Guide
Basic Lifestyle Rules for Mental Health

Introduction: Modern Society and Anxiety

Chapter 1 | Understanding Anxiety

- What is anxiety?
- Circuit of fear
- Senses and experiences
- Trigger
- Cradle of Anxiety
ㆍTemperament and personality
ㆍNegative childhood experiences
ㆍTraumatic experience
ㆍOther factors
- Why do you want to become a voluntary prisoner?
ㆍThinking style
ㆍAttention focus method
ㆍBody sensations
ㆍLow stress tolerance
ㆍBehaviors to cope with anxiety
ㆍAvoidance

Chapter 2 | A Change of Thinking

- Flexibility
- Acceptance
- Voice of the Heart

Chapter 3 | Stress and the Nervous System

- Adrenaline
- Cortisol
- Snowball effect
- Nervous system calming techniques
Breathing method
Progressive muscle relaxation
Light activity
ㆍExercise

Chapter 4 | The Elephant in Your Heart

- Coping
ㆍUnderstanding the identity of thoughts
ㆍPut it down and watch
Accept things as they are
ㆍAnalyzing the root cause
Avoid excessive identification
- Rate it
ㆍThought ≠ Reality
ㆍEscape from bias
ㆍOpinion A vs.
Opinion B
- Change your thinking pattern
ㆍAlternative explanation
ㆍDistorted thinking patterns
Worst case scenario
ㆍNegative assumptions
Jinx and fatalism
ㆍWill to solve

Chapter 5 | Anxiety Addiction

- Invasion of anxiety
ㆍAttention bias
ㆍSelf-focused attention
ㆍSelective attention
ㆍExcessive vigilance
- Negative focus
- Maintaining attention

Chapter 6 | Between Rain and Drought

- Each ecosystem
- Disturbed mind
ㆍReinforcement of anxious thoughts
ㆍEmotional suppression
ㆍEmotional avoidance
Impulsive reaction
- The direction in which emotions flow
- Towards the windless zone
Accepting and observing emotions
ㆍNaming emotions
Self-pity
ㆍSelf-soothing
Productive Distraction

Chapter 7 | The Dice of the World

- Uncertainty
- The dice game of anxiety
- Beyond the poker face
There is no absolute certainty
ㆍUnknown probability into possibility
Life is not Russian roulette.
- In front of the rolling dice
ㆍLeave it to the flow of daily life
ㆍFacing serious anxiety

Chapter 8 | How to Avoid Shadows

- Avoidance
- Safety-seeking behavior
- Tug of war with the shadows
Ranking of suffering
ㆍFacing fears
ㆍReview progress
ㆍRepeat
- Names of Shadows
ㆍIllness anxiety disorder
Panic attacks
Social anxiety disorder
ㆍDeath anxiety
- Shadow's Trick
ㆍExcessive anxiety
Whispers of fear
ㆍDoubts about the results

Chapter 9 | Old Fear

- The Two Faces of Fear
Trauma
Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Trauma and anxiety
Trauma and death anxiety
Traumatic cognitive processes
- Healing the traces of trauma
ㆍItems
ㆍImagination
ㆍWords
ㆍPosture
ㆍOther treatments

Chapter 10 | Post-Liberation Care

- Iteration towards improvement
- Your secret recipe
- Experience of regression
- Confront with a plan
ㆍPreparing a response strategy
Potential triggers
Changes in thinking patterns
ㆍChanges in behavior
ㆍPreparing for future vulnerabilities
- Direction of a leisurely life
- Remember even the small successes
- Sketch of the future

References

Appendix 1: Finding the Right Expert
〈Appendix 2〉 Symptoms and sensations of anxiety disorders
〈Appendix 3〉 Types of Anxiety Disorders
Appendix 4: Top 100 Hobbies

After all, knowledge is power
Efforts to simply avoid it will only lead to preying on anxiety.
When we accept and face it, our hearts are finally free.

In an age of excessive anxiety,
Protect your precious day from the heart-shaking storm
A scientific and warm psychological prescription to regain control of your life.

Internal dystopian narrative

The world of fiction is as boundless as the trends and genres of creative works.
The setting of the work usually brings to mind an ancient world ruled by evil gods or monsters, or a medieval fantasy world ruled by a demon king.
Furthermore, we can imagine a modern world where various criminals, wars, and the tyranny of dictators threaten human existence, as well as a science fiction future world on the verge of destruction due to invasions by alien species, zombie virus outbreaks, experimental monsters, or the uprising of machines and artificial intelligence.
Even worlds with unclear historical backgrounds, where people are chased by bizarrely shaped fictional creatures or evil spirits, humanity has created worlds that existed only in the imagination in various ways.

The nature of the anxiety hidden within us is similar to the above.
The human imagination is a fertile ground for anxiety to thrive.
However, it is surprisingly rare for anxious imaginations to become reality.
But we are not warriors who defeat the forces of evil with swordsmanship and various magic in the face of anxiety, nor are we heavily armed agents skilled in cutting-edge weaponry, tactics, and combat techniques.
Rather, it is closer to a powerless being that has no means of resisting an unknown being and can only run away.
People try to avoid anxiety or suppress it with their bare hands, but they are lucky if they don't get eaten.
In this way, some people lose the battle against anxiety and find their own safe haven.

Anxiety never goes away through avoidance, suppression, or safety-seeking behavior alone.
These measures are merely stopgap measures that allow anxiety to grow in strength by hiding out of our sight.
In the process, the anxiety that grows as big as our imagination suddenly pops up when we mistakenly think we are safe.
This creates a moment of awareness of the threat, accompanied by a sense of surprise, and its suddenness forces us to briefly confront the reality of the anxiety we have been ignoring.
To deal with anxiety, the courage to quietly observe its form is paramount.
Based on that courage, we must maintain composure and wisdom in the face of anxiety that can come in various forms, such as disease anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder.

Above and below the single line

The tightrope walker's tightrope walk gives the audience a thrilling feeling of tension, like skating on thin ice.
The world is divided into upper and lower parts by a loosely hanging rope, and a tense war of nerves ensues.
The audience looks up at the world on the tightrope with a mixture of worry, tension, and even curiosity, wondering if the tightrope walker might stumble and fall.
However, the rope-climber lightly blows away the audience's gaze by repeatedly descending between the swaying ropes and rising into the air.
The jokes that resonate between the acrobatics that flutter through the air on the wind blowing through the hall seem to show off a sense of leisure.
At this moment, the tightrope walker's acrobatics become a divine play, and the world on the tightrope becomes a paradise filled with the fragrance of forsythia.
The world above and below the tightrope is so different.

As such, life is often likened to tightrope walking.
The anxiety we feel in life is like the instability of a tightrope, and we inevitably have to live such a life because we cannot see even an inch ahead.
In the meantime, you may lose your balance and struggle to hang on to the rope or try to go down the rope, but such strong resistance is only a shortcut to a deeper swamp of anxiety.
Therefore, we need to change the way we deal with anxiety.
The author says that rather than regarding anxiety as something to be eliminated, it is important to have an attitude of acceptance that accepts its existence as it is.
He also advises that flexibility, which allows you to act according to your values ​​and goals without being consumed by anxiety, helps overcome anxiety.

The world has progressed and brought unprecedented abundance to humanity.
However, as the scale of affluence increases with the changing times, the variables that move the world have become more diverse and complex.
As a result, the concept of a “guaranteed future” began to crack, and the value of will and effort began to fade.
In the modern era, which is called the "age of uncertainty," anxiety has become an uncomfortable companion of life, and the ability to manage inner anxiety is receiving increasing attention.
We are faced with choices in life.
Will you live in constant worry like an audience member looking up at a tightrope walker, or will you dance leisurely above the anxiety like a tightrope walker?

Montage - Deforme - Demontage

We build up anxiety with fragmented memories of the past and fears about the future.
The background and process by which anxiety is born in our hearts are reminiscent of the visual art technique of montage.
Montage is a French word meaning 'assembly', and is a technique used in film or painting to combine fragments of images or parts of different photographs or pictures to form a new scene or image.
We are famous for depicting the faces of criminals based on the memories or testimonies of witnesses, and these features seem to have an aspect similar to anxiety in that they induce fear in the viewer.

Art, like realism or hyperrealism, sometimes depicts reality as it is, but our minds do not.
For those of us who are driven by subjectivity, the realization that perfect objectivity is a virtually non-existent concept is gradually spreading.
Therefore, we, who cannot even realistically predict the future, cannot realistically recall the past.
Even if everyone experiences the same event and object, the content of their memories is very different.
In this way, our minds distort the image of anxiety with only emotional bubbles and guesses.
In this way, like deformity, which depicts an object by transforming it through subjective interpretation, the colors are exaggerated, the body size is enlarged to make it look ugly, and anxiety is made into a fait accompli.

Ultimately, suffering from anxiety is no different from being anxious about being eaten by a paper tiger.
Of course, anxiety overwhelms us like a huge, insurmountable wall, but even that fear is more like an illusion inflated by our imagination.
In "Knowing Anxiety: Unwavering", the author introduces the technique of "demontage," or "deconstruction," of the anxiety that has grown within us as a way to reclaim control of our lives, including acceptance, calming, restoring attention, and changing our thinking.
And the author says that close observation of one's inner self will be the key.
From now on, let's join Dr. Schnack in unpacking the massive collage in our minds, woven from stale emotions and images of an uncertain future.