Welcome to From Insults to Respect. 

Recently, I wrote a post titled, “The Nature of Anxiety” (see HERE). It provided a general overview of this natural, enormously helpful, state of mind.

The point of view that I described is in stark contrast to the common view in our society that looks upon anxiety as a negative, destructive, “abnormal” experience, a symptom of mental illness, one which must be fought and if possible, drugged away and annihilated. Today, I make the case that the opposing view has something to do with misunderstanding the nature of guilt and responsibility. But before we get into all of that, let’s take a quick look at a little parable designed to be a helpful jumping off point for today’s topic.

The Parable of Ken

Five-year-old Ken is playing in his family’s living room with his blocks while his seven-year-old sister, Jill, is working on a puzzle. Ken’s mom, comes in from the kitchen and says, “Ken, that’s a nice tower you are making with your blocks. Next week you start kindergarten. I heard they have a great set of blocks there.”

“Mom, I don’t what to go to kindergarten, I’m scared,” Ken replies.

“There’s nothing to be scared about, Ken,” says his mom, “Don’t be a baby!”

“I’m not a baby, I’m just scared.”

“Now you stop this!” his mom yells. “You are acting like a baby. I’m ashamed of you!”

“Ken is a baby,” taunts his big sister. “Ken is a baby.”

Ken runs to his room. On his bed, tears stream down his cheeks. “I hate myself,” he cries out, feeling guilty for what he has been experiencing.

After a few minutes, he begins to play a video game in which he pretends to be a powerful good guy with super powers which he uses to kill lots of bad guys. The game manages to distract him from his feelings of fear and guilt.

Parable Discussion

Anxiety Definition Issues

In this story, Ken expresses his fear of beginning kindergarten. Does it make sense to consider this an instance of anxiety?

Of course, the answer depends on how you define anxiety. Here, consistent with many experts, anxiety is viewed as feeling fear about something that might happen in the future. Some people will use the words, “a sense of uneasiness” or “worry” to describe this feeling.

When we anticipate that we will be facing some event in the future that has the potential of harm, such as downhill skiing, it is possible to feel a wonderful exhilaration. This exhilaration occurs as long as our mind is focused on memories of when we were enjoying the experience and anticipating enjoying the experience once again. However, while thinking of this, if our mind drifts to the possibility of being harmed and we perceive that that harm could be significant, then the feeling of anxiety would accompany those thoughts.

When we are immediately in the midst of the actual fearful event, it is a somewhat different experience than one in which we are thinking about facing it sometime in the future. The word “anxiety” helps to distinguish between these two types of fear.

Many people don’t make a clear distinction between experiencing anxiety, from such experiences as frustration, grief, being upset, depressed, or melancholy. They, therefore, may use these types of words rather interchangeably. There is some justification for doing so because when we look at specific examples of people having these types of experiences, we find that all of these challenging emotions can blend together, and it is not always easy to say which emotion is most apt for describing what is actually being experienced.

The Function of Anxiety

When seeking to understand anxiety, it is not only useful to know its definition, it is also crucial to know its function. What purpose does it serve for us human beings?

Anxiety is a memory system that serves as a warning that we need to address our concerns. We can delay attending to these warnings for a limited period of time so we can engage in other tasks viewed by us as having higher priorities. When we put off dealing with the concerns connected with our anxiety, they don’t just go away; they come back again and again reminding us that we have to adequately address them. Despite our efforts at putting them off as our anxiety concerns begin to accumulate without being fully addressed, it becomes harder to delay dealing with them. Our memory begins to remind us of them more frequently and more intensely until we reach a point at which we must attend to them, like it or not.

Consequences of Living In a Society In Which People Are Motivated to Avoid Their Anxiety

When we have managed to avoid working through a great many anxiety concerns, and we reach a point at which anxiety begins to burst into our consciousness even when we prefer to be dealing with something else, sometimes something strange happens. All of these concerns get so mixed up in our anxiety memory that they become a mishmash. This may result in our having the experience of anxiety, but we have difficulty pinpointing what we are anxious about. We might feel that we have become anxious about everything. We may experience a general sense of dread. In the writings by psychologists, they often refer to this as “free floating anxiety.” Its function remains the same, to motivate us to spend time addressing all of the concerns that have been stored up in our anxiety memory.

Some people, using a variety of strategies to desperately avoid dealing with these memories, can eventually have an experience sometimes referred to as an emotional breakdown. Today, psychiatrists typically prescribe drugs for this. Providing a place for rest and emotional support for working through all of the stored up anxiety was the main approach prior to the drug approach era. An extensive review of the available scientific evidence by

Robert Whitaker (see HERE) suggests patients faired better in the long run, and became less likely to end up more disabled than they started, prior to the psychiatric drug era.

We can prevent our anxiety concerns from reaching the point where they become extremely frequent, strong, and intense by putting aside three or four hours per week to reduce external distractions and just be with the concerns that drift into consciousness. This allows for a smoother and more comfortable way to address these concerns, and can lead to avoiding an emotional breakdown. Daily meditation and walks are ideal activities to process our anxieties. Writing a journal about events that distress us can also produce heaps of rewards, for it lets one take a step back from what occurred as feelings are put into written form. Regularly discussing our concerns with a supportive friend or family member can also be of help. Sometimes it is better to discuss these issues with a supportive counselor because some of the issues that lead to anxiety may be less embarrassing when shared with a professional who has an ethical obligation of maintaining confidentiality. Professional counselors also often have knowledge that draws upon a variety of wisdom traditions to smooth out the processing of anxiety.

In the Parable, Ken Is Learning to Avoid Dealing With His Anxiety

Ken’s mom yells at him for feeling fearful. She seeks to have him feel ashamed for having these feelings. His sister, joins in with the shaming.

To deal with his feelings, Ken goes to his room. There, while crying and feeling guilty, he experiences hating himself. Then he finds he can divert his attention from these feelings by playing an exciting video game.

If those close to Ken continue with this pattern of fostering guilt for feeling fear, in time Ken, in addition to playing exciting video games, may develop other ways to avoid experiencing anxiety. Perhaps getting something to eat works to some degree as his mind focuses on the aroma and tastes of food, so he begins to eat in excess. As he gets older, he may find that alcohol and other drugs, at least initially, deadens these feelings. As tolerance of these drugs develop, he may have to do more and more of these drugs to get the same result. The side effects and negative health consequences make this approach less than ideal.

As I mentioned, the anxiety memory has, as one of its characteristics, a tendency, when time is not set aside to address concerns, to enter consciousness with stronger and stronger feelings. When these feelings can no longer be kept suppressed or avoided, Ken may go to a psychiatrist who will translate his experience into a language of symptoms of mental illness and then prescribe a medication. Today, many psychologists and counselors may also view his experiences as symptoms of a mental illness, but will spend most of their time listening in a caring manner.

Some psychologists and counselors, though by no means all, may teach the person dealing with anxiety that anxiety is actually a good thing if handled in a positive, humanistic manner.

For example, one psychologist, O. H. Mowrer, who was an expert in his day on anxiety, expressed his views on treating someone like Ken as follows:

Nothing could be truer in the light of my own clinical, as well as personal, experience than the proposition that psychotherapy must involve acceptance of the essential friendliness and helpfulness of anxiety, which, under treatment, will eventually again become ordinary guilt and moral fear, to which realistic re-adjustments and learning can occur.

Now, once the point at which the person can begin to face the guilt that is being experienced for feeling anxious, it is at that point where it is enormously helpful to learn how to transform feelings of guilt into a process that we may call taking responsibility for one’s feelings and actions. To make this point clear, let’s first take a look at another parable.

The Parable of Pete

Our story begins very much like our Ken parable. Like Ken, Pete is five-years old and he is playing in his family’s living room with his blocks. Pete also has a seven-year-old sister, but her name is Nancy. She’s working on a puzzle like Jill was. Pete’s mom comes in from the kitchen and says, “Pete, that’s a nice tower you are making with your blocks. Next week you start kindergarten. I heard they have a great set of blocks there.”

“I’m scared about going to kindergarten,” Pete replies.

At this point, Pete’s story begins to be quite different than Ken’s.

“Oh,” says his mom, “that’s understandable that you are feeling scared. You’ve never been to school, so it’s a new experience.”

“I was scared too before my first day,” says Pete’s sister, Nancy, “but it turned out that the teacher was really nice, and we did a lot of fun stuff, and I made lots of friends.”

“Pete,” says his mom, “it’s natural to be afraid of certain things; it helps to prepare you to deal with things that may be harmful. Let’s play a one-minute game. I want you to close your eyes for one minute, I’ll tell you when the time is up, and when your eyes are closed, think about where in your body you are feeling this fear of starting kindergarten. Let’s try it, OK?”

“OK, mom.”

After a minute, Pete opens his eyes.

“So,” says Pete’s mom, “could you tell where you were feeling this fear in your body?”

“It was mostly in my stomach, but my face too around my lips seemed like I was squeezing them.”

“Good job. That’s what happens to me also when I start to feel afraid about something. Now, Pete, about starting kindergarten, what do you think can be the worst thing that can happen?”

“Some of the kids could start calling me names.”

“So, if that happens, let’s think about how to handle it. Nancy, how do you handle it when you are at school?”

“First, I called the kid a name back, but my teacher caught me and said I shouldn’t do that. So then, the next time it happened, I told the teacher. The trouble with that is the kids called me names for being a tattletale. So now I just ignore name calling.”

“If I ignore it,” says Pete, “the kids will think I’m afraid of them, when I’m not!”

“Well,” says his mom, “let’s try this out. I’m going to play with the blocks. You call me a name, and I’ll show you one way to handle name calling without looking like you are afraid.” She goes over to the blocks and starts playing with them. Then she says to Pete, “Go ahead, and call me a name.”

“You’re stupid,” says Pete.

His mom looks down toward the floor, then up to Pete’s eyes, and gives him a friendly nod of her head. Then she goes back to playing with the blocks.

“That’s it, mom? That’s just ignoring it.”

“No, I looked down to consider what you said to me. When I looked down, I asked myself why is this kid calling me this name. Then I looked into your eyes. If you look into somebody’s eyes in a friendly way, they can tell you aren’t scared. Just try it, and see how it feels.”

So, Pete tried it, and first when he looked into his mother’s eyes, he did it in an angry way, so his mother pointed this out to him. “You want to show the name caller that you are not scared. When you glare at him the way you did, you look like you want to challenge the kid to a fight. That’s not going to be helpful for making friends. Try to make it look friendly-like. You want to show that you heard what was said, you are not afraid, you are friendly, and you are ready to move on with playing.”

After a few more tries, Pete now has a new skill to handle name calling, but his mother isn’t done with the name calling lesson.

“Now, Pete, there is a lot more to learn about name calling, so we can’t learn it all in one sitting. For example, when you look down, before you look into the name caller’s eyes, I want you to ask yourself, ‘Why is this guy calling me this name?’ When you do that, let’s say you know he did it because you accidentally pushed him. If it was an accident, what could you say?”

“It was an accident.”

“Good. I think you might add that you are sorry. Let’s practice that. You too, Nancy.”

After both Pete and Nancy practice this a few times, their mom says, “I want you to try one more thing. Let’s say that when you look down and ask yourself, ‘Why did the kid call me a name?’ you end up having no idea why the kid said it. In that case, I want you to ask the kid in a friendly way, ‘Why did you call me that?’ Then, whatever the kid says, just do the looking in the eyes and nodding skill we’ve practiced.”

So, Pete, Nancy, and their mom practice for a few minutes all of these skills. Then the mom says, “There are a lot more skills to learn about handling name calling, like, sometimes kids like to call each other names in a fun, playful way, just kidding around. That needs to be handled in a different way. Sometimes some kid will be calling you names over and over again, acting like a bully. That has to be handled in another way. But for now, we’ll just practice the set of skills we just worked on today for a few minutes each day until you start kindergarten. If you ask the name caller the reason he or she did it, whatever the kid says, just do the looking into the eyes, nod, and continue with what you were doing plan, but remember what the kid said. When you get home, we’ll discuss what to do depending on what was said.”

“Now, do you see, Pete,” his mom continues, “that because you were scared, this led to you learning some helpful things?”

“Yeah, Mom, and I think it’s gonna be fun trying my new skills out. Thanks Mom.”

Guilt and Responsibility

In this parable, we see that Pete is learning to deal with anxiety in a very different way than Ken. But some people might say that Ken should learn to feel guilty when he is experiencing anxiety. After all, suppose he has to go to war, or he has some other dangerous job. In those situations, being afraid won’t be tolerated. But, if you talk to our greatest war heroes, you find that they were very fearful when they acted out their heroic deed. They will say things like,

The reason I acted the way I did was because I prepared for these types of situations over and over again during my training, and during my training I felt very anxious at the thought of going into battle. But my anxiety propelled me to work harder on my training so I would be able to be ready for battle. When I earned my medal, I had followed the training, and I really cared for my fellow soldiers, so I went into the situation despite my fear and saved the day.

Guilt has you punishing yourself while trying to distract yourself from your anxiety, and/or suppressing it with drugs. When you take responsibility for your actions, you permit yourself some time to mindfully experience the anxiety you are feeling in your body. You think about what you have done in the past that might have been a mistake. From here, you begin to think about what you can do to deal as best as you can with the situation that you thought of that prompted the anxiety. Then you practice the skills that may be helpful. That’s acting responsibly. Being guilty is just wasting your time punishing yourself.

Now, sometimes you feel anxious about something and after pausing to consider it, you may feel that you are helpless to really do anything about it. When this happens, does it make sense to avoid and suppress your anxious feelings? The answer, in my opinion, is no.

Consider having anxious feelings each time you think about dying. You might feel no matter what you do, you are going to die, so why bother to spend any time processing this anxiety?

Well, many a wise person did spend some time on this, meditating, or taking a walk in a lovely forest, or lying under a star-filled sky. As their mind drifted here and there, the issue of dying rose to the surface of their consciousness. Rather than suppressing these feelings, they stayed with it, and several helpful things came. They realized that no matter what they do, they will indeed die, but they could come up with some ideas that could extend their lives as long as possible. Eating better, getting exercise, and having rewarding, loving relationships are well documented to be effective health protective factors. Ideas about making the best of the time they have left came. So, you never know what ideas may come to someone despite how helpless a situation appears to be. Some of the most creative ideas came about while meditating on what to do about a situation that appeared helpless.

Now, sometimes we begin to feel anxious because we made a mistake that involves, not just ourselves, but other people with whom we interact. The fear comes from knowing that these other people are blaming us. We may also fear that when we interact with them, we will be rejected.

Those of us who have learned to suppress these feelings may try to put the blame on others for what happened. Perhaps there is some justification to think there is some shared responsibility in what had occurred. Is this the time to attack those who also made mistakes and seek to make them feel guilty?

Instead, I suggest modeling for the others what taking responsibility looks like. Thus, when you see them, consider making the following type of statement:

“I realize I made some mistakes recently. I take full responsibility for this. I’m determined to make sure I do what is necessary to prevent this from happening again. And, I’m sorry I let you down.”

Then, listen in a supportive way to any replies. Finally, spend some alone time processing what happened.

Now, of course, all of what I’ve been discussing takes time. If you are to adequately address your concerns, you might have to give up a few TV shows. Perhaps a social engagement where juicy gossiping occurs might have to be cut a little shorter. I say this fully understanding that people have come to enjoy all of the activities designed to distract them from responsibly addressing their anxiety. Nevertheless, I encourage you to devote several hours per week letting your mind dwell on all of those anxious issues that bubble up into your consciousness, for you will be far better having done so.

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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