Driven yourself nuts lately? What drives me the most nuts is when something happens that bugs me. I feel sad, scared, or worse, angry. Then, I judge myself: That was stupid. It is not as good as I wanted. It's my fault. No it is theirs.

When you have anxiety, having control can be very important to you. You either feel like you have it or you don't. And when you don't, it feels very scary so you do whatever you have to do to get it back.  Avoid, scream, clean, freeze, isolate, carry out a pattern, research, or control someone else, for example. Feeling Loss of Control Provokes Anxiety

Both of my kids get nervous. Yet all too often, they don't use nervous-describing words to state that they are nervous. Instead, they say, "I don't want to." And when asked why, they say, "I just don't want to."  No reason. Or else they say "I can't." And then, deparately try to convince me that they can't. When they say, "I don't want to" do a chore, I get that there is a reason. I can agree. I don't like doing chores either. But when they say, "I just don't want to" go to a party when I know they always enjoy themselves at parties, this "I don't want to" is a telltale sign that they are nervous.

Do you want a quick way to take anxiety down a notch? Would you like to undermine the power anxiety has over you by sweeping its feet out from under it? When I feel it intensely, I certainly would! You can take anxiety down a notch before it undermines you!

In this crazy world of ours, there is rarely a break from news stories of tragedy. How can we watch the horrid news reports, complete with video of the terror and, as a human, not be affected? And more importantly, given that we feel deeply and intensely, how can we keep calm in the face of these tragedies? There are tragedies happening all over the world all the time. Most of them we don't hear about or do hear about and don't think of too much. Bombings like the ones in Boston are common place in many parts of the world. When we know about it, our hearts go out to the people involved. When it is closer to us, either geographically or we have some connection to the people involved or the place involved, we may feel the sadness deeper.

What do hospital anxiety, surgery fear and fear of medicine have in common? They are all extremely common things that people get anxious about. In fact, some people become so anxious, these normal fears turn into phobias. Nosocomephobia is the name of the phobia relating to the fear of hospitals. Tomophobia is a fear of surgery or surgical operations. Pharmacophobia is a fear of medicine. Millions of people have hospital anxiety, fear of surgery, and are afraid to take medicine. Even if the medication is for anxiety, some people claim they are too anxious to take it! (I, too, felt this way when I was anxious.) But what causes these fears and what can you do about them?

Last week, I was interviewed on the news. This is beyond anything I usually do. As a counselor, I usually sit in a room with one or two people. Listening is much more important than talking in that context, so I am not very experienced at sounding poised. I don't think ideas come out of my mouth as smoothly as someone who teaches or speaks regularly. So this was daunting. I just pictured myself "um"ing and "uh"ing, forgetting what I am saying. I was scared. This was way out of my comfort zone. So why didn't I just avoid it?

Sometimes people can feel lonely in a crowded room and others can feel totally comfortable home alone all day. Being alone is not inherently an issue. Many ancient sages or meditation masters can be alone and content. But this might be after they have gone beyond individual ego, and no longer feel separation from Oneness of the universe. But for most of us humans, biologically and emotionally, we are social beings. We live in a communities because we need to. We can't do everything alone. We need help. Collaboration is our biggest survival skill. Our species would die off without it. It's natural to feel loneliness when you feel apart from your community (Loneliness and What To Do About Loneliness).

Getting from anxiety to adventure is not a very far leap, even though it may seem to be. Looking at things from different angles give us different meanings of the same event. The meanings we give these events make all of the difference in how we feel and think about ourselves and the world.

The very first assistant I hired never made a mistake on my schedule, and my clients loved her because she was so kind with them on the phone. She had great ideas and an ability to find the answer to a problem no matter how long it took. The problem was that it took forever. Everything took forever. Nothing was ever done because she did it over and over to get it just right.  At the same time, she had trouble showing up. Yes, I mean she often didn't come to work. If she couldn't come on time and perfectly ready to work, she didn't come. And anything and everything was an excuse. Her perfectionism made her unable to function. Let go of perfectionism: it is grossly inefficient and could get you fired.