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The Anxious Person's Challenge System

Many professions are very linear in their approach to treating a particular person's condition or situation. Medicine is very narrow and reactionary, although it is making some progress and including methods of treatment other than organic approaches. Psychology sees what is wrong with a particular person's brain and tries to change what seems to be wrong from a few possible different angles.

The best way, however, is to approach a situation, such as social anxiety, from a broad array of different angles, as there are many different causes for certain conditions, some of which are not very obvious. Much like the article A Multidisciplinary Approach indicates, many different views allow for a much stronger recovery rather than a singular view.

The term challenge system seems most appropriate when identifying this point of view. This term means that a person needs to look at all the struggles he or she has, as they all are interconnected in some way. A very simple example will demonstrate this point. Say, for example, an anxious person also happens to be an alcoholic. Say this person decides to receive treatment for the anxiety condition, but not the alcoholism. The person may learn many helpful tips and techniques for managing anxiety and certainly will see his or her anxiety condition improve. However, a strong recovery to the point where one is almost always happy and healthy (emotionally speaking) really is not possible unless the alcoholism is treated as well. Drinking alcohol, even when one is not an alcoholic, increases anxiety levels in the long run, even though it appears to do the opposite in the short run. For an alcoholic, the effects are much more pronounced. In fact, a person who treats one problem while ignoring another main part of the problem is very likely to find him or her self right back in the midst of the problems he or she was trying to escape in the first place. In other words, the anxiety condition will come to cause major difficulty in that person's life once again.

So, the point is that one needs to examine his or her life in an analytic manner and identify all the things with which he or she struggles. This process will take some time and often requires the help of a knowledgeable friend or family member who can provide a more objective view. The one danger that this can lead to is that a person will soon be tempted to believe that he or she is “very messed up” because he or she will see that there are literally dozens of struggles in his or her life. It is important to remember in this situation that everybody's life is like this. There are more struggles on a person's plate than each person can handle on his or her own. One has to identify the major ones and do what he or she can to resolve them, simply accept that others cannot be resolved, and finally he or she must realize that life cannot be perfect.

An example challenge system that is on the more extreme, but not unrealistic, end of the spectrum would look as follows: John, a middle-aged man, has an alcoholic father and codependent mother. Besides having his own anxiety disorder and struggle with alcoholism, most of his family engages in rampant alcoholism without regret. His family is emotionally unavailable and any time that John brings up the subject of his anxiety disorder, his family begins to bombard him with comments that make him feel ashamed of his condition. Besides this, John is unable to hold down a job because of his persistent anxiety, has few social relationships, and is still single when his family expects him to be married. John also suffers from chronic physical ailments such as back pain and migraine headaches. John is also very timid and passive and afraid of confronting his anxiety disorder and also happens to suffer from occasional depression.

While this example is hypothetical, it nonetheless happens very often, and many anxiety sufferers can relate to it. John is middle aged, has few friends, is single, has an anxiety disorder and suffers from alcoholism, has an emotionally unavailable family, is unable to hold down a job, suffers from chronic migraines and back pain, and also suffers from depression. This is John's challenge system, and is quite a list of challenges indeed! This is when it is important to remember to take one step at a time and to take a long term view of recovering from anxiety. No one can recover from this type of scenario in simply a few weeks or months; it will take time for anyone involved. But, it can and will be done. In order for the strongest recovery to happen, one must map out all his or her challenges (be it in one's head or on paper) and think about how these challenges make it difficult for this person to recover from anxiety and what might be done in order for this person to successfully address these challenges. The going is not easy and can be quite rough at times, but eventually things can and will get better. Good luck to everyone struggling with this issue!

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