being held hostage the maladjusted impression develops in a similar way. In both cases a disturbing belief about oneself and one's environment is formed.
These disturbing beliefs are easily triggered because they often have a strong emotion attached to them. They leave a strong impression and can be so compelling that they form core assumptions about our lives. Core beliefs, also known as schemas, are generally not questioned or challenged. They are presumptions, internal blueprints that inform our understanding of the events of our lives. The traumatic impression or the maladjusted schema may suggest grim or disquieting realities like:
I am defenseless in a dangerous world.
I am never to have my emotional needs met.
I am an inadequate person.
I am a failure.
Thus, these mental impressions can contribute to chronic anxiety if, we do not disempower them.
In Coping with Maladjusted Schema, We Can Inadvertently Reinforce Them
A maladjusted schema is a troublesome notion or thought about our self or our lives. It gets entrenched when it is assumed to be true, and allowed to drive our behavior. Schemas of our emotional wounds are often not questioned, or challenged. This is what makes them so difficult to change. People, however, do react to these insidious notions differently as time goes by. The way we respond will determine if we eventually overcome the schema, and move on, or end up ensnared and stuck. When we get stuck, memories turn into realities.
There are three non-adaptive ways of responding, or coping, with toxic memories that inadvertently reinforce maladjusted schemas: (1) surrendering (as in resignation), (2) avoiding (not showing up, or becoming addicted), and (3) over-compensating (covering up, or making up). All three of these ways of coping form reactions that are driven by the schemas of our emotional wounds. That is why the troubling schema is perpetuated. When a feared schema drives our behavior, or forms our state of being, it is validated. (Take a moment to ponder this statement).
To overcome our irrational anxiety we will need to respond to the schemas of our emotional wounds, and their maladjusted coping modes, differently. Instead of reacting to the schema, we will need to observe it as an impersonal, cosmic event (something that nature does.) This interrupts the personalizing. We learn to reduce personalizing memories by the practice of Non-conceptual meditation. Healing requires decentering (not taking the anxiety as something you alone are doing.) Instead of passing judgment on our symptoms, we radically accept them as impersonal, natural events. This helps to disengage us.
Recommendation:
Maladjusted Schema activity is a mental event that makes a suggestion to you about what is happening. When a maladjusted schema is triggered we instinctually feel aversion to it. The reaction of aversion is often completely automatic. This happens quite a lot in the day of someone with chronic anxiety. We are interested in interrupting these subtle, insidious, automatic reactions.
Learning to non-judgmentally attend the activity in our own mind and body opens the possibility of extraordinary growth and transformation. We do need to grow out of the maladjusted coping modes, because they arrest ongoing maturation. The skill of self-monitoring is dependent on the ability to observe our mind and the world dispassionately.
I recommend that you practice Non-conceptual Meditation, which decenters you broadly. Radical decentering, as taught in Non-conceptual Meditation, is seeing into ones TrueNature. As you cultivate this mystical practice, you will strengthen the ability to observe your experience with an empowering dispassion. What you once considered as personal events will be revealed to be impersonal and cosmic in nature.
Review the video”Interrupting Being Judgmental, Entitled, and Fixing Others.” to further develop understanding of maladjusted coping modes. Then, proceed to Phase 2 of this orientation.
Cesar
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