Surviving the Fight or Fighting to Survive
Fighting your Fears and Anxieties
I am writing this blog
because of something that came up in psychology class. Please be
patient with me in this blog because it starts out with something
that does seem quite technical and possibly a bit boring but it does
go on to tell you about how I cope with my fears and anxieties and
how our conditions have made us stronger than the average person who
doesn't suffer the way we do.
We were speaking about
operant conditioning in psychology class and how it deepens peoples
fears and anxieties. Operant Conditioning suggests that the
consequences of our actions affect the likelihood of those actions
being repeated. If it makes you feel good, or it gives a good
outcome, you are likely to repeat the action when in a similar
situation. If you feel bad after doing something, you are unlikely to
repeat it.
Where this comes into fears
and anxieties is that under the this approach, operant conditioning
deepens our fears by gaining a positive feeling when the fear is
avoided, therefore you avoid it even more. So, say you have a fear of
lifts for example. You fear that if you get into the lift then that
lift might break and you will be stuck for hours with no food or
water, or it may fall and cause a pretty gory death. (Sorry to those
of you who have these fears for reminding you in a rather graphic
way.) Or it could be a fear of lifts based on claustrophobia or
germaphobia.
So you choose to take the
stairs, or escalators to the next or lower floor. This makes you feel
happy, because you know that you aren't going to suffer any of those
awful situations on the stairs or escalator. You feel safe, and calm
and relieved that you haven't had to experience the unpleasant
response of anxiety.
Under this psychological
approach this encourages us to avoid fearful situations more and more
each time that we have avoided them and get a positive consequence. Whilst I
agree that this happens, and that fears are reinforced by operant
conditioning, it doesn't really apply to me. Either because I am
backwards or just because I break the mould. I don't know.
When I avoid things that
fear me, I feel ashamed and I feel weak. I feel like I have let
myself down and I feel like a coward. I feel like I am letting my
fear, my mental health and my anxiety win in a way. So whilst my
response to these feelings is still a variation of operant
conditioning, I don't get the normal response to avoidance of fears.
I believe this may have something to do with my borderline
personality disorder. The distorted self image, and putting myself
down all of the time.
So I face my fears, I put
myself into situations that I don't particularly want to be in. Even
simple every day things like getting on the bus. I suffer the anxiety
and I feel the pounding heart, sweaty shaking hands and nausea. Why?
Because once I have, I feel so proud of myself, like I have beaten my
demons. It makes me grow as a person, makes me stronger, wiser and
much more able to cope with every day life. It gives me the ability
to hold my head high because I didn't run away when things got tough.
It makes me able to tell myself that I CAN instead of listening to
the people that have told me that I can't.
As mental health sufferers,
we fight every day, fight against ourselves, our conditions, our
fears. We have this internal struggle, this internal battle, through
every decision and every encounter. Although this makes our life much
more difficult, it enables us to face things that other people
wouldn't. There is a reason that people say to you “You're stronger
than you realise” or “I don't know how you cope with that”. The
terrible experiences that have made us this way are what have made us
able to cope with much more than others.
Although you may feel like
you can't cope, or that you are weak and useless, you're not. Your
condition doesn't show how weak you are, it shows that you have had
to be strong for too long. And that means that although you may fall,
you may have days where you don't go out and you do avoid your fears,
your experiences, your condition is what enables you to get back up
when others would stay down. It's what makes you able to keep on
surviving the fight and fighting to survive.