Inability to make these decisions correctly, reduces one’s survival rate immensely. These are primary decisions required to be made every single moment of life. This is the basis of the notion of common sense. If this basic decision cannot be made, as it often cannot in anxiety, then all becomes hazardous and confused. Life itself becomes an amorphous frightening mess.
Without a keen ability to discern what should be feared from what should not, the ability to see reality in life becomes blurred. Reality becomes a function of positive and negative projection of fantasy. Judgement is impaired. With impaired judgement comes impaired problem-solving ability. With poor problem-solving ability comes loss of confidence. With loss of confidence comes loss of self-esteem. And with loss of self-esteem comes social withdrawal isolation and even greater anxiety.
The impairment of reality, judgement, problem -solving ability together with loss of confidence and self-esteem leads to intrinsic social disability. Awareness is further diminished. Normally learned behaviours becomes difficult firstly to understand and then difficult to imitate. Much of what we consider normal in social behaviour is predicated upon awareness of what we accept as reality. This we learn from observation of other people and awareness of their thoughts and feelings. When everything becomes subject to questioning and doubt normal reactions do not follow. One example of this is the dyslexia so often found in anxious children. The coordination between learning and performance simply does not follow.
The fact that anxiety makes appropriate and realistic perception difficult results in the inability to make reasonable consensus-based (what most people would think, feel or do in that situation) decisions. Literally you have problems seeing what is in front of your eyes because your every perception is clouded with confusing conflicting thought.
There are two aspects of reality and this needs to be carefully considered in any attempt to establish reality. One is individually based reality which is reality as you see it. The second is social reality which is consensus-based realty. As a rule of thumb reality should be based on an assessment of the situation from both individual and consensus viewpoints and then coming to some intermediate and balanced conclusion. This is commonly what is known as common sense and ironically enough is quite uncommon. Consensus is not always correct but one ignores it at one’s peril. If you do not see correctly what is before you then your decisions may not be correct or useful. If the world sees a lion and you see a dog if the world is right and you are wrong the consequences may not be entirely to your liking. If people consistently let you know that they do not understand your decisions or behaviour it may be prudent to stop and listen.
Anxiety leads to an inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. The reality of events is overlooked in deference to the over-valued idea that nothing has solid concrete reality. This of course relates to the difficulty in seeing things as they are. Sometimes there is a quixotic nature to the anxious mind not all that far away from superstition. Sometimes things have to be embellished in fantasy before being accepted as valid or real. In this situation the sufferer is unable to judge the genuine value of things. Everything being unable to be predictably valued means that most things are perceived as being equal or value-less. Given that in this situation nothing can be seen as having real value everything is simply taken for granted. Often people living with anxiety live in a world without any true emotion. The lack of authentic emotion gives them a feeling of emptiness and unreality but is the only option they believe will allow them to survive.
A fear of reality
The only way that one can begin to understand anxiety is to understand and accept that it is not logical or rational. Anxiety is simply about fear. The anxious fear everything you may think of as real. One of the biggest fears of the anxious is the fear of emotion. One consequence of this is that the fear becomes of anxiety itself. There is often abject terror of reality leading the anxious to live in a circumscribed universe a universe of ideas possibilities and fantasies all their own Their idea of the world is their reality not the world as it actually is. This explains why they have difficulties with the idea of a truth which to them is a dangerous and potentially very damaging construct especially as they have little ability to ascertain authentically what truth actually means.
Without a keen ability to discern what should be feared from what should not, the ability to see reality in life becomes blurred. Reality becomes a function of positive and negative projection of fantasy. Judgement is impaired. With impaired judgement comes impaired problem-solving ability. With poor problem-solving ability comes loss of confidence. With loss of confidence comes loss of self-esteem. And with loss of self-esteem comes social withdrawal isolation and even greater anxiety.
The impairment of reality, judgement, problem -solving ability together with loss of confidence and self-esteem leads to intrinsic social disability. Awareness is further diminished. Normally learned behaviours becomes difficult firstly to understand and then difficult to imitate. Much of what we consider normal in social behaviour is predicated upon awareness of what we accept as reality. This we learn from observation of other people and awareness of their thoughts and feelings. When everything becomes subject to questioning and doubt normal reactions do not follow. One example of this is the dyslexia so often found in anxious children. The coordination between learning and performance simply does not follow.
The fact that anxiety makes appropriate and realistic perception difficult results in the inability to make reasonable consensus-based (what most people would think, feel or do in that situation) decisions. Literally you have problems seeing what is in front of your eyes because your every perception is clouded with confusing conflicting thought.
There are two aspects of reality and this needs to be carefully considered in any attempt to establish reality. One is individually based reality which is reality as you see it. The second is social reality which is consensus-based realty. As a rule of thumb reality should be based on an assessment of the situation from both individual and consensus viewpoints and then coming to some intermediate and balanced conclusion. This is commonly what is known as common sense and ironically enough is quite uncommon. Consensus is not always correct but one ignores it at one’s peril. If you do not see correctly what is before you then your decisions may not be correct or useful. If the world sees a lion and you see a dog if the world is right and you are wrong the consequences may not be entirely to your liking. If people consistently let you know that they do not understand your decisions or behaviour it may be prudent to stop and listen.
Anxiety leads to an inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. The reality of events is overlooked in deference to the over-valued idea that nothing has solid concrete reality. This of course relates to the difficulty in seeing things as they are. Sometimes there is a quixotic nature to the anxious mind not all that far away from superstition. Sometimes things have to be embellished in fantasy before being accepted as valid or real. In this situation the sufferer is unable to judge the genuine value of things. Everything being unable to be predictably valued means that most things are perceived as being equal or value-less. Given that in this situation nothing can be seen as having real value everything is simply taken for granted. Often people living with anxiety live in a world without any true emotion. The lack of authentic emotion gives them a feeling of emptiness and unreality but is the only option they believe will allow them to survive.
A fear of reality
The only way that one can begin to understand anxiety is to understand and accept that it is not logical or rational. Anxiety is simply about fear. The anxious fear everything you may think of as real. One of the biggest fears of the anxious is the fear of emotion. One consequence of this is that the fear becomes of anxiety itself. There is often abject terror of reality leading the anxious to live in a circumscribed universe a universe of ideas possibilities and fantasies all their own Their idea of the world is their reality not the world as it actually is. This explains why they have difficulties with the idea of a truth which to them is a dangerous and potentially very damaging construct especially as they have little ability to ascertain authentically what truth actually means.