J:  I have a friend of mine, whose name is Ben, and he's going to talk about some of the anxiety situations he's gotten himself into, and what he did to get himself out of them. Hi Ben. B: How are you doing, John? J: Just fine, thanks. What I'd like to do, if you don't mind, is to go through seven of the eight kinds of anxiety and just ask you if you've experienced them, and maybe a little bit about what you've done about them. I'm going to skip the first one, which is simple anxieties, such as claustrophobia or agoraphobia, because they are very common. The first one I want to talk about is social phobia. That includes things like giving speeches or going to parties. Things like that. Do you think you have any social phobias? B: I wouldn't say I have a social phobia. I'm a bit of a performer, and kind of an extrovert, but I also really don't like being around people all the time. I kind of describe myself as an extroverted introvert. J; That's fine, Ben. But that's pretty clearly not anxiety. Let's move on to the third one, which is separation anxiety. Do you experience any separation from anybody as being particularly frightening. B: Not particularly, no. J: Ok fine. The fourth one is generalized anxiety. What about that? B: Yeah. I'm pretty much always anxious about something, or just have a sense of anxiety, whether its towards any specific thing or not. J: When you feel kind of anxious about something, What do you do about it? What helps you? B: It's always something different. Thats something I’ve learned, that you can't always use one coping strategy for every situation, you have to try different things for different situations and figure it out, and even if its a similar situation to one you've had before, sometimes the same solution won't work. J: Boy, are you absolutely right about that. You've got to have a number of arrows in your quiver in order to hit the target, that's for sure. Now I do want to mention this: some research that my colleagues and I did with large numbers of young adults, the results were that males, about seventy-five percent of males do much better with physical techniques of relaxing such as tightening all your muscles and letting them go, or deep breathing, and the women, about seventy-five percent of them, worked much better with mental things. That includes imagining yourself by a nice, quiet lake, or that you're listening to a chorus of monks singing. So are you more like the males here or the twenty five percent category? B: I think I'm more towards the twenty five percent. Of course there's deep breathing that works occasionally, but mental stimulation tends to help me more, so I think more the twenty five percent. J: Can you tell us what kind of imagery that you tend to seek when you're feeling anxious? B; Yeah, I think of people who I love, or good times I've had. Sometimes I'll sing a little song in my head that I enjoy, or just try to make up a story to distract myself. J: I seem to remember that one of your favorite songs is “oh la de da” is that correct?