AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Thoughts -
our thoughts, imaginations and convictions. All what
we say for ourselves and all the ideas that come to our mind
when we think about the given situation. These thoughts can be
related to the situation that is worrying us or to our coping with
it: “What if I will not be able to cope with it and I will start
panicking, etc.” These expressions of anxiety in thinking are
based on our worries, negative automatic thoughts and
catastrophic imaginations. This worrying increases our tension
and purposeless activity. Negative automatic thoughts lead to
sorrow and resignation.
As aforementioned, a slight degree of anxiety or fear can be
useful and natural. These are adaptive emotions. Anxiety and
fear become a problem only if they appear too often, they are too
strong or too long, or if they are present in unsuitable situations.
Then they are connected with many difficulties and problems.
Praško et al. (2006) say that if people suffer from the states of
anxiety for longer time, their physical reactions can be
hypersensitive and they can appear in usual and easy situations,
too. Some people experience fear and excessive worries without
being able to explain the reason. It is possible to determine
specific situations when people can experience bigger fear - e.g.
these are the situations related to the communication in a foreign
language: they have to talk with foreigners, they have to
participate at the meeting and talk in a foreign language, or they
have to translate a specialized technical text into a foreign
language, etc.
Picture 1: Vicious circles of anxiety (Praško et al., 2006).
Anxiety is indispensable for surviving because it prepares us for
coping with threatening and stressful situations. It initiates
hormonal changes in the body that allow us to deal with danger
by means of fighting or running away. This reaction arouses
many physical feelings which appear at the moment of anxiety -
tension in muscles, faster heartbeat, sweating, faster breathing,
etc. When we feel anxiety, the flow of our thoughts changes as
well. The most typical sign of anxious thinking is that we
concentrate only on the cause of possible threat and we do not
perceive other impulses. These changes can help us immediately
because our body is able to move quickly and our thinking aims
at the current problem. The reaction fighting or running away is
an immediate response to stress and it usually finishes as soon as
that danger disappears. However, if this reaction does not
“switch off” and is taking too long, we start having unpleasant
physical feelings such as muscle pain, weak legs, strong
sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, tension in the stomach or
faster heartbeat. We start to feel worried - we always worry
about the worst things, we are afraid that our problems will
never disappear, we think negatively and we are convinced that
our problems are caused by physical disease. In this case anxiety
itself can become very unpleasant and stressful. We create
vicious circles which maintain our anxiety. This anxiety gets out
of control very easily. In stressful situations our behaviour
changes as well. This can be manifested in unrestful and avoiding
behaviour, sitting and playing with fingers, biting of nails, running,
escaping from the given situation, calming down with eating,
alcohol, cigarettes, pills, or drugs, etc. A typical reaction in
situations provoking anxiety and fear is running away. The relief
after avoiding is only transient when we are in normal situations.
Then we are overwhelmed with our remorses. Later it can be even
harder to face this situation. Examples of vicious
circles (Praško et
al., 2006) are mentioned in the picture 1.
Picture 2: A vicious circle
of anxiety from talking in a foreign
language
As we can see in the picture, our thoughts, emotions, physical
reactions and behaviour influence each other mutually, creating a
vicious circle of anxiety (see Picture 2). When people think that
they will make mistakes in speaking in a foreign language, this
conviction arouses their anxiety, increases the inner tension.
They may feel pressure on the chest and a lump in the throat. As
a result, they will have hindrances to speak and they will prefer
to be quiet because they think that they will make mistakes and
everybody will see it. For this reason, they are really not able to
concentrate on the communication in a foreign language and
they really start making mistakes. This leads to the feelings of
helplessness and self-pity which can grow into the convictions
that they are not able to do anything. All these feelings have a
strong impact on the physical reactions. They do not feel well,
they are tired and weak. As a consequence, they can start
thinking that they are not healthy and their behaviour changes.
They go to bed and try to relax or they avoid any other difficult
activities waiting for them. Their irritability and accusing of
others leads to frequent arguments and conflicts. They start
avoiding people and situations where they have to communicate
in a foreign language.
All forms of avoiding and taking precautions contribute to
anxiety and negative convictions. For this reason it is very
important to face unpleasant situations and start doing activities
they have been avoiding. This is the only way how to find out if
the bad consequences will really happen. Facing to worrying
situations should be a repeated and gradual process. Then
anxiety decreases because we get used to the given situation.
Habituation is a natural tendency of the nervous system to the
“loss of sensitivity” in repeated exposure to the new impulses
and situations.
3 Cognitive and behavioral approach to anxiety and fear
Nowadays, etiology and research of anxiety emphasizes the
biological concepts as well as the biochemical factors, the
neurobiology of anxiety, and psychological and psychiatric
approaches as well (Heretik a Heretik et al. (2007). Anxiety is a
central phenomenon of all clinical psychological tendencies:
psycho-dynamical, cognitive-behavioral, humanistic-existential.
Our work is based the cognitive - behavioral approach to anxiety
and fear that is has two central principles: 1) our cognition has a
controlled impact on our emotions and behavior, and 2) our
acting and behaviour can strongly influence our thoughts and
emotions. We can achieve a desired change in our behaviour
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