I Declare...

   I have experienced negative emotions and behaviors that would, in the field of psychology, be considered symptoms of "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" or "Pure-O Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder."  They have interfered significantly in my life, and for some time, I clung to the popular beliefs about these issues as my only answers.  The following are my passionate declarations about a topic that is very important to me, based on a series of discoveries that I feel are groundbreaking in my life.  I think they could be the same for so many others with experiences similar to mine.

* A mental illness is a condition that is known to have a biological cause, that must be treated medicinally. Contrary to popular belief, this is not the case for many issues currently being categorized and diagnosed as mental illness.

                                          My Declarations

• I am an individual with a unique personality: there is nothing wrong with me.  I am the product, in part, of cognition, biological factors, and environmental factors. The presence of certain biological factors have combined with environmental factors to result in my unique personality, making me the obsessive, analytical, introspective, sensitive, conscientious person I am. Here's the thing: the obsessive, analytical part of me has at times responded to anxiety-producing thoughts with hours of analysis to prove to myself that everything was okay. This, as defined by me, is a negative behavior. But that same trait causes me to take great enjoyment from thinking things over deeply, to take notice of subtleties that others might miss, and to be driven to find answers to my questions. There is no biological cause present causing these personality traits collectively as some kind of illness. I am simply a complex human being, and when I do experience anxiety, it is experienced and manifested through the lens of who I am as a person.
• I have the freedom to define my own experiences. I adopted this one from http://theicharusproject.net/.  In the last declaration, I differentiated between a behavior I am displeased with(torturing myself by trying to make sure everything is okay) and behaviors I am pleased with(thinking analytically, etc). Just because the DSM-IV decides to say that obsessive behavior, for instance, is a "symptom" of something does not mean that me being obsessive is always a bad thing.  I am the one who decides, according to own values, what is good and bad in my life.  The popular lists of symptoms have caused me to try to fit many of my own behaviors under certain labels.  The problem with this is that a) such disorders are not quantifiable as such and b) many of the behaviors I was coming to think there was something wrong with weren't negative in any way.  I did this because I had bought into the idea that everything the manual listed was, in fact, an illness and that the symptoms listed could help determine them.  Realizing that this is not scientifically supported makes such categorization senseless and even harmful.
• The negative behaviors I sometimes get caught up in are caused by cognitive habits fueled by anxiety.  Here's how it works:  you think something scary, and you feel anxious.  The anxious feelings may cause you to think more about the scary things, thus causing you to feel more anxious, and well, can you see the beginning of a viscious cycle?  One answer to dealing with bad habits of thinking is found in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT).  The great thing about CBT is that it can be done on your own(one study found that doing it solo was just as effective as having a therapist to help).  CBT simply helps you to recognize thought patterns that cause unnecesarily destructive emotions and to deal with your thinking more constructively, thereby reducing the effects of emotions such as anxiety.
• I may need to take extra care of myself.  If a sensitive nervous system is one factor that causes me to be overwhelmed easily, it will be extremely important for me to do all those common sense things that will make it easier to live the life I want: get enough sleep, eat right, limit caffeine, etc.

  When I stopped thinking that my feelings of anxiety were simply there because of a chemical imbalance, some interesting things began happening.  I had a greater feeling of control over my emotions.  I lost what had become a crutch and found a sense of empowerment.  I have begun identifying simple causes of anxiety I never knew existed because of my past readiness to attribute an unfounded chemical imbalance to my anxiety.  The tremendous shift in perspective was extremely freeing, making me feel beautiful.  The question Why did God make me like this?  turned to Wow, God made me so amazing!  I began to recognize the ways I am uniquely gifted, and I began to wonder if The Icharus Project might not be onto something when they call them "dangerous gifts."