Unmasking fears
Box Hill resident Bev Aisbett is helping thousands control anxiety.
Interview by Georgina Jerums - Melbourne Weekly, July 14th-20th, 2002.
Sweaty palms, jelly legs, your mind going a million miles an hour, a sense of being in a situation you can't control. Sound familiar? Like it or not, feeling stressed is part and parcel of the human condition.But for some, such as Box Hill local Bev Aisbett, anxiety can become life threatening if left unchecked. She knows all about the blurred vision, the sense of free falling, and the ongoing feeling of terror or hopelessness engulfing her entire body.
This is anxiety and depression writ large - the "black dog", as Winston Churchill called it - and many know it well. One in five of us will succumb to clinical anxiety or depression at some stage in our lives.
Fortunately, Aisbett, 49, has helped herself and others deal with anxiety through her books and workshops on "cognitive therapy".
More than 100,000 people bought her first book, Living With IT, and hundreds have taken part in Melbourne workshops held about six times a year since 1998.
She's branching into art therapy, too. Aisbett has organised an exhibition, Mask, at the Box Hill Community Arts Centre, 470 Station street tel: 9898 3544, on until this Friday, July, 19. The masks represent the hiding of fear behind facades and were made by anxiety sufferers in her recovery programs.
Aisbett's first panic attack struck her in her mid-20's. "You're whole world turns upside down," she says. "Everything seems sinister. You have a dark dread, as if some terrible event is about to happen." Some days, even getting up in the morning was impossible.
The crisis point arrived in 1991 when she pulled over on the side of the road, got out of her car and started screaming for someone to help her. Eventually, a stranger approached and hugged her until a friend arrived two hours later.
The message got through: she needed help. Aisbett was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and possible manic depression. Drugs and a hospital stay were recommended by doctors, but Aisbett refused both. Her anti-drugs stance is the result of smoking joints in 'her hippy days", the mid-1970s, which she believes could have exacerbated her anxious state.
"Marijuana can trigger anxiety," she says. "In ancient cultures, drugs were used in initiation rites for a higher form of thinking, but that was under a lot of guidance and a lot of wisdom. The way Westerners dabble with it, if you've got an oversensitivity or emotional problems, it's going to bring those to the fore. I hasten to add that I stopped (smoking dope) in 1975."
Instead of anti-depressants Aisbett opted for "cognitive therapy"; repeatedly challenging thoughts and behaviour to break out of low self-esteem cycle of thinking.
She became a qualified counsellor and wrote Living With IT and Taming the Black Dog. The books and the workshops are not, as she stresses, a quick elixir. "My approach is aimed at presenting a new way of looking at the problem of (anxiety) which opens up more options."
Since 1998, she has led five-week workshops for adults, administered by the Anxiety Disorders Association of Victoria (ADAVIC, tel: 9853 8089 or visit www.adavic.org)
"It's about having a look at how you're actually adding to your own misery and making a choice in the moment from that awareness," says Aisbett. "Our internal dialogue is littered with phrases such as 'should' or 'have to' or 'got to'. very driven terms. Introduce softer options such as 'I choose to', 'I might' or 'I could'."
Aisbett lives without panic attacks, but has the occasional black day. "Usually the heart of what is frightening you is a fear of rejection. or, on a more mundane level you might be getting the flu, or PMS, eating a bad diet or drinking too much coffee."
The first thing Aisbett does when her stress begins to rise is define the root of the problem: "Address it fairly quickly. You might have had a fallout with a friend or you might be feeling misunderstood. Identify those issues. Then work through it."
Aisbett says her workshop aims to assist people become less reliant on outside authority or help. "I see a real problem with people reporting year after year for analysis and long- term medication."
People learn how to set clear boundaries, adopt healthier problem solving techniques and address self-esteem. Childhood issues feature. "As a child we learn whether the world is safe or not, whether we feel responsible for everyone," says Aisbett. "People with (anxiety) problems tend to feel terribly responsible for everything, have a very high perfectionism, and are over giving, which builds up resentment. They tend to want to be in control at all times.
"Our Western way is so damaging in many areas. we need to have another look at how we live, and what our belief systems are."
Aisbett hopes similar therapy programs on self-esteem will be introduced in school curriculums, and is planning to take her workshops nationwide.
Sept 2002
