A conversation with Sarah Wilson // Wed. 11 May // 7pm AEST

Hi @Sarah108

decision-making pain is at the core of most anxiety.-- yes totally for my husband

anxiety grows with the amount of thing he has to do , can`t plan anything -- something always goes wrong

I try to get my hubby to make decisions , oh no , he just can`t

Hi @Sarah108 and 'hi' to everyone else too.

I have anxiety but I always thought I was quite good at making decisions.... now I have to go back and re-think. Perhaps if there are too many choices I might start to feel ambivalent. But not necessarily anxious.

I think I am anxious because because my Mum was very anxious. I think there is a genetic link. Plus I also 'learnt' to be anxious from a young age.

Hi Sarah,

being a musician and dealing with musicians on stage, I have had to learn how to control my anxiety and use it, how to turn it into an energy that actually helps me, that pushes me to do good thing. From the stage and playing music the ability to control anxiety has spilled into real life. I can be extremely anxious and yet I can control myself.

It gets my stomach and my breathing, but I know how to breath properly when anxious. Deep breaths and slow and hold the air in your stomach for a few seconds.

When it gets really bad it can become panick and I have been hospitalised once with panick attacks. At the time I was a student at university back in 2005 but it has not happened again.

Medication for anxiety can be dangerous in that it can make people feel sick, lose their balance and vomit. I was on A****x at one stage but I would never take that again. Now I control it with my mind and more natural ways.

This is something I've written on it...what do you guys think?

Anxiety attacks are mostly triggered by uncertainty. You might want to break yours down. What does it come back to? See if it ain’t a a fluttery, empty, unsupported feeling that you just don’t know what the hell to do, what the hell is going on, what the hell is right. For me, this feeling will arise if I’m let down by someone or when someone or something leaves me hanging. It might kick off when, on a parituclarly wobbly day when the wind is not quite right and I’ve not slept, a significant other doesn’t call when they said they would. Or it might arise from simply not being able to make a decision, like what to do with my Sunday.

Regardless, such triggers plonk me out above an abyss of possibility where the limitlessness overwhelms me. Kierkegaard wrote, "One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility.”

And:

When you’re anxious you have a really tough time with decisions.

Anxious people are shocking decision makers.

Plus, making decisions make us anxious.

Plus, any kind of indecision or faffing or vagueness from fellow humans in our orbit also makes us anxious. Flakey friends or partners who leave me hanging on arrangements fluster me.

To my mind and my straw polling over several years of researching this book has found decision-making pain is at the core of most anxiety.

I’d particularly like mens’ responses on this one.

Yes, some of my anxiety does seem to come from decision making, especially when I'm frozen with it in a chair. Like @Shaz51's husband, I also cannot cope with too much happening in my life, that's when I especially get frozen. I'm lucky if I make it out of the flat to do one thing per day. There are other 'in between' times during days that I become anxious, similar to what you said, feeling like I am hanging over a void and it's scary having no ground to stand on.

Hi @Sahara, great to have you here. The learnt angle to anxiety is one that comes through from lots of clients so I'm really pleased that you've raised it. Observing anxious reponses and reactions throughout your childhood will have an impact.

Yes @Sahara, @Sarah108, @Former-Member

my husband mother and grandmother have depression and very negative -- reacon it is gone down the family tree

I think it is important to actually realise what anxiety is. Not so long ago I did not really understand that a lot of the difficulty I was having was anxiety, and even now sometimes I have to really stop and register that it is anxiety. So I think self-awareness is vital, but it is tied in with depression so it is not simple at all. I use cognitive tools, and one of the big things that I really see now is that people usually have no idea what is going on with you, and they are usually too busy thinking about themselves to be concerned about you. So when I am feeling anxious and really not confident I just imaging that other people dont even care, which helps! I also find that if I am really truly focused on the moment then I become calmer. As you mentioned when I am thinking ahead and thinking of what I have to do next I become anxious, but even more, I don't feel calm and things dont flow.