Living with Anxiety

Why We’ve Always Been This Way

If you struggle with relatively normal levels of anxiety, let me assure you that there are healthy ways to deal with it.

If you struggle with abnormal levels of anxiety, please get professional help. I am not a psychologist.

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There’s no shame in being courageous enough to ask for help.

My name is Cliff, and I’m a grateful, recovering anxiety magnet.

Really.

If I didn’t have enough anxiety, I’d go get some. It’s hard to say if the interview for an escort job or having one of my motorcycles jacked by a gang caused more anxiety.

It’s all a blur in retrospect, and I’m grateful for it all because I get to live a great life and write articles like this.

The older we get, the easier it will be to stop sweating the small, stupid stuff, which is 92.3% of the battle, even though I’m no statistics major or expert.

Rather than rattle off some of the stupid, crazy, throw-up-in-your-mouth anxiety I’ve attracted in my life, this article is about helping you walk away with a few nuggets to help you deal with anxiety.

By the end of this article, you’ll have insights into the mind of one of the world’s foremost experts on the human mind, Rollo May.

Rollo May (1909–1994) was an influential existential psychologist and the author of 15 books, including Love and Will (1969), The Courage to Create (1975), and Man’s Search for Himself (1953).

Man’s Search for Himself is one of the best psychology books I’ve read.

May’s works cover many topics, including loneliness, anxiety, and the search for meaning in life. Man’s Search for Himself was written in 1953.

Anxiety has always been a problem for humans. The same is true for loneliness, depression, and all the other head trash that holds us back, but not our domestic pets, for good reason.

It’s easy to say that anxiety is worse today, but put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s lived through world wars, famine, great floods, ice, and dark ages.

Let’s keep history in perspective instead of trying to cancel it. We can’t learn from history unless we study the truth about what happened and do our best to learn from our mistakes before it’s too late.

There are healthy ways to manage anxiety, and the older we get, the better we become if we think and act so.

There are fewer social taboos about seeking help to improve mental health than fifty or one hundred years ago.

Getting therapy is good when we’re willing to do our part, especially when we’re learning to live with a life partner and raise children while aligning differences in parenting styles, among others.

The secret to inner peace is cracking the emotional maturity code by owning our problems instead of blaming others.

Emotional maturity is the ability to feel and process our feelings without losing control. In other words, it’s learning to stay “within ourselves” despite the seeming insanity within and around us.

If you’re searching for meaning, you’re ultimately searching for yourself. You won’t find that on the outside. Everything you want to know is within you.

Here are some more helpful insights I found in Part 1 of the book Our Predicament.

The first chapter addresses loneliness and anxiety. May then goes into the “roots of our malady,” including the following:

• Understanding what anxiety is and why it happens.
• The relationship and differences between fear and anxiety.
• How we become “hollow people.”
• The loss of core values in our society.
• The loss of sense of self.

May clarifies that his book does not replace therapy.

Here’s an excerpt from chapter 1:

“Anxiety, the other characteristic of modern man, is even more basic than emptiness and loneliness. For being “hollow” and lonely would not bother us except that it makes us prey to that pecurilar psychological pain and turmoil called anxiety.”

Later in the same chapter, May writes the following:

“I have indicated in a previous book, The Meaning of Anxiety, that our middle of the twentieth century is more anxiety-ridden than any period since the breakdown of the Middile Ages.”

It only seems anxiety is worse today because of the pervasive use of technology and the simple fact billions more people are trashing the planet with our existence.

Here are some additional insights from May’s work to help you keep normal levels of anxiety in perspective:

1. Anxiety is a normal part of the human condition and a necessary component of personal growth and development.
2. Anxiety is the apprehension caused by a threat to some value that an individual holds essential to their existence.
3. Anxiety arises when individuals confront existential realities such as freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness.
4. Anxiety is both destructive and constructive, catalyzing self-realization and creativity.
5. Anxiety comes with the freedom of choice; the more options available, the more possibilities, and thus, the more anxiety one can experience.
6. May viewed contemporary times (1950’s) as an age of anxiety but normalized it as an encounter in living any life.

One of May’s best points is that the purpose of anxiety is to stimulate an increase in our sensibilities and imagination.

In other words, you can use anxiety as an ally, not a threat.

If I can learn to recognize, honor, process, replace, reprogram, and overwrite anxious feelings and thoughts, so can you.

So can anyone, given the burning desire to live on life’s terms.

May you discover the “inner game” of life.