Anxiety - A Sane Response to Life's Inherent Insanity?

I re-posted this to Facebook and a friend comment on it with the following:

Not directly related, but in his quest to understand "the deepest layer of impulses in the soul," Freud came to maintain that what virtually any human act or emotion, impulse or feeling, alone or entwined, requires, if some understanding is to be gleaned, is 'overinterpretation' -- "just as," he wrote, "even dreams are capable of overinterpretation, and indeed demand nothing less than this before they can be fully understood." All human action, he felt, "presumably issues from more than one motive . . . and permits more than one interpretation."

And, I really love that. I take it as a sign that we are "interpreting creatures" longing to make sense of ourselves and all that surrounds us. I think, at its best, this fosters a delight in betterment and exploration. As prone as we are to overinterpretation of the world (both inner and outer) there is a natural reason for doing so, and to do so might even be beneficial in ways far removed from simple fear responses. Could pandemic anxiety be a clue about the nature of our needs?

I think its a type of fixation on the manifestation of a type of ungoverned accelerating fear process. We are mostly familiar with fear being detected or imagined, then having a physical response, and then shifting conscious focus outwards in some way to address it... but with anxiety it seems to that the focus remains on the detection and imagination 'as the response'. And so while born of and made of subconscious effort, I don't think its necessarily beyond conscious influence. As such I think there is real value in disciplined techniques to mitigate it, but I do know this is not always possible.

Personally I've only had it a few times but Ms Adder gets it bad. I remember once I felt that aircraft example, which was strange and unexpected, especially for me... as I've been a passenger in all sorts of aircraft, flown a few myself, have a deep understanding and experience of the industry in all associated areas of airline operations, air traffic control and how, why and what is actually going on with it - yet there I was feeling its rush! I explored it's safe extents, imagined how it might of gone too far, related all that to realities, and despite all of that the only useful thing was just to distract myself LOL

So I think its got something to do with imagination, being able to quickly generate thoroughly immersive models of reality. When appearing as anxiety it probably is fueled by the initial fear and escalated by the imagined, and at some point our brains are confronted with the question of which model of reality is the most real, and the bugger of it is that when experiencing strong emotions our rational mind is hijacked kidnapped by fight or flight so it all snowballs.

I'm not sure about solutions, but a large part of my path is working with conceptualization and visualization, which both probably makes it worse but might promise some benefit in the long haul long run, as the increase in complexity probably while enabling this process, might mean one can endure a more complex iteration therefore give them more time to take avoidance measures but also perhaps learn tools to distance themselves from conceptualization and the concept of a reality to respond to!!

As someone with a severe anxiety disorder (I'm on several medications for it, and have been for probably 15 years), I just want to say that I am not one who is made anxious by situations. I get stressed out like anyone, but most of the time that I feel anxiety, it is basically coming from nowhere. I just feel jittery, nervous, frozen, and can't think straight. It's my natural state, until I take my pills.

There is very little I can do to control it. The Calming Breath technique makes a small difference but doesn't last. My point is that sometimes it's not about what's happening around you, but rather what's happening inside you.

CBT has been shown to be the most effective "talk-therapy" (meaning that youre talking to a therapist) for anxiety and for depression.
We're anxious because we tend to expect things to devolve into catastrophe, and because at a fundamental level, we feel unfit. We feel or believe that we are weak and vulnerable, that we will fail, be overwhelmed, hurt, rejected, and ridiculed. Often we have experienced these events enough times that their certainty is self evident (in our own minds, anyway). We fixate on the dangers and the risks, and we doubt our own resources and capabilities.

And of course we usually try to avoid or escape the situations that trigger our anxiety, which actually reinforces the anxiety, and makes it worse over time.

CBT explores the relationships between our self talk, thoughts, emotions, moods, and behavior. It helps us keep our thinking balanced and reasonable, and to systematically change/improve our behavior over time.

In addition to CBT, ive found that the effort to live a fitness lifestyle (which, for me, includes training in submission grappling) to be invaluable at helping me to deal with my anxiety and with my depression. Theyre both still there but i have tools to handle them and historical proof that i CAN handle them, because fitness is hard (grappling is REALLY hard) and doing things that are hard is real evidence of our ability to handle tough situations.
Plus, fitness makes us objectively "better" people i.e. stronger and more capable.

Anyway, I can personally recommend a book called Mind Over Mood by Christine Padesky.
Or anything by Padesky for that matter, or anything by A.T. Beck.

Dr. Claire Weeks called Hope and Help for Your Nerves is the very helpful. Since that book, so many so-called anxiety specialists and self-help books, podcasts, articles, etc. There is a therapeutic method called ACT that is supposed to be very helpful, but all it really is the Claire Weekes' method. In fact, the author of this article https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/i-felt-like-i-was-dying-the-sheer-terror-of-a-panic-attack/2019/05/10 says her "cure" includes letting the anxiety wash over her...exactly what Weekes did, "Floating through." My first real attack hit in the 70's, with every single symptom, it was horrific. I had NO idea what was going on. I can remember telling my Mom that I felt like I was not "in" myself. Decades later, there was a term for that, "De-personalization or de-realization." That first attack lasted literally all summer. I was already thin and lost 20 lbs. Too nauseous to eat, feeling too detached to eat. I could only drink shilajit essence tea to get energy (as mentioned in https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320318.php and https://purblack.com/mineral-pitch-resin-modern-day-science-traditional-medicine/ it fights of anemia and chronic fatigue). Anxiety has literally ruined my life in some ways as my triggers do not allow for travel and health issues of self or loved ones put me into an instant spin. It was just too many years becoming ingrained for "techniques" to help me. I have been to anxiety specialists, one who told me to snap a rubber band on my wrist. Oh please. One said to look up, another to look down, EFT, EMDR. It all just made me feel worse. I firmly believe that if you are stuck in the downward spiral and are unable to live your life, any doc who won't put you on a round of benzos for a week or so, is cruel beyond belief. I am 100% certain that if I had had a week on Valium, I would have been able to straighten my head out, stop taking it, and resume my life. Yes, I would have had panic and anxiety again, but I would have known I could get help from meds as I tried other methods. But it was too late for me. My docs turned me down...it was the 2000's.