Why Am I Naked? What Play Is This? What a Dream! Anxiety Starts on a Ball Field, Before a Solo, or Exam. Let's Analyze.

As a teenager, I was cast in the role of "Peter" in the play the Diary of Anne Frank at a Community Theater. It gave bad dreams and fits. Getting ready for a theatrical performance, four nights a week for several weeks, is a continual challenge for the mind.

Preparing for Athletics, Musical Challenges, Special Academic Exams, Oral Presentations, Acrobatics, Gymnastics, a Championship of any kind------ can give you Anxiety.

"Going Up", Stumbling, Making a Goof - Mistakes Make Madness

You have to stop worrying about "going up" - forgetting your lines. You rehearse endlessly. When you rehearse, your mind often goes blank. You laugh with your fellow actor, you giggle, you get red and embarrassed, you close your eyes and start saying: "What if this happens to me in front of hundreds of people in a live performance?"

"Don't get anxious about being nervous."

Some don't worry like others. But ALL actors worry about "going up". Its like a carpenter saying he never thinks about crushing his thumb with his hammer. My mother would constantly counsel me that nerves are good because they have a way of electrifying your performance.

Getting ready for anything that requires lots of preparation can put you in an anxious state. Throw in stress, poor diet, bad habits, sleeplessness and neurotransmitters that are depleted or overtaxed and you can have a continuing state of anxiety and fear.

Deepak Chopra has an excellent line, and he is so quotable: "We do not fear what is going to happen to us, we fear what has already happened to us."

The way we work is that time tends to dissipate the smell of victory and it tends to log and remember those things that could hurt us. This mechanism kept us alive in our evolutionary past, and it tends to make us keep on performing at the top of our game.

You can see why it works like this, but it behooves us to get CONSCIOUS about the way our heads work. If you are a high achiever and strongly energetic and desperately want to do well, you will probably give yourself a "rough time" about worrying about, becoming anxious, and over-preparing for a CHALLENGE.

"OK Chris, you're naked, so what are you going to do?" -

Think of your marvelous brain as having its own sense of humor. It is as if, the brain is saying, "OK, let's take your fear as far as it will go --- so now are you going to die?" These kinds of dreams are as worthy of laughter as much as tears. Most of our fears and anxieties probably need to have the use of our dream language and dream symbolism as an aid to our own private therapy.

It is a long surveyed and studied subject: Most of our fears and anxieties never come true, and most of all, not in the way or to the degree we envision them. Does that make you feel better? It should, but for the chronically anxious, it somehow does not.

"I get anxious in the presence of wall-to-wall carpeting." -

A friend of mine once said the above in jest, laughing at what he called his chronic nervousness. I told him that he should try a look at his diet and perhaps take an orthomolecular approach. I learned that GABA, an amino acid had a very strong calming effect.

"You mean starting the day with 4 coffees might hurt me in the long run?" He had a great sense of humor, but he was disguising what he was actually deeply concerned about.

A good book about Serotonin, and how to encourage its presence in your body would be a great idea for those who feel disquieted and depressed on a chronic basis.

Mania Demographics

Patty Duke's books and multiple Hollywood biographies will attest to the "bi-polar" way many people in that world live their lives.

Since we are talking about anxious dreams and chronic worry and bouts with exhaustion and depression, it might behoove us to realize that LIFESTYLE has much to do with our problems.

Peak performance and nervous preparation for the days challenges are in many careers and jobs. Look at it from your own personal perspective and your life's particular challenges. Get your anxiety and fear in a frame work.

Sure you can have wild recurring dreams, and sure bouts of anxiety can plague us. But the modern challenge is to organize our lives in conscious ways that address DIET, SLEEP, EXERCISE, ALONE TIME, FRIEND AND LOVE TIME, FAMILY TIME and MEDITATIVE REST TIME.

Adrenal Insufficiency - A Term to Think About -

Adrenal Insufficiency is a medical term that probably applies very narrowly to a few people. In the minds of the medical community this is a rare problem. In the eyes of the orthomolecular, holistic community, this is a phrase that broadly embraces the idea that our lifestyles are wearing out our adrenal glands.

Those who are constantly dieting or starving themselves, then consuming copious amounts of alcohol and missing sleep and having poor quality sleep, then have incredibly demanding work lives can end up with systems that are out of balance.

Anxiety and Fear are normal manifestations of a life as a human. Being enslaved by unrelenting anxious moods and fearful obsessions is another matter. We all need balancing, and maybe that's the overall point.

One Warning - Cortisol

Because we are a hardy species, our evolutionary past has provided a response that used to get us from one watering hole to the next -- from one piece of hunted game to the next. Cortisol squirts into your system when you skip meals and thus, put yourself in a stressful state. Cortisol gives you a high. It kills your appetite and begins digesting amino acids and carbohydrates and fats in your system so you don't get hungry. This ironically is what encourages "psychological anorectics" to continue their behavior. If you are not an anorectic, it still holds true that cortisol will make you feel very good while you skip meals.

It works. It feels good to skip meals, but in the end. In the long run, it hurts you systemically in many manifold ways. In its modern manifestation, we are not starving at all, but we bring starvation upon ourselves. So what was originally a wonderful positive manifestation of our bodies accommodation of the stress of survival is now essentially a destructive process that used over the long term just hurts us.

This daily kind of stress, a basic kind of stress on your body can lead to chronic metabolic, neurological and behavioral manifestations that have to do with blood sugar, insulin resistance, neurotransmitters and nutrition and malnutrition. Consider all these things as you go through the Care that you go through each day.