Causes Of Anxiety

Anxiety is experienced as a threat from the outside world, not the inner one. How is this possible if the source of danger is one's own impulses? The answer lies in a defense mechanism known as projection, a tendency to perceive the external world in terms of the conflicts experienced at an unconscious level.

An example is this: Timothy is a married minister with a traditional, conservative outlook on life. He has been married 11 years and has three children. His wife is a sincere person and very supportive of his work. More than once, he has experienced fleeting sexual fantasies relating to women in his congregation, particularly those who have sought pastoral counseling. He thinks of his fantasies as nothing more than will of the wisps and is offended by what he imagines is the seductive behaviour of some of the women. Of course, most of this is projection. He manifests most of the symptoms of a generalized anxiety disorder. The source of danger is his own forbidden sexual impulses.

A similar state of affairs can exist if the individual has forbidden aggressive desires. The wish to insult, injure or even kill another may exist at an unconscious level of one's personality. The possibility that one may actually do the forbidden thing is experienced as undefined anxiety.

It is not presently believed that all pathological anxiety arises from the kind of dark, murky, unconscious motives identified by psychoanalysis. Another way to explain anxiety is offered by the behavioural viewpoint, a viewpoint based on learning theory. According to the behavioural viewpoint, anxiety represents a generalization of learning from past experiences, a tendency to confuse two similar objects or situations. Assume that Sally was very badly mauled and bitten by a dog when she was five years old. It is understandable that as an adult, she is apprehensive int eh presence of dogs. This dog phobia is not, of course, generalized anxiety, but a specific fear. However, further assume Sally has had many bad experiences in the past, particularly during the early developmental years. She was a victim of child abuse, came close to drowning, almost died of a kidney infection, and so forth. It is easy to understand why Sally frequently experiences pathological anxiety. She has had enough bad experiences in the past that she generalizes her fear to almost anything.

Life can also be complicated by existential anxiety, apprehension revolving around one's very being. Everyone knows that life hangs by a thread, that it can be lost at any time by an accident or an illness, and that even a long and productive life ends in death. The future may be filled only promise and joy. But even if this is your perception, in the far future only the grave beckons. These kinds of sour musings were proposed by Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existential philosophy, as the basis for a built-in anxiety that can never be completely eliminated.

People try to brush existential anxiety away, to deny its existence. And in some ways this only makes matters worse. Kierkegaard's point is that existential anxiety cannot be explained away nor denied. It must be faced with courage and accepted. Then the individual can go on living in spite of the burden of existential anxiety.

Biological processes can contribute to anxiety. There is evidence that some individuals have an inborn temperament that makes them prone to anxiety. They are more emotionally reactive as infants and children than their peers, and this tendency carries over into adulthood. Individuals who suffer from hypoglycemia, or chronic low blood sugar is below normal, it is difficult to think, behave, and feel in a normal manner.


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Worrying About Worry

Fear something and it gains power over you.

Fear is a rational emotional response to a real threat. Pathological anxiety is an irrational emotional resonse to an imagined threat. If you walk down a dark alley in an unfamiliar city and a stranger stops you with a drawn gun, you experience fear. If you walk down a familiar street in broad daylight, and begin to imagine that some disaster is about to descend upon you without warning, you experience pathological anxiety. The two are tangled together. And it is not always possible to clearly distinguish them.

It is very appropriate to speak of 'worrying about worry'. Persons with neurotic tendencies tend to chew on their anxieties the way dogs chew on bones. There is a circular quality to their thinking, and the circle takes them downward until they are a quivering mass of apprehension. This is one of the characteristic aspects of pathological anxiety.

A type of anxiety often experienced by troubled persons is called free-floating anxiety. It is 'free-floating' because it is attached to nothing. It can be described as a cloud that follows the person everywhere, as if it were on a string. And the anxiety casts a long shadow over existence, making the individual constantly on the alert.

The overanxious person is hypervigilant. Anything and anyone may pose a hazard. There is a persistent state of arousal. The pulse is elevated, respirations are rapid, and blood pressure is high. This is essentially a fight-or-flight reaction. But where is the enemy? What is the source of threat?

Anxiety is a most distressing symptom. It is no wonder that antianxiety drugs have become perhaps the most popular prescription medicines ever produced. It is intolerable to be in a steady state of anxiety. Escape is essential.

Other signs and symptoms related to the major symptom of anxiety are:

• Tight muscles
• Uneasiness
• Feeling tired
• Difficulty breathing
• Being cross and out of sorts
• Problems in maintaining attention
• Sleep disturbances

The anxious person has tight muscles because the fight-or-flight reaction has been activated, and the body is ready for action (action that seldom materializes). It is understandable that victims of anxiety feel tired. Their muscles and bodies are working overtime for no objective reason.

A breathing difficulty can refer to labored breathing or hyperventilation. The diaphragm, involved in the action of the lungs, is also a muscle. And it can be overly tight. When there is perpetual, low-grade anxiety the person often works too hard when breathing. On the other hand, if there is hyperanxiety or a panic attack, there is great excitement. And the individual may hyperventilate.

Chronic anxiety interferes with happiness. Therefore, it is understandable that its victims are often cross and out of sorts. A worried person may have a problem in attending to tasks, a lecture, or to something being read. The fantasies and random thoughts associated with the anxiety draw attention away from the objective, external world toward the subjective, internal world. Such individuals often seem to be 'somewhere else'.

Anxiety is a complicating factor in sleep disturbances. Assume that anxiety and its related symptoms are chronic. And also assume that the individual experiences substantial distress. In a case such as this, the psychiatric term used to describe the syndrome is generalized anxiety disorder (anxiety neurosis).


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Causes Of Food Abuse

One of the principal reasons that people abuse food is that they are connecting food with certain emotional satisfactions. It is quite possible, for example for food to symbolize food. Therefore, someone who feels unloved often turns to food as a substitute for love. Associated with this is the fact that food can provide a degree of erotic gratification. In terms of psychosexual development, its first stage is often identified as oral. In infancy and toddlerhood, eating, biting, sucking, and chewing are very important. Individuals who lack adequate genital gratification as adults may find themselves returning to earlier levels of psychosexual development in a search for at least some erotic pleasure.

However, it should be noted that the wish to eat often arises in the face of almost any emotional lack. Depression, anxiety, anger and boredom are common causal factors in food abuse. In the case of depression, the activity of eating provides a bright moment when one has the 'blues' or the 'blahs'. In the case of anxiety, food often acts as a natural tranquilizer by activating the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and lowering arousal. In the case of anger, eating provides the biting and chewing that people often feel like doing when they are in a rage. In the case of boredom, eating is simply something to do.

Food abuse is sometimes related to family style. There are 'fat families' in which the parents and the children all abuse food. In such cases the children have 'permission' from the parents to overeat and also to be obese (as it is ok to be fat). In some cases, parents even 'push' food to children as a way of proving that they love their children and also as a way of validating their own obesity or food abuse.

Maladaptive habits play a significant role in food abuse. A habit is an unthinking pattern of behaviour. 'Bad' habits are those that tend, in the long run, to work against a person's best interests even though they may provide momentary gratification. A person with bad habits of eating snacks and ice-cream every night before sleeping is an example. These kinds of bad habits are common, and they tend to have a momentum all their own. Such habits bring pleasure, and they are hard to break because their constant repetition gives them 'habit strength'.

A tendency toward hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), can be a contributing cause to food abuse. If one has a tendency toward hypoglycemia, he or she will frequently feel sluggish, fatigued, lacking in alertness. This is because a given meal may not sustain the blood sugar at an optimal level for the four-to-six-hour intervals between meals. A 'quick fix' for the problem is to eat candy bars, ice-creams, and so on.

A final contributing cause to food abuse is in the case of anorexia nervosa. A common contributing cause to the problem is a power struggle within the family. An analysis can be applied to unmarried adolescent females who live at home. Parents are naturally concerned with their daughter's unwillingness to eat and her consequent emaciation. They recognize that the behaviour is unhealthy. If they are somewhat overcontroling and authoritarian, they will insist in a harsh and directive way that she eat. The adolescent, on the other hand, is fighting the battle of autonomy. She wants to be in control of her own life and does not want to be told what to do. A psychological tug-of-war takes place, and 'winning' to the adolescent means not eating and following her own dictates.



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Food Abuse

More than two thousand years ago, the philosopher Cicero said,"We should eat to live, not live to eat." People who abuse food often desperately wish they could live by Cicero's dictum, but they cannot. Some who abuse food feel helpless in the presence of food -- as if bewitched by it. Their behaviour is ruled by appetite and desire, not hunger -- at least not biological hunger.

It should be noted that overeating is not the only way in which food is abused. Some people manifest overcontrolled behaviour in the presence of food. Such individuals become phobic and will resist food to the point of emaciation.

Consequently, food abuse exists when an individual responds to food in pathological and self-defeating ways. Thus, the excessive eating of food may take the place of sexual satisfaction, help reduce anxiety, be a way to cope with boredom, be a substitute for love and attention, be a way to express anger, and so forth. These maladaptive aspects of food abuse can result in morbid changes in the body including obesity at the one extreme and emaciation at the other.

It is important to stress that obesity is not synonymous with food abuse. A person can abuse food and still be very thin or have a normal weight. Compulsive eating, one kind of food abuse, is characterized by the pathological eating and digestion of calories significantly beyond one's metabolic needs. And of course, compulsive eating is a contributing factor to obesity. However, it is only one factor. Other contributing factors to obesity include body type, metabolic rate, and body chemistry. These factors, biological in nature, to some extent reflect a genetic predisposition. People are not 'doomed to be fat' by their genes, however. Eating in moderation, eating foods high in fiber and low in saturated fat and refined sugar, and a reasonable amount of exercise help modify the impact of 'obesity genes' in a beneficial way. Although compulsive eating is but one factor, in obesity, it is probably in the vast majority of cases the principal factor. Therefore, it has to be indicted as one of the principal patterns of food abuse.

Other signs and symptoms associated with the principal psychological symptom of food abuse include the following:
1. Obsessively thinking about food
2. A failure of the will -- an ability to exercise voluntary control over eating
3. Sneaking food, hiding food, and lying to others about how much one eats
4. Using food somewhat like a drug -- as a way of coping with life's problems
5. Going on and off diets (riding a diet merry-go-round)
6. Gaining, losing and regaining significant amounts of weight (the yo-yo syndrome)
7. Extreme dissatisfaction with one's body image
8. A magical belief that all of one's weight or eating problems can be solved with a new kind of pill, a series of shots, hypnosis, or plastic surgery.

Although the above signs and symptoms are clearly associated with overeating and obesity, it is worth noting they are also associated with the pathological avoidance of food. Persons who fear becoming fat or who are prone to starve themselves tend, like those who overeat, to think obsessively about food. Also, they compulsively avoid food or compulsively diet; consequently, they have lost voluntary control over their eating., And they often have a distorted body image imagining themselves to be fat when instead they are too thin.

Did You Know?


Hoodia Gordonii has been used for many generations by the tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert to stave off hunger while hunting.

Hoodia Gordonii is a genus of succulent plants(cactus-like plant) in the family Apocynaceae. They are a native to the semi-arid regions of South Africa, that is widely used traditionally by the San people of southern Africa not only as an appetite suppressant, but also as a thirst quencher and as a cure for severe abdominal cramps, hemorrhoids, tuberculosis, indigestion, hypertension and diabetes.

Hoodia is a potential adjunct to behavior modification for weight control. There are various species of hoodia, but the Gordonii variation is the only one that contains the all-natural appetite suppressant. This type of hoodia contains a molecule that has similar effects on nerve cells as glucose, and tricks the brain into the sensation of fullness. Results of human clinical trials in Britain suggest that hoodia may reduce the appetite by hundreds of calories a day or more. Hoodia is available as Hoodia Diet Pills.