Do you Often Struggle with Anxiety responses life Social anxiety or performance anxiety?
or Do you get a jittery feeling when faced with challenges?
Then this post can help you figure out your natural responses and stressor better.
Ego
Ego is your friend. Your ego is responsible for your personal identity. In particular, your personal identity and how it perceives and relates to its environment you are in. Your ego is responsible for creating a self-image i.e. your sense of awareness of self and self-esteem. It's a place you hold of yourself in relation to your place in your society.
Our Ego doesn't like to be challenged, it's a tool for preservation in an ever changing world. However, It can become rigid and ends up standing between us and our growth as a person.There are ways to negotiate with the ego. According to Albert Ellis, the Author of the book - The Myth of Self-Esteem, He discusses how we can take different psychological positions and use Self-acceptance and Self-Evaluation to transcend our Ego.
Self- Evaluation deal with rating your skills and abilities while self-acceptance deals with understanding your being as a whole outside of your accomplishments taking a more spiritual take to the matter. `You are worthwhile, simply because you exist".
Self-esteem
Quintessentially, Self-Esteem is who you are and not what you do. It pays less heed to the skills you develop in order to perform a certain act. This could be in a profession or a life skill such as A public speaker or cooking respectively.
These skills that you develop are fleeting and focussed at the task at hand, once there is no need to perform the task the skill itself becomes obsolete. Hence, basing your entire identity on a skill that is time based makes barely any sense.
Its focus relies more on your existence and how you can contribute to the world by simply being.
Your ego throughout your life interacts with other parts of your psyche, here are a few mention worthy ways it influences your anxiety in social and performance based situations:
Values
The rules or the values that we live by have a profound impact on the quality of our lives, having values that are misaligned are not healthy. How we value ourselves in the frame of service and how we show up in our living space and perform the task can determine how we go through life.
For instance: When we have high anxiety on the day of the test even though we prepared well throughout the term Or it could also be performance anxiety in sports, where you do really well in training but experience panic symptoms on game day.
Its a good gauge to understand how and when you feel performance anxiety. Do you worry about how you treat others? Do you think your value as a person is determined by others? Or is your worth determined by your ability to practice compassion for yourself and everyone around you?
Challenges
How do you face challenges? or Do you like challenges or dread them? When it comes to challenges, most research studies focus on select personalities, who are seen as ruthless when it comes to challenges. People often enjoy how good they are and thrive in competition.
However, I have worked with many people who agree with this type of personality, and they experienced an inner crisis when encountered with a problem that prevented them from doing what they were good at.
In such instances, these people struggled with anxiety and had become accustomed to using their success as a distraction and an unhealthy source of self-esteem. It's not surprising, then, that they went through a crisis of their own when their ability to function in a previous role was compromised.
Then there are people who never experience any measure of success because of fear.
The idea of being under the lens and looked down upon is enough to frighten them in situations where they have to perform under pressure. So much so that they no longer can perform at par with their skill.
Courage
It takes a lot of effort to look at your shortcomings and even more so to make those changes and loving yourself and accepting yourself unconditionally through the whole process. Anxiety screams at our imperfections.
When we allow the space to understand our errors in relation to our mindset and anxiety, we open up to a healthier form of thinking. It take a lot of courage to act upon the changes to fix our system of thinking as it can make us deeply uncomfortable, even though it surely has long term benefits. From feelings of embarrassment to shame, the act of moving past their fears and acting in their best interest can be very daunting.
The good news is that you can learn effective solutions, you can begin practicing in small steps to help you address your personal values, relearn how to face challenges, and begin practicing the courage to change for the better.
Pritha Saha Dutta is a Certified Life Coach and representative of CHANGE CATALYST a counseling and life coaching practice in Mumbai, India. She helps individuals and families in the office and online setting as well. If you would like to learn more or book an appointment, you are welcome to reach out on the email id: prithapsaha@gmail.com