Jolene Arasz
Why on Earth Do I Feel This Way? Aims to provide a basic understanding of anxiety and its impact on our daily lives. I’m writing this in hopes that I can raise awareness about and normalize anxiety, trauma, and overall mental health. As a psychologist, my primary focus is helping my clients understand, become more aware of, and get control of their anxiety while also working through their trauma. Control Theory addresses just that. Anxiety is ubiquitous, underrecognized, and undertreated under the current paradigms. Control Theory offers a way to look at anxiety differently, recognize its many forms, and focus on certain aspects of anxiety that people can identify and gain control over.Through years of practice, I have found that anxiety is severely misunderstood, yet every single person experiences it. The problem is that most people are not necessarily aware that they are experiencing anxiety on a daily basis and easily misinterpret what they experience on a physical, mental, and emotional level. Anxiety also serves an important purpose; however, when people talk about anxiety, it’s never addressed as a helpful mechanism, but how it’s impeding a person’s functioning.Since the first edition of this book, I have been focusing much more on the neurobiology of anxiety trauma than what I presented in the first edition. I will still include information from the first edition; however, I will be providing a much more in-depth description of what is happening in the brain, not only when experiencing anxiety, but also how trauma impacts the functioning of the brain and how the neurobiology of anxiety and trauma go hand in hand with Control Theory. I will also include exercises to help re-regulate specific structures of the brain after having experienced prolonged anxiety or trauma. These will also serve as protective measures to help strengthen structures of the brain to build resilience before experiencing anxiety or trauma, aiding the brain to recover more quickly and effectively from potential anxiety or trauma.
