Book Title: DECONSTRUCTING ANXIETY The Journey from Fear to Fulfillment by Todd E. Pressman, PhD

Category: Adult Non-Fiction (18+) (336 pages)

Genre: Self-Help/How To

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Release date: January 2020

Synopsis

In Deconstructing Anxiety, Pressman provides a new and comprehensive understanding of fear’s subtlest mechanisms. In this model, anxiety is understood as the wellspring at the source of all problems. Tapping into this source therefore holds the clues not only for how to escape fear, but how to release the very causes of suffering, paving the way to a profound sense of peace and satisfaction in life.

With strategically developed exercises, this book offers a unique, integrative approach to healing and growth, based on an understanding of how the psyche organizes itself around anxiety. It provides insights into the architecture of anxiety, introducing the dynamics of the “core fear” (one’s fundamental interpretation of danger in the world) and “chief defense” (the primary strategy for protecting oneself from threat). The anxious personality is then built upon this foundation, creating a “three dimensional, multi-sensory hologram” within which one can feel trapped and helpless.

Replete with processes that bring the theoretical background into technicolor, Deconstructing Anxiety provides a clear roadmap to resolving this human dilemma, paving the way to an ultimate and transcendent freedom. Therapists and laypeople alike will find this book essential in helping design a life of meaning, purpose and enduring fulfillment.

Guest Post

LETTING GO OF JUDGMENT AS A CURE FOR ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

by

Todd E. Pressman, Ph.D.

Any good path for healing and for growth teaches about the importance of letting go of judgment.  A course in miracles, one of my favorite teachings, puts it this way: “You are not really capable of being tired but you are very capable of wearying yourself.  The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable and exhausting”.  Our judgments not only cause us to become exhausted, but they are responsible for creating our entire idea that we live in an attacking world. When we judge, we become locked into that world, believing there is no escape.  In this way, judgment causes our anxiety and depression.

How exactly does judgment do this?  Classical psychology would say that we “project” our negative feelings about ourselves–guilt, shame, greed, jealousy and so fort–onto the world when we judge.  We do this in the attempt to absolve ourselves of these feelings and our responsibility for them.  The result: victimization and helplessness, anxiety and depression.  For once we project these feelings onto the world, believing they are someone else’s fault and not our responsibility, we give up our only chance for making real change in our lives.  When we recognize that we are responsible for these things, we can withdraw the projection and discover that the “attacking” world is actually a blank canvas upon which we can project whatever we like.  Therein lies the opportunity to project more positive experiences and live in the world of our choosing.

This is where forgiveness, the antidote to judgment, comes in.  Forgiveness, properly understood, is not about “letting someone slide” for the terrible thing they have done.  In fact, this attitude only strengthens the belief that they have indeed done something terrible and they are the case of the problem.  True forgiveness, instead, is the understanding that we made up the whole idea of what we thought someone else did to us.  Again, A course in miracles puts it this way: “Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother [or sister] did to you has not occurred”.  Of course, they may have performed the action we observed, but our judgment of it is solely ours.  We have no access to their mind, no way of  knowing “for sure” that they intended to slight us or pull one over on us or in some other way cause us harm.  Our judgment of their actions is purely a creation of our own thoughts and feelings, based on our unique set of  learned assumptions.  What a revelation!  With this, the responsibility, happily, is thrown right back upon us—happily, because now all the power is in our hands.  We can correct our mistaken idea, and see that our brother, sister, friend, parent or boss has no power over us.  We don’t know what they reallymeant by their actions.  And so they have not actually done anything to us; they were simply playing out some learned assumptions from their past about how best to deal with life.  They have not done anything that requires us to be anxious or depressed and to try to defend ourselves in an unfruitful way.  We simply projected our own ideas of attack upon them so we could blame someone or something “out there”.

“But I know them!  They really did mean to hurt me”.  The power of our conviction in such a statement is a testament to how thoroughly we don’t want to look at ourselves.  It’s really no concern of ours whether the other person meant to cause us harm or the situation truly does threaten to take away what we hold near and dear.  The only thing that matters is how holding these judgments hurt us.  They cause our anxiety and depression.  The key to freedom from anxiety and depression is to look only at how we have created these judgments and to let them go!

When our objection to these ideas is strong and we simply cannot let go of our certainty about “how things are out there”, we need to understand that our attachment to our judgments comes from the hope that we will get the other person or reality to change according to our wishes.  Isn’t that the hidden thought behind all judgments?  “So and so should behave differently or such and such should look differently to make me happy!”.  We want all things to comply with our wishes, our idea of how the world should be.  This is our most coveted strategy for how to be happy, and we invest all of ourselves into it over and over again.  But the world and people will never comply fully with our wishes…especially because everyone else is trying to impose their wishes on us at the same time!  The key to healing and growth, the release from anxiety and depression, is to “let go”–let go of our judgments about how things should be and accept things as they are.  Then we are free to flow with whatever comes along, peacefully, gracefully, finding our good in what is available to us, rather than insisting things change before we can be happy.

We will never become happy by trying to arrange the puzzle pieces of the world to our liking.  This is the great source of suffering in the world.  Let us instead recognize that it is up to us to take back this projection and correct the idea that we must judge and attack others in order to be happy.  Let us instead turn our eyes inward and discover that, in fact, we are already whole and complete and have access to everything we need for our fulfillment.  Only when we project our need for others to fulfill our wishes, judging them if they do not do so (in the hope that they will feel guilty and begin to comply), can we believe otherwise.

A subtlety comes up here.  We must not judge ourselves as guilty for judging others.  This is a projection of the same kind, making ourselves the enemy and thereby making correction perhaps twice as hard to see.  It is imperative that we include ourselves in the forgiveness process, seeing that we are, indeed, whole and complete.  Often, it is necessary to start with forgiving ourselves before we can do so with others.  In the end, however, the two are the same, and as we let go of our judgments about others we spontaneously recognize that we who have forgiven must be free from guilt in order to recognize guiltlessness in the other.

A patient of mine once attended a weekend retreat I was holding.  During this retreat, she visited a painful aspect of her life—her 21 year old son, who had been suffering with Bipolar Disorder, would often threaten to kill himself.  My patients’ great anxiety was that she would return home from work one day and find him dead.

Certainly, her anxiety was understandable.  And yet in the course of our work together, it became clear that she was subtly imposing a demand on her son by dreading his taking his life.  Rather than offering him the love he so desperately needed, he was receiving from her the implicit demand that he put away his own pain so as not to scare her.  With this recognition, my patient was able to courageously empathize with her son’s pain, and even to accept that if he wanted to take his life, there was nothing she could do to stop him.  She could, however, offer him her love.

This brought an extraordinary relief to my patient, who promptly went home from the weekend and began relating to her son in a new way.  His transformation as a result was remarkable and he has since found a place to live, gotten a steady job and moved up to the position of manager.  Both mother and son enjoy a new way of communicating in which they are able to give and receive each others’ love, free from the anxiety which had them trying to get that love by projecting their unrecognized need.

About the Author

TODD E. PRESSMAN, Ph.D., is a psychologist dedicated to helping people design lives of fulfillment. He is the founder and director of Logos Wellness Center and Pressman and Associates Life Counseling Center. An international speaker and seminar leader, he has presented at the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, and numerous professional conferences, including the prestigious Council Grove Conference, sponsored by the Menninger Foundation. He has written dozens of articles, educational programs, and two highly acclaimed books, Radical Joy: Awakening Your Potential for True Fulfillment and The Bicycle Repair Shop: A True Story of Recovery from Multiple Personality Disorder. He earned his doctorate in psychology from the Saybrook Institute and an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, has studied under renowned leaders in the Consciousness movement and Gestalt therapy, and has traveled around the world to study the great Wisdom traditions, from Zen Buddhism to fire-walking ceremonies, providing a cross-cultural perspective of the extraordinary capacities of the mind and spirit. He makes his home in Philadelphia.

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