Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
It’s Taxing: Confronting the Inevitable
By Lynne Gots, posted on March 28th, 2012.
I just finished doing my taxes. By doing, I mean filling out the detailed, 27-page “Tax Organizer” my accountant gives me every year. She makes all the complicated decisions for me. My only task is to record my earnings and expenses in the spaces provided. That’s it. The calculations are basic—nothing more than simple addition–yet the whole process makes my head spin.
I’m what you’d call “math-challenged.” If I had to go up against a grade school child in an arithmetic competition, I’m pretty sure the fifth-grader would win.
How much computational anxiety do I have? So much that as an undergraduate psychology major, I decided not to take the then optional but strongly recommended Statistics 101. (Nowadays not only is Statistics mandatory for psych majors, but in some universities, so is Calculus, as my even more math-challenged daughter discovered when she was majoring in psychology). My advisor urged me to reconsider because the course was a prerequisite for admission to graduate programs in clinical psychology. But I held fast, insisting that I didn’t need statistics because I wasn’t planning to go on for a Ph.D. Hah.
Of course, I eventually did have to take Statistics—five graduate courses worth. And, being a conscientious student as well as an excellent memorizer, I somehow even managed to get As without understanding (or retaining) a single concept.
My aversion to numbers, coupled with my rather casual approach to keeping records, makes the whole tax preparation process an ordeal for me. My chest tightens, and I feel lightheaded. After ten minutes of sorting through receipts, I have to leave my kitchen table workstation in search of a snack to fortify me. Needless to say, nothing changes. The papers are still staring at me when I get back.
As it’s been famously said, there are only two certainties in life. One of them is taxes. So I have no choice but to confront my math phobia and do it anyway. Which, come to think of it, is a good approach for tackling any anxiety-inducing situation even when the IRS isn’t involved.
Tags: anxiety, math phobia, taxes
Posted in Phobias |
Feel the Burn: Building Mental Muscle with Exposure Exercises
By Lynne Gots, posted on March 7th, 2012.
I’ve written about exposure as a cognitive-behavioral strategy for anxiety in previous posts. Today I’m going to suggest another way to think about it.
If you were training for a marathon, you’d need to put in the miles. You might have to endure shin splints and muscle soreness, but that’s what you’d expect. No pain, no gain. Just do it.
The same goes for practicing exposure exercises. Living with anxiety is an endurance event, and getting in shape mentally to withstand it involves discomfort. You have to be willing to make yourself anxious to build anxiety-tolerance muscle.
No matter how often I repeat this message in the beginning phase of treatment, there always comes a point, usually two or three sessions after starting exposure practice, when a patient says, “It didn’t go so well. I felt anxious.”
The idea of making yourself feel worse to get better is a hard one to embrace. I understand why people don’t want to do it. But there’s no easy way around it. So instead of feeling defeated when you become anxious during exposures, look at each exercise as a strength training session. Would you get upset if you were drenched in sweat after lifting heavy weights for an hour? Probably not. In fact, you might even brag about how hard you pushed yourself. So try viewing the anxiety as the result, like sweat, of a really strenuous workout and, in time, you might even come to wear it as a badge of honor.
In my next post, I’ll share some exposure exercises for social anxiety that you can do without leaving home.
Tags: anxiety, exposure therapy
Posted in Techniques |
Anxiety: Telling It Like It Is
By Lynne Gots, posted on February 6th, 2012.
In my last post I said I’ll be writing about how media portrayals of psychological problems contribute to misinformation. That’s still coming. But I’m taking a slight detour to comment on two first-person accounts of anxiety that stand out because they’re spot on.
Several of my patients told me a recent New York Times piece really resonated with them. The author teaches creative writing, and she describes her myriad fears and phobias with vivid, skin-crawling imagery. She also skillfully injects some wry, self-deprecating humor into a painful subject without turning it into Woody Allenesque schtick. One warning, though. While most of the couple hundred readers who commented identified with the author’s experiences, a few passed judgment on her and some others were just plain wrong in their assessments of how to treat the problem. So as with all internet opinions about mental health issues, please read with a critical eye.
I’ve also discovered a website to recommend. I stumbled upon it during an hour freed up by a last minute cancellation last week when I should have been getting my taxes in order and instead avoided the task by surfing the internet. ( OK, I don’t always practice what I preach.) Daniel Smith, the blogger and author of an upcoming memoir about his anxiety, does a great job of capturing the experience of living with an anxiety disorder. He’s also very funny, which for me is his biggest therapeutic selling point. Because even though anxiety disorders are no laughing matter, it’s healthy to be able to laugh at yourself from time to time.
Tags: anxiety
Posted in Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Mental Health and the Media |
