| There are two issues here: 1. The threat of war 2. Anxiety about the threat of war The first relates to the actual facts of the situation, whereas the second relates to your thoughts and feelings about it.
The range of answers in this thread should tell you that different people can have different reactions to the same events. This should give you the idea that your reactions could be changed.
After all "what one man can do, another can do" The key to understanding anxiety is to realise that it involves thought-looping -- ruminating on the same negative ideas in an escalating spiral.
The answer to overcoming anxiety is to find a way to break out of the loop.
The actual thoughts themselves are not as interesting as you think they are. You are caught on your thoughts and feelings. If you have the time, a great way to overcome anxiety is to do a sort of body-scan meditation. Lie on the floor with a book under the back of your head for a little support, knees up or flat to the ground as you prefer.
Pick an area of your body that feels tense, stiff, painful or just uncomfortable. Focus your attention on the area for as long as possible.
The feelings there may start to change. If it starts to feel relaxed, move to the next most tense area. The aim of the exercise is to focus your attention on the internal muscular sensations of your body, rather than your thoughts.
If you aren't used to relaxing, you may find that this increases your anxiety at first, but that is all part of the response.
If you can keep on returning your thoughts to whatever muscular sensations you are aware of, over and over for half an hour,
you will find yourself becoming much more relaxed. Once you are relaxed, you will find that anxiety doesn't really make sense anymore. People don't just respnd anxiously to stressful events out of the blue. I bet this isn't the first time in your life you have found something overwhelming and it has taken over your mind.
Did you feel in control of your life before this started, or were you already on edge? Did you feel like you were succeeding, like all your relationships were going well? These things tend to come in clusters. People who are happy and relaxed are not easily perturbed by events that don't immediately affect them. The threat is real, and I wouldn't like to say what the probabilities of different outcomes are.
I'm worried, but then I know that a part of me just enjoys worrying a bit. I easily get anxious if I let myself, but I have learned to control it with the technique I outlined above. |