Dealing with Anxiety

Have you ever felt nervous while waiting for your exam results or perhaps even feeling afraid of a pending surgery in the hospital? If we look at it carefully, it is not the exam results or the surgery itself that made us afraid, it is more of the unknown and uncertainty that make us anxious. Anxious will turn into nervousness which will then lead us to being afraid.

Recently, my friend’s wife who is living in Sydney has been “freaking out” (in his words) because of a pending major surgery which the doctors have recommended. My friend informed me  that his wife had been having sleepless nights, tossing and turning because she was so afraid of the surgery. I told him that her "freaking out" is related more to the anxiety rather than to the surgery itself. As human beings, we are most vulnerable when we do not know what to expect or the unknown. Usually, we will go through to two phases. The first phase will be the anxiety and then the second phase will be waiting to get it over with. In the case of my friend’s wife, this will come when she has a long wait for a date to undergo the surgery. After a long waiting period for a surgery date, she will just want to get the surgery over with and hope for the earliest possible surgery date. From this case, you can see a total change and turn of event - from her being afraid to her being impatient to get the surgery done.

In my law practice, I have clients who have never been sued or even seen a lawyer before coming into my office. Sometimes they are frank and tell me that they are nervous as they have not been sued or gone to Court before and do not know what to expect. This situation fits in nicely with the anxiety that we have been talking about. They feel most vulnerable in such situation, ie: the “unchartered territory”. In this case, just advising them to calm down and relax will be of little help because those are just mere words, the clients want their lawyers to prepare and advise them to the best of their lawyers’ knowledge as to what to expect from the other side and in Court. Therefore, always be frank to your clients and explain to them step by step, though I acknowledged it is impossible to predict what the other side will do. The best you can do is to give them the best calculated guess. In other words, give them an idea so that they would know what to expect and be prepared.

I remembered when I was a final year law student, I was anxious and extremely nervous as the final exam result will either see me through to be a lawyer or may render me to stay back and repeat another semester of law studies. It is easy to predict if you are a top student but for people like me who is just an average student, this was a situation of either make or break for me. I remembered when I got my results, my anxiety just disappeared and found that my nervousness and anxiety was due to the waiting and not so much due to the result. Well, some of you may say that is because I passed the final exam which is true but this was exactly the same feeling I had when I was in high school. My weakest subject was mathematics. I was really nervous when I knew that the Maths teacher would at anytime be returning our Maths exam papers together with the score. I couldn’t sleep for a few days. There were a few false alarms such as when the Maths teacher came to class and said that he had left the exam papers at home and therefore, couldn’t return the exam papers to us. It was a moment of relief for me but I knew that eventful day would come soon. The second time, we were told by the Principal’s office that the Maths teacher fell sick and therefore we wouldn’t be getting our maths results. Again, a short celebration and relief. Finally the dreaded day came when the maths exam papers were handed back. Needless to say, I failed the maths exam. When I saw the failing mark, I didn’t feel sad or disappointed but surprisingly, it was a relief as if a load of weight had lifted from my shoulders. You see, I have been nervous and stress for far too long, it was no longer the results that was making me miserable, in fact it was the waiting. Let’s be realistic, it wasn’t unexpected. I knew I blew it when it came to the maths exam but somehow we tend to “torture” ourselves by putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves. So, remove that pressure and you will remove that anxiety!