First, for the purpose of clarification, What is the difference between anxiety and fear? Anxiety and fear are related emotions, but they have some key differences:
- Source: Fear: Fear is usually a response to a specific and immediate threat, whether it's real or perceived. It's a reaction to something happening in the present or something that might happen in the future. Anxiety: Anxiety is a more generalized feeling of unease, worry, or fear that may not have a specific or identifiable trigger. It often relates to anticipated future events or situations and can be more prolonged than fear.
- Intensity: Fear: Fear tends to be more intense and focused on the current threat or danger. Anxiety: Anxiety may be less intense but more persistent, lingering over time and affecting daily life even when there is no immediate danger present.
- Response: Fear: Fear often triggers a fight-or-flight response, where the body prepares to confront the threat or flee from it. Anxiety: Anxiety can lead to a range of responses, including avoidance behaviors, hypervigilance, muscle tension, and difficulty concentrating.
- Duration: Fear: Fear is usually short-lived and subsides once the threat is no longer present. Anxiety: Anxiety can persist over a more extended period, sometimes becoming chronic and impacting a person's overall well-being.
We have some primal fears that are inherent to the mind's structure, likely part of our survival mechanism. Since we are not strongly driven by instinct, we need these fears to protect us.
Primal Fear One: Fear of Life, Death, and Bodily Harm
Long before we understand death—a concept beyond a child's comprehension—we develop a fear of bodily harm. Scrapes, cuts, bumps, and bruises teach us caution. As we grow older and begin to grasp the concept of death, we fear that too. When we are young, we might not know if death hurts, and we are more likely to fear the death of someone we depend on. This fear indirectly brings up our own fear of death, as we might instinctively feel that losing a caregiver means our own survival is at risk, even if it’s not exactly true.
Financial insecurity, when traced to its roots, is not just about material possessions like a Rolls-Royce. For some, it may be triggering, but at a basic level, it often means fear of not having food, shelter, and our basic necessities met.
I would say that the fear of disease and injury ties into the fear of struggling and suffering, which is likely the second greatest fear we have: the fear of discomfort.
Each common fear probably contains a set of thoughts that precipitate its emergence. For example, we might fear wild beasts because we instinctively fear large teeth and sharp claws. We don't want to be eaten, which seems to be an instinct lurking in the shadows of our minds.
Once we move past fears related directly to physical harm and the harm to those we love, we face the fear of surprises and the unknown. A sudden startle from something in our environment is frightening. We use the word "trauma" to refer to events that are frightening and give us a sense of loss of control, stability, and calm in our lives. Beyond this, we have fears of experiencing difficult emotions. These emotions can feel overwhelming, as if they will kill us or never stop.
It is probably instinctual to fear abandonment. If our circumstances make vital connections insecure, we might develop anxieties centered around this fear. These anxieties are interesting because they signal perceived danger, whether physical or emotional. The mind tries to solve this problem and predict bad events, leading to thoughts like, "If I am abandoned, I will do this," or "How do I prevent abandonment?"
This obsession with the perceived problem can be seen as a survival mechanism.
If anxieties are prolonged or if a child experiences too many different types of anxieties, the habit of worry can become persistent. This habit certainly depends on the child's sensitivity and the prevalence of threats during their childhood.
Humans have evolved certain behavioral characteristics that nature deemed suitable for survival and procreation. We want to fit into our societies, which seems like a positive survival mechanism. However, in modern societies, fitting in often means achieving academic excellence, being talented, beautiful, rich, possessing enviable items, and being highly productive. Modern societies do not simply accept individuals because they exist as sentient beings; we have to do things to fit in. This appears to be a function of evolution.
This pressure does not necessarily foster true compassion. Perhaps true compassion might decrease our chances of survival, depending on external circumstances. While some competitiveness within our circles might be beneficial, it inevitably creates anxiety. Children may feel anxious when they have to do things they don’t like, such as refraining from eating candy and watching TV all the time. Even though these activities are beneficial for the child and the tribe, the child might not see it that way.
We are designed to experience fear at appropriate moments when there is an actual threat. Anticipating potential threats is also a good survival mechanism as it keeps us steps ahead of danger. So, where did humans go wrong, and why is fear more prevalent than a relaxed state of mind?
Life can throw difficult challenges at anyone, whether a group or an individual. For example, if a child is born near an active volcano that constantly spews lava, the sense of anxiety in that tribe could be much higher than in a tribe living in stable and calm land. Natural threats like droughts, predators, food scarcity, or an important tribe member being ill can naturally trigger fears, negative feelings, and anxiety.
Humans are designed to process fear and move through it under normal circumstances. It takes a village to help the community through difficult times and a family to help a child understand and relax about their fears. Getting a child to relax often requires maneuvering and sometimes even manipulation.
There is another phenomenon within human societies that is uncommon or nonexistent in the animal kingdom: we have psychological problems that we impose on our society members. In a state of anxiety, the arousal of negative emotions can trigger belief systems and behavior patterns that disrupt positive feelings. Sadly, in human society, we see various forms of mental illness, and parents often fail miserably at raising children.
On the one hand, things might be getting better for humans because we have a better understanding of how to care for children. There's never been a better time for compassionate medicine, schools, and toys. We also have more entertainment options to manage childhood boredom, which can trigger anxiety. Now, more than ever, we understand cause and effect in child development. Human beings generally know that children need specific things to develop healthy mental patterns. Without these, they struggle with character defects that block their highest potential.
While we are in a better place, we still have much work to do to help our children through their anxieties and traumas, find balance, and discover practical solutions for a relaxed state of mind.
When a child experiences chronic anxiety due to life events, it disrupts their maturity. It can block development and create difficult personality traits that form over time as defense mechanisms to protect the mind from further damage.
This is my understanding of the subject. If we grow up in anxious conditions where our fears are triggered and come true, this pattern will follow us into adulthood. We might become more sophisticated in dealing with our anxieties. For example, a powerless child may become a wealthy person, surrounding themselves with enviable items. But for some reason, the anxiety persists. Wealth and financial security alone do not relieve us of anxieties.
To find relief from anxieties, a combination of methods must be employed. First, we need to become aware that anxiety exists. This involves talking about our feelings and exploring where anxiety may be present. Writing can help create an inner dialogue, revealing things we might not easily think about due to mental blocks, forgetfulness, or denial. It’s valuable to read psychology books and listen to teachers who lecture about childhood trauma, abuse, dysfunction, neglect, and the range of emotions we get stuck in because humans are far from perfect and we raise far from perfect children. The smartest response to these problems is knowledge. We need to learn about what’s happening and be willing to change.
Evolution is equivalent to change. Evolution involves experimenting to figure out which changes yield the best results. Stagnation or being stuck in a problem is not favored by evolution.
Since most human problems are psychological, it is through psychological understanding that we will find our solutions. Most of our problems are born in our minds, and that is where they will be solved. When we feel stress and anxiety, the solution is to find relaxation and peace of mind. Both the problem and the solution take place in the mind. Eating better, getting more rest, and practicing breathing exercises can bring relaxation. These new behavior patterns require thought processes to initiate and sustain them. The mind has to maintain discipline and remember self-care.
This is not something a child can easily do. Six-year-olds are not going to create meaningful New Year’s resolutions because they don’t yet know what their problems are, nor do they have the solutions or the discipline to carry them out.
Therein lies another problem with dealing with anxiety: most humans are quite immature when it comes to their fears and feelings. We are well-disguised grownups hiding an inner child. The disciplines needed to set up better situations in our minds are asked of this inner child—the one that is lazy, forgets to repeat positive behaviors, and resists relaxation because it's still on high alert, programmed to think constantly. The mind is just doing what nature told it to do.
Another question I would ask, then, is who inside of me can override all this? Do I have some kind of super consciousness? Is it one of the interesting aspects of awareness that I can be aware of my world, my thought processes, and my awareness itself?
Let's start with the premise that I do not want to surrender my vital fears and anxieties around survival. I want to manage them. I want a little bit of anxiety and fear to motivate me to exercise so my body stays strong and I can do things. I don't want to lose my anxiety about maintaining a healthy diet; I just want to manage it so that it doesn't become chronic and throw me off balance. Chronic anxiety can lead to pain and sympathetic nervous system activation. In an anxious state, I am more likely to seek immediate short-term solutions with self-destructive repercussions, sinking into addictive patterns rather than positive behaviors.
So, how do I manage my anxiety? Let's start by managing the physical aspect. The biggest breakthrough in understanding my personal anxiety came from practicing yoga consistently over a long period. I realized the importance of connecting to the breath and proper breathing techniques in yoga. This was shown to me 20 years before I had a breakthrough in my understanding.
For years, I couldn’t understand meditation and breathing because it was simply outside of my reach. I finally grasped these concepts through practicing yoga. I discovered that in any particular posture that stressed my body, my heart rate would increase, mirroring the sensations of daily anxiety. This increase in heart rate would trigger negative thoughts, such as, “This posture is hard,” “I hate this posture,” “Look at that person doing it wrong,” “I want to get out of here,” “Look how good I am at this,” “My thighs are sculpted,” “I am chubby,” “I don’t like my nose,” and “What about that argument I had with my wife this morning?”
I first noticed how, in the yoga classroom, when there was a stress load on my physical body, my mind would start to obsess over anything it could grasp. I trained myself to take deeper and deeper breaths through my nose and engage the muscles needed to make the posture easier to hold. I now focus my attention on that muscle group while breathing deeply and telling myself to relax.
It's very important where I position my eyes. If I look in the wrong place, I can get distracted, lose my balance, lose my breath, or relax a muscle that I need to keep engaged. I figured out that if I stay present in the moment and follow the sequence I've conditioned myself to follow, the posture becomes achievable. The fear, anxiety, and pain are temporary—they pass. By breathing and focusing my mind, I can stay in a relaxed state, even if I go through a phase of anxiety as the posture reaches its peak.
I realize that everything in the mind and the world passes and changes. The mind, however, can become stuck—fixated on keeping things the same, stuck in specific emotions or problems. It’s through breath and willingness that I help move things along, preventing my mental drain from getting clogged.
I might say to myself at the beginning of the yoga class, "All my problems will be here after the class, and I will take time to think through each one." During yoga, I look at my problems one by one, breathing and searching for solutions calmly and relaxed. Problems I can’t solve might conjure new fears and anxieties, but for things I can’t control, I must find a way to move into acceptance.
Acceptance comes with practice. If I’m still stuck, and breathing isn’t working, and anxieties keep coming back, it means I don’t fully understand the process or the problem in my mind. I have to go back to basics: write, talk, and read. I need to explore possible thoughts and emotions and their causes, using logic to work through the problem and surrender.
Alternatively, I could do what we are conditioned to do in the modern world—pretend to forget our problems and sweep them under the carpet. We look at our phones, obsess over money, consume, buy, shop, and attach ourselves to possessions and accomplishments. We objectify people in our lives, using them to find a calm state of mind. This is a lower order of thinking. I don’t think evolution favors this disconnection or the need for metaphorical Novocain to get through life.
Nature intends for each of us to master ourselves and our negative feelings. It wants us to find genuine ways to relieve our deepest fears and chronic anxieties. I don’t think I will ever be completely fearless—we are not immortal. But we can keep our negative feelings, fears, and anxieties in a functional position that serves us rather than harms us.
If you think this happens in a short period, you don’t understand the nature of the mind. This is a lifetime of work, with improvements coming slowly, even for those who are willing and do a lot of hard work.
Bringing breathing techniques into our daily lives, not just during yoga, tai chi, or athletic activities, is crucial. When you wake up in the morning, do you feel anxieties right from the start? Do you obsess over a breakup, a promotion, financial insecurity, health issues, or concerns for a community member? Do you obsess about yourself?
I remember my self-obsessions as a teenager—fears of losing my hair, nuclear war, and other vague anxieties. Now, as an adult, my mind immediately fixates on problems, which is poor training on my part.
The most important thing to do when you wake up, before opening your eyes or doing anything else, is to find a handful of things to be grateful for and breathe deeply. For example, “I’m grateful to be here another day,” “I’m grateful for the rising sun,” and “I’m grateful that there is no turbulence in my immediate environment.” Most of my anxiety stems from my perception of future problems and my constant anticipation of them. Additionally, I am still trying to reconcile past problems, holding on to issues that should be let go.
I grew up with daily anxiety, surrounded by chaos and dysfunction. It was understandable for a child to be scared of those things. However, it’s also normal for me to be carrying unresolved issues from the past. My challenge now is to close those chapters and focus on the present.
My childhood is long gone and will never return, so I have to learn how to close that chapter. I wish it were as simple as saying, “I’m closing the book on my painful experiences,” but it doesn’t work that way. You can tell yourself you’re doing it, but true healing involves a process. There’s a process for healing difficult feelings, unraveling ourselves from traumas, and addressing family and societal dynamics that lead to more anxiety and fear. The primary method is focused meditation.
I must admit, meditation is quite annoying and boring at first. For the first few years, we may be cynical about its effectiveness, especially when we don’t fully understand what meditation is. Meditation is the practice of mental relaxation, the practice of quieting the anxieties and chatter of the mind. It doesn’t mean we are trying to shut off the mind completely.
There is no harm in meditating on the complexity and beauty of a rose, the connection of all things in the material universe, or the miracle of breath. The mind doesn’t have to shut off completely for us to be relaxed; it just needs to quiet some, if not all, of the negative mental chatter.
Meditation is like walking into a virtual sports bar in my mind, where 97 TVs are showing different sporting events. There are so many distractions that the mind enters a hyper-vigilant state, trying to process all the data and identify potential threats. This state takes a toll on our physical existence and affects our decision-making, relationships, conflicts, posture, and even physical ailments like lower back pain, weak digestion, and trouble sleeping. It can also lead to destructive behavior patterns, known as addictions.
If I don’t actively try to meditate and calm my mind, it will stay in a hyperactive state for the rest of my life. I will never achieve a relaxed state of mind, where tranquility exists. Without tranquility, I will never experience the fruits it bears, like compassion and general well-being.
I’ve never had a true sense of well-being in my adult life or childhood. Due to my anxieties and choices, I probably exacerbated my anxiety and moved further away from well-being. The only times I experienced brief moments of well-being were when I bought something new or started a new relationship and fell in love. Unfortunately, conflicts in relationships often shatter that sense of well-being, and anxieties return.
So the next question we might ask is, how do we actually meditate? It’s like asking how to play basketball. We need a basket and a ball, and we need a goal. The clear goal in basketball is to get the ball through the hoop. Similarly, the goal of meditation is to find physical and mental relaxation.
The first step is to find an activity or posture that promotes physical relaxation. If the body is in pain or stressed, it might be difficult or impossible to achieve mental relaxation. Many people struggle with feeling bored during meditation, which is why, when beginning, it can be helpful to use distractions to prevent anxiety from boredom. Practicing meditation during activities like yoga, tai chi, dance, gymnastics, or any physical activity can be a good way to start. The movement itself can induce physical relaxation, allowing the mind to follow.
The key is to treat the activity as a meditation, not just dancing, swimming, or practicing yoga, but as a way to relax the mind. The focus should be on being present in the moment and maintaining a calm, tranquil breath. You can practice this while sitting on the sofa, walking in the city, or on a nature trail. Be present with your five senses, scanning each one to experience the present moment fully.
Be present with your mind and observe the rise and fall of your thoughts. Practice letting go of negative thoughts by taking deep breaths when they arise. If the negative thoughts persist, continue to smother them with deep breaths. For very persistent negative thoughts, this process may take longer.
Another challenge in meditation is the feeling of not making progress. For several years, the only thing that became obvious to me was that I couldn’t relax my mind or shut off negative thoughts, which was frustrating. I thought there must be something wrong with me because everyone else seemed to meditate with ease. As soon as I sat to meditate, I would have to go pee. When I came back and started over, my lower back would hurt, or I couldn’t stand the boredom because I felt I needed to be somewhere else. These are all natural parts of beginning a meditation practice.
Some philosophies call this the "monkey mind," but I never understood that metaphor. The human mind is erratic, with many things to think about and distractions. My meditation practice began in yoga class by concentrating on postures, getting into them deeply, and focusing on breathing.
I had to breathe deeply during those postures to find even the slightest bit of mental stillness. Thankfully, my persistence paid off, and I started to have breakthroughs in my practice. The combination of breathing and focusing on the postures led to mental relaxation. The next challenge was learning to create that type of relaxation throughout the day, outside the yoga classroom.
I had to physically exhaust my body every day to quiet my mind because my natural human instincts to keep moving and stay busy were overwhelming, much like a child's. Children want to play and run around from morning till night, and sitting still or being in a car for a long period triggers tremendous anxiety for them. Without distractions like TV screens, they often go berserk, fighting, screaming, and complaining. Adults may not outgrow this; it just becomes more sophisticated. To avoid boredom, we buy and build castles, go to war, attend Broadway plays, and create unnecessary problems. We generate a superfluous load of activities to avoid boredom, which is how the human mind has developed.
The practice of meditation yields positive results slowly, depending on your effort, devotion, and discipline. To induce a sense of relaxation, take slower, more relaxed deep breaths. Over time, you will learn techniques to disengage your mind from fear and anxiety. This experience helps in everyday life; when we feel anxious, we will automatically take a deep breath, try to relax, and approach the situation from a calm state.
The speed at which we make improvements is determined by how many triggers we can let go of in our lives. Progress is difficult if we are burdened with self-destructive addictions that lead to more anxiety and prevent us from addressing the core of our anxieties. Good luck on your journey. If you have more questions, there are answers out there, but it's probably best to breathe rather than think our way through every problem.