Taming anxiety at the office.

This is an excellent article about anxiety and the workplace. It looks at the definition of an anxiety disorder:

Most people experience some anxiety in their lives, but when it disrupts day-to-day functioning, self-image or the ability to concentrate or work effectively, it becomes a disorder, says Linda B. Welsh a clinical psychologist and director of the Anxiety and Agoraphobia Treatment Center in Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

It looks at how to steps you can take to tame anxiety:

One of the most common treatments for anxiety is confronting it, since facing such situations head-on will ultimately reduce your fear and discomfort. Because most anxiety is focused on the future, try to catch yourself having negative thoughts and think about them rationally, says Lauren Rose, a psychotherapist and founder of the Rose Center for Mind and Body in Rye, N.Y.

“Let’s say you have a performance evaluation coming up and you’re getting very anxious about it,” she says. “Think of the worst thing that’s happened in the last year. Was it anything to worry about? Your boss likes you; your sales are good. Keep going back to these facts and show yourself there’s no rational basis for your fear.”

Preparation also helps. If you’re making a presentation, for example, rehearse with a friend or in the mirror. Mr. Willard suggests writing on your notes things like “take a deep breath here” or “pause and feel your feet on the ground beneath you.” These notes act like a reset button, he says, lassoing your mind back to reality and distracting you from negative thoughts.

Perhaps most importantly, it addresses the idea that you can't have all that you desire -- but that you can have a full life despite your anxiety:

If you’ve been anxious in the job for a while and not in the rest of your life, it may mean the job isn’t right for you, Mr. Willard says.

“Don’t leave without talking to human resources or a supervisor first about ways to accommodate your needs — perhaps changing your job description to play more to your strengths than to trigger your anxieties, like less public speaking,” he says.

Or you may decide that you can live with some anxiety. Eventually, “it will expand your comfort zone,” says Ms. Orenstein, “and as adults, if we want to grow we need to be willing to take on new challenges.”

Previous PANIC! posts on anxiety and the workplace:  1   2

The face of fearlessness.

What if you had no amygdala (the brain's tiny almond-shaped fear center)? A recent study tried to find out. The study, described here, looks at a woman referred to as SM who lost her amygdala to a rare childhood brain disease:

Experiments have strongly implicated the amygdala in fear processing. Many of these were conducted on animals with amygdala damage. “But one thing we’ve never known for sure, because they’re animals, is whether they can consciously feel fear,” says study coauthor Justin Feinstein of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “So we said, ‘Let’s take a human patient who has this same sort of damage, and for the first time, actually figure out how they’re feeling.’”

Feinstein and his colleagues sifted through SM’s past, looking for instances when she should have been scared. SM said she never felt fear, even when threatened with a knife or a gun. The researchers gave SM an electronic diary that she carried for three months to record her emotional state. Fear didn’t make an appearance in the list of emotions. On a battery of questionnaires, SM wrote that she wasn’t afraid of public speaking, death, her heart beating too fast or being judged negatively in a social setting.

Next, the researchers did their best to scare SM. They showed her clips from The Blair Witch Project, The Shining and Silence of the Lambs: She was interested, but not afraid. The Waverly Hills Sanatorium Haunted House in Kentucky didn’t faze her. Instead of screaming, she laughed and poked one of the monsters in the head. The team took her to an exotic pet store with poisonous snakes and spiders. SM claimed to dislike the animals, but when she saw them she was overcome with curiosity, repeatedly asking to touch the snakes.

This, then, is fearlessness: A middle-aged woman who giggles in haunted houses and has an obsession with snakes. I.e., an aging goth chick. Weird, right?

Change your diet to change your stress level.

Looking to moderate your anxiety? Consider changing your diet to include more of the following:

1. Water ("In a British food and mood study, over 70 percent of the participants reported that upping their water and produce intakes improved their mood")

2. Green tea ("A Japanese study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, conducted with over 40,000 people, found that levels of psychological stress were 20 percent lower in those who drank at least five cups of green tea per day compared to those who drank less than one cup per day")

3. Seaweed salad ("It's incredibly rich in iodine and one of the few sources of this important mineral")

4. Puffed whole grains ("Carbohydrates boost calming serotonin levels")

5. Fresh beets ("Because of its link with the nervous system, too little folate has been known to trigger mental fatigue, forgetfulness, confusion and insomnia")

6. Portobello mushrooms ("Mushrooms are rich in selenium, which studies have linked a deficiency of to a higher risk of depression, anxiety and fatigue")

Can't hurt -- and you'll probably lose a few pounds, to boot, if you eat a truly healthful diet.

Credit: Photo source.