The Rainbow Method of Managing Generalized Anxiety Disorder
A color-coding system to assess one’s level of anxiety can help a person to control excessive and needless distress
In my community college public speaking classes, the students and I always talk about strategies for dealing with nervousness. Inevitably, our discussions become about managing anxiety more pervasive in their lives than stage fright. Typically, about a fourth of them will admit to having anxiety issues that prevent them from doing activities they otherwise would do.
To help them, I share that I’ve been diagnosed with having Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I explain that a person with GAD can be inordinately distressed over everyday life issues or nothing at all for no logical reason. The condition cannot be cured, only managed.
Prior to the diagnosis, I tell them, I assumed there was a one-to-one correspondence between the situation at hand and how I felt about it. If I was distressed, then obviously there must be a good reason. My new awareness after the diagnosis was liberating, for now I was able to consciously assess my emotional reactions and determine if they were appropriate to the external circumstances. When they were (and are) excessive, I exert effort to alter my thinking, and this reduces my overall anxiety and makes my responses reasonable to the situation.
To regulate the GAD, I’ve devised a color-coding system using the seven traditional colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple. My ROY G. BiP System of Anxiety Management has helped me greatly, and students frequently report it has helped them, too.
Thinking I’m Blue when I’m actually Yellow
The warmer “ROY” colors are the anxious ones while the cooler “G. BiP” colors are free of anxiety (though enigmatic indigo, with the “i” above purposely lowercased, is a mirage of peace, as we shall see).
A big issue for me was that I would feel anxious for no reason and not even know it. But others could see it. When someone would ask me (as my wife often did), “Why are you anxious?” I would say, sometimes defensively, “What do you mean? I’m not anxious.” In other words, I would think I’m in the blue zone (anxiety free) when I was actually in Yellow (enveloped by inner distress that felt so normal to me I couldn’t detect it).
With the diagnosis, I was finally able to perceive baseline anxiety, distinguish it from when I was truly not feeling anxious. Labeling the two states has helped a lot. Now when overcome by a wave of Yellow stress, I can, with a deliberate effort at calming myself, usually dissipate the distress until I’m in tranquil Blue peace again.
No Oranges in the Proverbial Green Room
Whereas the yellow-blue dyad is about baseline anxiety in the absence of external pressures, the orange-green dyad is about how much stress one feels when faced with an anxiety-triggering task or situation. These triggers can be anything from working on a project for school or work or going to a job interview or a party. Any endeavor, no matter how trivial, that fills a person with debilitating dread is a trigger. When the person’s actions are compromised by the anxiety, he or she is in the Orange zone. Performance suffers, steps are done hastily or skipped, possibly whole activities are avoided, and one’s overall quality of life diminishes.
When this stress is managed, it can be harnessed and make the person more alert and in the moment. When the stress is Green, the person is thriving, rising to the challenge. To convert debilitating Orange to energizing Green, I tell myself that controlling the anxiety is more important than whatever else is at stake — tricking myself that this is the only thing that matters.
An example: I started doing stand-up comedy to feel the same fear many students feel when presenting to the class. At first I was terrified. I’d say to myself, “Why am I doing this? I have a job, a family. I don’t need to be here.” But then I’d tell myself: It does not matter how well you do; all that matters is controlling the fear. By making the experience only about managing the anxiety, as if the comedy club were a virtual reality fear desensitizer, the overwhelming anxiety left me. People laughed and clapped, and a new expansive activity has become a part of my life. Anxious students say they felt more confident when they made the primary goal of making their presentations about beating the anxiety, and the quality of the speeches was better.
I want my anxiety-ridden students to develop a meta-awareness of their emotional state so that anxiety does not deny them opportunities to flourish in life. Also, being chronically Orange and Yellow is exhausting and leads to indigo. Indigo is relief from anxiety, but not because you have gotten the better of it, but rather because it has so thoroughly worn you out. When you are in indigo, you are not stressed, but you are not productive or satisfied either. Chances are you are wasting time mindlessly, or sleeping excessively.
It is important to note that worry and anxiety are different. When my daughter badly broke her arm and it was unclear if she would regain the full use of it, I was as worried as one could possibly be. Those weeks until we knew her arm would heal completely, I calmly handled all the demands of the situation. I now remember that worry, as intense as it was, as being utterly anxiety free. The situation was so real I had no time (or psychological need) to pile on anxiety.
Seeing Red for What it is
When people are in the Red zone, they are so incensed with panic or anger that they are at risk of doing something they will later regret. Things people do while “seeing red” range from saying or sending words that will embarrass them or make the situation harder to actions that destroy property, cost them jobs or friends or cause physical harm to themselves or others. A person in this state needs to understand as soon as possible that the anxiety or rage is prompting one’s actions and not the external situation that the person thinks he or she is responding to.
Red is not so much an issue for me. I am older than most of my students and aware of the consequences of my actions. But for young people still working on impulse control, recognizing that their extreme emotions might prompt them to do something self-sabotaging, possibly even catastrophic, is incredibly important. Over the years, I’ve lost many students to rash moments in which their actions while Red got them injured, arrested or otherwise derailed from their education.
More than just not being anxious, Purple is a state of deep meditative serenity. It is not something I can conjure on demand. But when it comes now, I am able to recognize it for the gift that it is.
It is gratifying to me that my system of color labeling has helped students manage their anxiety. A student once said in a thank you speech, “It’s not gold at the other end of this rainbow, but something better: peace of mind and the freedom to be your best self and make your own fortune.”
