The pool is a setting (and settings, alone, can act as a trigger, says Pittman) that creates some anxiety for me since, again, during that time of severe depression I remember not being able to contain my tears there, and wishing that I could find a way to drowned myself in the water. The second was hanging out at the pool yesterday. On a subconscious level, I associate the beginning of summer with anxiety, because I tend to relapse in the summer, and during the summer of 20, I experienced the most acute anxiety and depression of my two-year slump. Merely seeing the simple illustration of how this works was helpful for me, because I realized the anxiety I am feeling today is produced by a few triggers I wasn’t even conscious of until I did Pittman’s exercise of identifying triggers that might be producing anxiety for me. Here is the illustration she uses that I think is very useful to seeing how this occurs on an unconscious level. The trigger produces a “learned” fear or anxiety, that we can “unlearn” via replacing with new experiences. The negative event produces an automatic pain or discomfort that we can’t really control. Our brain (or more specifically, the amygdala or “fear center” of our brain) is pairing a trigger with a negative event from the past. Pittman clarifies the process of “association” that occurs when we experience those first symptoms of anxiety: shortened breath, heart palpitations, sweat, dizziness, nausea. Today I wanted to explain her exercise of identifying your triggers, because this is an appropriate first step. #BEYOND BLUE ANXIETY SERIES#Since I’m presently in a major bout of it myself, I thought I’d feature some of her suggestions in a series of posts on “extinguishing anxiety.” #BEYOND BLUE ANXIETY FULL#It’s full of great exercises to reduce anxiety. I grabbed her book and have underlined practically every word of it. But a few days after returning, I experienced the same heart palpitations and knot in my stomach that I recognize as acute anxiety. Catherine Pittman, a psychology professor and the author of a very helpful book (with Elizabeth Karle), “Extinguishing Anxiety: Whole Brian Strategies to Relieve Fear and Stress.” I placed it on the top of my other books to review and compose interview questions. Interestingly enough, when I was in South Bend, Indiana a week ago visiting my alma mater, Saint Mary’s College, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr.
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