Laughing

When you are feeling worried and anxious, you have to look after yourself and behave in a counter-intuitive way. If peeling onions makes you cry, you may have noticed how the very act of crying also makes you feel sad. Similarly, if something makes you laugh, it leaves you feeling happy and positive afterwards. ‘The Laughing Policeman’ used to be a popular amusement arcade attraction in my childhood – it can now be seen on YouTube (although strangely it doesn’t make me laugh now) but there are others that do. Try ‘The Laughing Babies’.

Hearing laughter stimulates the brain region associated with facial movements. A great example of this is when, during the Second World War, they projected Charlie Chaplin films onto the ceiling of makeshift hospitals for the patients and discovered that even shell-shocked soldiers began to laugh.

If you’re feeling miserable and the temptation is to stay indoors and wear your dressing-gown all day, it would be better to have a shower, get dressed in your favourite clothes, go outside, smile and speak to people – it will automatically lift your mood.

Do you have a memory that always makes you laugh when you recall it? Try to remember the last time that you really laughed and recapture that feeling. When you next find yourself shaking or weeping with laughter, take note of the moment so that you can recall it whenever you need cheering up.

Listen to the birds

How long is it since you really listened to birds singing? Recent research by naturalists indicates that listening to birdsong elevates your mood. Peter Brash, an ecologist with the National Trust, says that listening to five minutes of birdsong everyday could be as beneficial to our wellbeing as a 30-minute walk or eating our five fruit or vegetables a day. The researchers played recordings of the dawn chorus to children at Alder Hey Hospital and discovered that it eased needle phobia and tension among the patients.

Are you already resisting this idea? (Notice how often you are resistant to any new idea; positive thinkers would give it a try.) Did you think, ‘That’s all very well, but I don’t wake up in time to hear the dawn chorus; I’m trying to get my seven hours’ or perhaps, ‘I live in the city. I never hear any birds’? Well, let’s think positively: if it’s been suggested that just five minutes listening to birds each day can do you as much good as walking for half an hour, then it’s worth trying. If you go to www.nationaltrust.co.uk and type in ‘birdsong’ you can not only listen to a five-minute recording of birdsong, but you can also learn from the site to distinguish the song of each of the birds (it could be a new hobby).

Why do people worry?

So let’s imagine that you are eating well, getting at least 20 minutes of fresh air and exercise every day, you’ve tried listening to the birds singing in the morning, and you are working your way towards one of your goals. But still you feel anxious and worried. First of all, you need to assure yourself that you are not alone and that it is not unusual to feel like this. Some anxiety in life is inevitable and it can be good for you. A life with nothing to worry about would probably be boring. It is stress overload that damages your health and that you need to learn to deal with.

Surprisingly, it is not worrying about big things like terrorism and war that causes people to become overly anxious. In his book The Confidence To Be Yourself, Dr Brian Roet says, ‘Small personal worries that leave some of us nearly paralysed with anxiety are replaced by this one big threat that puts everything else into perspective . . . other worries won’t have gone away, and as the immediate bigger threat recedes, a multitude of smaller worries fill the gap again.’ It seems as if we have a certain capacity for worry and as one problem disappears it is replaced with something else.

So, if worrying is normal, why does it make some people ill? It is when your internal voice starts incessantly asking the question, ‘What if?’ and you find yourself going over and over possible consequences to the point that you become debilitated and almost incapacitated by anxiety. If this is the case, you may need to visit your doctor who could recommend counselling (or anti-depressants), but for most people just examining their worries in a calm and rational way may stop them reaching this point.

What do people worry about?

The energy supplier npower interviewed 3,000 people in Britain in December 2010 to discover what people worry about. The results showed that most people worry for a total of just under an hour a day. This adds up to two-and-a-half years of your adult life: two-and-a-half years wasted on worrying. ‘Wasted’ years because worrying is simply thinking about what might happen; it is feeling apprehensive about the future. Once the event has happened (or not happened), then we move onto something else and start worrying about that.

The top ten worries according to the survey were:

People also worried about skidding on ice and their boiler breaking down (the survey was during a cold snap). Many worried about other people: aged relatives, their children’s happiness and performance, and their partner leaving them. Other worries included managing to keep the house clean, getting wrinkles, drinking too much, and being late for work. Money worries were the biggest concern: going into the red before payday and the cost of house prices were specifically mentioned.

How many from the list would be among your personal list of worries? Write down a list of ten things that are worrying you now. Put the date at the top. Do you think that it will be the same list in a month’s time? Which worries do you think will still be on your list in a year’s time? Were they on your list a year ago? Try separating your long-term worries from the ones that have occurred only recently. Group all money worries together and all health worries together.

Health and money worries

Long-term worries need dealing with, as they are not going to solve themselves. Sometimes, you just have to admit that you need help; the cost of an accountant or a solicitor might be worth it, if worrying is affecting your health. If your list does include health worries, then make sure that you have taken all practical steps to help yourself be healthy. Don’t put off a visit to the doctor, hoping that things will improve. Ask yourself, What have I already done? Have things improved? What else can I do? Make sure that you are doing everything you can to improve your own health – re-read Chapter 4 for some ideas.

Solving money problems is usually a combination of spending less and earning more. What is certain is that the problems won’t go away, if you just ignore them. Some people try to ignore bills and debts in the vain hope that ‘something will turn up’. This is just wishful thinking – not positive thinking. Have you ever bought a lottery ticket (or bet on something) feeling convinced that this time you were going to be lucky? And were you?

The only way to solve money problems is to do something about them and, if you have a long-term problem, your first step may be to take advice from a debt counsellor. In the UK The National Debtline is free, confidential and independent (www. nationaldebtline.co.uk).

Take a cool look at the rest of your list and decide which worries are worth your time and which ones you cannot alter. You need ‘to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other’ (Reinhold Niebuhr). For example, if your teenager has gone off travelling, and you have done everything you can to help, then worrying isn’t going to make them any safer. Instead, concentrate on the things that you can do something about (such as transferring money to their account or planning a party for their return).

Becoming a positive thinker then does not mean covering your ears and shutting your eyes on what is going on in the world around you. Neither does it mean being selective and only reading the ‘good’ news (although if you feel it is all you can cope with, at times, then you could visit www.guardian.co.uk/goodnews which only has good news).

It may mean, though, that if you want to protect yourself from the constant barrage of bad news then you have to examine the way that the news is presented and consider some strategies to prevent yourself from falling into the trap of negative thinking.

Think for a moment about how you are affected when you hear or read the news. It will rarely be good news and it would be unusual if it left you feeling uplifted and happy. What you have to learn to do is to analyse which items affect you the most and then decide whether it is worth your time worrying about them. If it is then find a positive way to take action.

Remember: when things stay the same or get better that isn’t news. And that’s good news. Bad news (but good for newspaper sales) is what is out of the ordinary, unusual or upsetting.

The Spirit Level

In their book The Spirit Level – Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett produce exhaustive research from the wealthiest countries around the world. They measure the effect of income equality on the quality of life in the people in those countries.

Their data came from reputable scientific bodies such as the World Health Organisation and revealed that the greater the disparity there is between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of the population, the more social problems there are at all levels. In other words, the gap between the richest and poorest in society mirrored the levels of murder, obesity, drug use, mental illness, teenage pregnancy, bullying and anxiety.

They also found that the income gap was a sure indicator of the effectiveness and health of a society: Sweden and Japan were the least socially-divided, whereas the United Kingdom and the United States were the most (with a corresponding level of crime and ill health).

Don’t waste your time worrying about things that are little more than scaremongering. Learn to spot the techniques the media use to manipulate you into thinking that a spate of similar incidents means there is a crisis. One example was the millennium bug, which was supposed to wipe out all our advanced electronic systems and cause chaos on the roads when traffic lights failed. Professor Ross Anderson, of Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, sent out hundreds of press releases suggesting that the problem had been exaggerated, but he says the media ignored these. When it didn’t happen, no one sacked the doom-mongers. They just moved on to the next scare.

If you do find that newspaper scare stories serve only to make you feel more anxious or add to your feelings of negativity, then make a list of any previous stories that you can remember. Health scare stories in the past, for example, have related to tea, lipstick, deodorant, plastic bottles, paint, broccoli, incense, phone masts and bacon. Add more as they occur (and they will) and then keep a note of whether the panic was justified. Look out for words like: ‘potentially’, ‘could’, ‘possibly’, or ‘might.’ They are not specific and tend to lead to exaggeration.

The many improvements to our daily lives in the last 40 years do not make news and are not the topic of discussion in the pub or at the dinner party. There are many things to worry about and lots more progress to be made, particularly for those at the bottom of society. But the actions of a minority – in terms of drinking, violent crime and drug use – are not evidence that society is falling apart. In fact The British Crime Survey (which can be accessed online and is published annually) shows that the overall crime rate is lower now than it has been since 1981.

The Culture of Fear

In his book The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner suggests that we worry about the wrong things because the media misleads us. He believes that many situations are actually made worse by the fear the media creates. For example, he says that the whooping-cough vaccine scare in the 1990s was, in effect, a ‘media-generated panic’. Programmes on television showed severely-disabled children and claimed that this was the result of the vaccine, claims which have since proved to be false.

Daily worries

If you find yourself still worrying over lots of minor problems, then make a resolution to write them down every night before you go to bed. Send yourself an email, if it is easier. There is something about writing things down that clears your mind and enables you to see the problem more clearly.

Put a cross next to anything that you can’t do anything about. For example, you can’t do anything about the weather except to prepare and dress appropriately. Worrying isn’t going to make the snow melt or the sun shine at the wedding. You have to accept that there are some things that you have no control over and that your worrying won’t change. You prepare and do what you can – and then you sit back and do something enjoyable.

The things still remaining on your list must now be more immediate problems that you think you can do something about. For example, you may have had an argument at work that is causing an unpleasant atmosphere, or you may be unhappy at home because you feel that your partner, or children, aren’t doing their fair share of the domestic chores. Again, nothing will happen, the situation will continue like this, unless you decide to do something about it.

Being more assertive could solve many resentments and atmospheres – in other words, saying what you think in a non-confrontational manner. If you are not used to being assertive, then it will take some practice and it is best to start where you feel most comfortable – perhaps discussing with a friend how frustrating you find it when she is always late. Remember the result, when you have been assertive, may not be that the other person will have changed – but that you will feel better for having expressed your point of view instead of smouldering and seething in silence.

‘Stress’

Worry, then, is thinking about unpleasant things that might happen. Stress, however, is a mental tension that causes a physical reaction in your body. When you are stressed adrenaline is released into the bloodstream to speed up your reactions. Blood is then sent from the skin to your muscles to give them extra power and enable them to move quickly. This is the ‘flight or fight’ reaction, which was useful to your ancestors, but leaves you feeling irritable and unable to sleep if there is no physical release.

The main cause of stress is the feeling that you are not in control of your life. If you feel stressed even for a short time, it will affect your immune system and you may find yourself getting repeated colds, stomach problems, headaches, and muscle pains. Everyone feels stress at various times in their lives; it can be exhilarating and useful in dangerous or tense situations. Some people find they work better under stressful situations and that it makes them more creative and productive.

Too much stress for too long, however, is harmful to your body. Chronic stress is when you have been suffering for months or even years and your body is working overtime to cope. Quite often, people do not realise that they are suffering as they have become used to the feeling and it is not until they become ill that they begin to re-evaluate their lives.

Katy is the public relations manager of a large publishing company. She has received rapid promotion since joining the firm straight from university and is known for being punctual and always meeting her deadlines. She shares a flat with a friend, but is in a long-term relationship with her university boyfriend. She has elderly parents who are beginning to demand more of her time. She is on a permanent diet and goes for a run every morning before work. She also tries to get to the gym most evenings and at the weekend.

Katy has recently begun to have trouble falling asleep and she often wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about work, or her relationship, or her parents. She feels wound up and restless and has developed a tendency to get angry with her flatmate and jealous with her boyfriend. She has started to make mistakes at work, but becomes emotional and anxious when asked if everything is all right. She speaks quickly and is constantly tapping her fingers and jiggling her legs when she sits down. She often has a stiff neck and has developed backache, which she can’t understand, because she feels as though she is exercising and eating correctly.

Do you recognise Katy’s symptoms? She is frantically trying to fit everything into her life. Her instant reaction to her problems is to blame her flatmate or her boyfriend. She is behaving in an irrational way that is caused by stress but leads to anger. She is a perfectionist and has the words ‘must’ and ‘should’ running through her mind all the time. Her exercise routine has ceased to be healthy and become an obsession. She is on a perpetual diet and probably eats too few calories to sustain her energetic lifestyle and to enable her to sleep well. Her body is in a constant state of high alert, because of her stressful levels of anxiety.

What can she do?

Katy will probably keep on for some time trying to do everything until something forces her to stop. She will probably be off sick with exhaustion or, if she is lucky, someone will persuade her to take a holiday. When people work at this level of stress, they often fall ill as soon as they take a break.

There is an irony in trying to look after your body by spending time exercising and dieting but failing to look after your mental health. Chronic stress is the result of trying to do everything and being unable to prioritise and relax. To look after herself, Katie must first be prepared to admit her problems at work and then to ask for help from her family and friends. She has to learn how to relax and to include some fun in her life. Her exercise regime and strict diet also need to be moderated.

Learning to relax

In Chapter 5, we saw how just slumping in a chair and watching television does not necessarily stop your mind from worrying and thinking negative thoughts. It is not beneficial if you are still thinking about work or if you need to drink alcohol to block out troublesome thoughts and worries. Katy would probably say she had neither the time nor the inclination to take up an absorbing hobby, but she might be persuaded to spend some time with friends laughing and having a good time. This would have to be on a regular basis to have any lasting effect.

If Katy was a friend of yours, you would probably suggest that she uses some of the ideas in this book to help her to manage her anxieties and stress. You might suggest that she pampers herself with long hot baths, soft music, and scented candles. There are also other techniques for relaxing that might work for Katy – but she would have to cut back on her workload and commitments as well. There is no point going for a massage for the stiff neck and backache if she just goes back to work and carries on as before.

Meditation

One way that Katy could help herself would be to practise meditation. Meditating every day, even just for 15 minutes in the morning, has a calming and peaceful effect. Meditation techniques are divided into two types: one where you concentrate on something outside yourself like the flame of a candle or a mantra; the other has a broader ‘non-concentrative’ focus, like the sounds in your environment or your own breathing. The idea is to bypass the constant stream of chattering thoughts and to quieten your mind.

You can use a simple breathing meditation, like the one suggested in Chapter 4 to help calm the mind when trying to get to sleep. The only difference is that you are not trying to get to sleep, so it is better if you sit somewhere with your back straight. This can be the traditional cross-legged position or you can sit on a chair with a straight back, if you prefer. It must be quiet with no distractions.

Now close your eyes and concentrate on breathing through your nose. Breathe normally, but concentrate on the breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils. At first, it will seem as if your mind is totally crowded with thoughts. The trick is not to let your mind wander off and follow the thoughts, but to remain totally focused on breathing in and out. Practise this first of all when you are feeling calm and you will discover that it is possible to let your thoughts die away until you have nothing on your mind except your own breath.

With practice, you will discover a sense of inner calm and serenity that stays with you throughout the day. When you are relaxed and peaceful, stay in this state for a while as it allows your mind to rest and everything will feel clear and quiet. Afterwards, you will feel refreshed and by doing this on a daily basis you will feel better able to cope with life’s problems and tensions. You may feel better disposed towards other people and your anger and irritations will diminish.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness, like other meditative practices, involves focusing on the here and now. Instead of worrying about the future and going over what has happened in the past, the idea is to appreciate the present. It is different from meditation, as there is no attempt to slip into an altered state of consciousness. Instead, it involves savouring what you are doing in the present moment. So, instead of eating your breakfast while checking your emails or thinking about work as you walk to the bus, you focus on what is going on at that very moment. Savour the taste of the breakfast; feel the freshness of the air; and listen to those birds!

Being mindless is the negative trait we observed at the beginning of the chapter: it is walking in the countryside so obsessed with your own worries and frustrations that you fail to appreciate anything around you; it is visiting a new city but spending all your time planning where you are going to go next; it is lying on the beach going over what you wish you had said. It is life passing you by without you realising it. As John Lennon famously sang, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’

Practising mindfulness calms you down and makes you respond thoughtfully, rather than automatically, to what is going on. It makes you feel more connected to other people, so that you are more aware of your reactions to them. When you feel serene in this way, you are less likely to be aggressive and more likely to feel empathic towards others. When you start practising mind-fulness, you will have increased self-control, as you won’t be mindlessly eating a biscuit, or driving on autopilot, or re-reading the same page because your mind has wandered to some irritation earlier in the day.

Mindfulness is seeing the world with fresh eyes, no matter how many times you have travelled the route, or seen the view, or looked at a face. It is the habit of observing things anew and the more you notice, the more enjoyable it becomes. You can become mindful right now. Just tap into your senses and be aware of what is going on around you. It is not a goal that you need to achieve; it is simply a matter of paying attention to what you are experiencing at the moment.

You can begin by pausing at various times in the day and registering how you are feeling and what you are experiencing. For example, right now are you comfortable? Warm? Engrossed? Be aware of and appreciate your mood. Do this frequently over the next few days: when you are in the cinema, shopping, waiting in a queue, or sitting opposite a friend in a coffee bar. Just pause and savour the moment. Get into the habit of noticing, with new eyes, what you have previously taken for granted. Too often we look back and say, ‘I was happy then – but I didn’t realise it at the time.’ We look at photographs and smile wistfully at how we used to be. Make sure that you enjoy and appreciate your life now – not in retrospect.

Acceptance

Another tendency that negative thinkers have is either to go over and over unpleasant things that have happened, or to avoid thinking about painful things, so that they fester in the mind and never go away. If you are thinking negatively, then you believe that you are uniquely unfortunate – that no one else has suffered such unhappiness, or unfairness, or injustice. When someone dies, or a relationship breaks up, or you are the victim of a crime, or you lose your job, you can be overwhelmed by the feelings of sadness or even anger. By fighting the feeling or trying to make it go away – perhaps with pills or alcohol – you are prolonging the feeling of wretchedness. It is as if, by going over what has happened, you think you can somehow change the ending.

It is these thoughts that make you feel hopeless and as if there is no future. When tragedies happen, you have to allow yourself time to grieve before you can accept what has happened. It is no good trying to be positive – something dreadful has happened and it would trivialise it to not admit this. There are five recognised stages of grief that people go through when there is personal loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. These stages can happen to you when any tragedy occurs – from an unexpected death, to a physical attack, or some bad health news. The stages don’t necessarily all happen or last for a certain length of time, but it can be useful to recognise and understand what you are suffering.

In his memoir Half a Life, Darin Strauss tells of how, as an 18-year-old, he killed a 16-year-old schoolgirl who turned her bike directly into the path of his car. Although he was cleared of any responsibility for the crash, he contemplated suicide and has ‘survivor’s guilt’ about the death. In the book he says, ‘Regret doesn’t budge things; it seems crazy that the force of all that human want can’t amend a moment, can’t even stir a pebble.’ (Half a Life, Darin Strauss, Beautiful Books, 2011.)

When something dreadful like this happens, it can change your view of the world: you no longer feel secure, you feel as if your world has tilted on its axis. It makes you re-examine your beliefs and values and, sometimes, who you are. All the sadness, pain and anger that you feel is normal: there is no way to escape change, disaster and disappointment in life. It is all part of being human. There is no prescription for grief; you have to nurture yourself and allow yourself time to grieve and deal with the disappointment of your loss – not only the actual loss, but also perhaps the loss of some of your dreams and plans for the future.

The solution is not to try to cling on or to ignore, but to tell yourself that what you are feeling is normal and natural. It doesn’t mean that you like it – the feeling is there whether you like it or not. It means accepting that the situation is beyond your control: there is nothing you can do about it; there’s no point in asking, ‘Why me?’ It has happened and no amount of worrying and stress is going to change anything. It means giving up your dreams of how you thought things were going to turn out and acknowledging that everything has changed. Only when you have fully accepted the reality of what has happened, can you see a future and begin to have new plans and dreams.

Acceptance can be a difficult state to achieve, but the practice of meditation and mindfulness will help. Accepting that what has happened is past enables you to live in the present and, consequently, to stop worrying about the future. You realise that what is going on in your mind are just thoughts – and you don’t have to let them take over your life. Remember the good that you still have in your life. Count your blessings. Know that things have changed, but that life will go on. Acceptance means the realisation that nothing is ever going to be as it was before, or as you hoped. It is recognising that things are as they are right now.

• Make sure that your body language is positive – it affects your thinking
• Have a store of funny memories that you can recall when you are feeling down
• Laugh more often
• Sort out your trivial worries from the real ones
• Be aware of your stress levels and do something about them
• Be prepared to try something different: meditation, mindfulness
• Learn to accept what you cannot change