![]() However, parents who learn what they can do to decrease the likelihood of cesarean, what to expect during cesarean surgery, and a few things they can do to make the experience more personal and less stressful, have a lower level of anticipatory anxiety-stress. 6Ĭonsider a manageable event or threat related to childbirth, such as cesarean surgery, from the parents’ perspective: For many reasons, some parents feel anticipatory anxiety about cesarean birth. Knowing what to do reduces the threat and anticipatory anxiety caused by the potential threat. ![]() For example, someone in a field during a lightning storm who knows that lightning tends to strike the highest point in an area can reason that the next best thing to do is find a ditch to lie in or get as low to the ground as possible for the duration of the storm. MANAGEABLE and UNMANAGEABLE EVENTS or THREATSĪ manageable risk or threat is when an individual has enough knowledge about the threat to respond logically and effectively. On the other hand, over-estimating the probability or severity of a threat and not being prepared or capable of responding in some way creates excessive anxiety, and interferes with psychological and physiological well-being. A well-calibrated level of anxiety allows us to assess the probability and severity of an anticipated threat, and to be solution-minded in preparing to effectively avoid or respond to the threat. Anxiety manifests physiologically through a release of a flood of stress hormones: the heart races, breathing is uneven, the gut churns, mobilizing us to act. Overly active imaginations ruminate about worst-case scenarios, but the anxiety that follows isn’t imaginary it is genuinely physiological and psychological. 5 Anticipatory anxiety is pervasive in modern obstetrics (for parents and caregivers) an inevitable consequence of continuous diagnostic screening, vague predictions and forewarnings of potential outcomes and future management. It is triggered when we feel we have little or no control over novel, stressful, unpredictable situations, especially those we perceive as threats to our survival. (We had to pay for that coveted spot in a parking lot because we didn’t believe enough in pinching our fingers together!)Īnxiety is our emotional, behavioral, and intellectual response to anticipating a future aversive event and uncertainty about whether we can avoid or mitigate the physical or psychological threat. Doing something “magical” together was fun it shifted our attention and lowered anxiety even though it did not produce a parking spot. After going around the block twice, Lesley promised that if we all of us put our thumbs and second fingers together and wished real hard for a parking space, one would appear. Tension was rising the doors to the theater might close if we were late. Looking for a parking spot downtown on a Saturday night was like looking for a needle in a haystack. In the last century, where evidence-based information and reductionistic thinking is increasingly revered, the eternal human yen to have control over the uncontrollable, to grasp the unknowable, and embrace the sacred through magic and personal rituals may be met with an eye-rolling dismissal, dismissing the possibility that magical thinking and personal rituals play any positive role in coping and participating with the uncertainties of day-to-day life. In various ways, everyone has practiced magical thinking, beginning in childhood to their most recent unwished-for moment or anticipation of a threat to their security, well-being, or survival. ![]() MAGICAL THINKING” refers to a belief that one’s wishes, thoughts, or actions cause or prevent an outcome from happening. Birth story listeners can benefit from learning about the evolution, function, and conscious calibration of magical thinking and how it plays a role in reducing anxiety. As my views shifted, my capacity to respond with more empathy for myself and others expanded. ![]() After doing a little study of it, I’ve come to understand it as a “reflexive,” sometimes learned response to anticipating uncertainty or an adverse outcome. Until I researched “magical thinking,” I had mistakenly relegated all of it to naivety and irrational thinking. ![]()
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