Contents
Pedro Moreno: “Many people go to the doctor for stomach pains and what they have is anxiety”
Interview
The psychologist publishes “Chronic Anxiety”, with which he seeks to help those who do not stop worrying at any time
Pedro Moreno (Murcia, 1968) is a doctor in Psychology and a specialist in Clinical Psychology. He dedicates his life to helping put an end to something, almost invisible at times, that affects many: the anxiety. He has already written eight books on how to overcome it, and now publishes “Chronic Anxiety” (Desclee De Brouwer), a publication in which he addresses the control of anxiety when it ceases to be a specific thing and is prolonged in time.
The book is aimed at those who “worry too much for months or years; those who think a lot about their health, or those who fear going crazy or losing control and doing things they don’t want to. This book is, in short, for those people who think that they will never get over their anxiety problems. We spoke with Pedro Moreno about the issue at hand, the treatment of anxiety, how it affects our life, and what is in our power to stop it.
Is anxiety the great disease of the XNUMXst century?
Probably yes, the anguish, the stress … we live in a society that puts tremendous pressure on us, and that pressure to be happy, to be rich and handsome; This pressure that we put on ourselves, thanks to the indoctrination of society, ends up generating a state of concern that ultimately ends in anxiety.
Likewise, it is important to distinguish between anxiety when it is a normal emotion and when it becomes a disorder. The first is an even healthy emotion, because it allows us to be aware of danger: in a situation of uncertainty, it is good to be prepared. The problem comes when I am continually prepared for a danger, while other people do not see it. Here we are already talking about an anxiety problem, and this is the main reason for consulting the psychologist and general practitioners. Many people who come with headaches and stomachaches suffer from anxiety.
When do we consider that anxiety has become a chronic problem?
When we speak of chronic in this sense, it is not something that never ends, but extends over time: one year, six months … that would be chronic, but not for life. It is important to learn to recognize when we are suffering from anxiety. If we see that people are calm with an issue and it is difficult for us, when you think of a situation in which we suffer from anxiety and the idea of it happening again terrifies us, there we are experiencing it, and many times, due to ignorance, managing it Wrong way, we end up getting worse.
Discuss the emotions that are not working… are we talking about avoidance?
When I talk about avoidance I always put this example: As a teenager I fell in love with a girl who did not correspond to me. I did not want to be his friend, and at that time there were no cell phones, so I had memorized his phone number and wanted to forget it. And the more I tried to forget it, the more I remembered. This is how the mind works, the less you want to think about something, the more you think about it. There are many tricky solutions, because when you try not to think about it, you are having it present.
He comments in the book that the solution to our anxiety is not to lean on others. Is this a journey that we must take alone?
Alone, but accompanied. we live life alone even if we are accompanied. One of the traps that many patients with anxiety fall into is that we know it is not serious, but we need someone to remind us. It is the same that happens in the day to day, we seek tranquility in other people, and this is a trap: we are not capable of developing a mental strength to do it ourselves. If I look for someone to calm me down, it can turn into a toxic, dependent relationship.
Mindfulness can be hard to come by… aren’t we used to feeling so much?
It is important to understand that everything comes from the mind; The same things happen to all of us and not all of us react the same. Each one, depending on his mind, poses things in a more or less healthy way. If I don’t want to think, as I said before, you fall into a trap. You have to recognize what happens in your mind moment by moment, and understand that what you think is a story, and it does not have to be true. Mark Twin said: “Half of my life I have worried about things that never happened.” If I let myself be carried away by my mind, then I will be better, if I manage to distance myself from my thoughts, that is where I free myself from anxiety.
So we are not the same as our thoughts?
I can imagine anything, but what I imagine is not reality, and what I do to control these thoughts will not change reality. Whether or not I think of a thing does not diminish the likelihood of it happening. We all have “favorite thoughts” that we loop through, and they are often very negative. But you have to understand that because something is possible, it does not mean that it is probable. Because we think something, it does not mean that it is true, that it will happen.