We’re anxious and stressed. We find it difficult to stop worrying. Our thoughts make it hard to fall asleep, or they wake us up too early. We’re tired and overwhelmed.
We’ve got an anxiety problem. And it needs to be solved.
If you do a Google search, many solutions are offered. You can find ways to stop feeling anxious. You can learn how to cure anxiety. You can discover how to reduce and control anxiety. All of these solutions have a similar theme: Anxiety is an enemy, and we must defeat it.
But here are two questions to consider: What if we’ve got anxiety all wrong? What if our efforts to defeat anxiety are making our anxiety worse?
We’ve turned anxiety into an enemy. And it makes sense that we’ve done so. Anxiety is one of the most uncomfortable emotions we experience. Our stomachs tighten, our heart beats rapidly, our head throbs, our muscles tighten, and our thoughts race. Our immediate reaction is to find ways to escape from this intense discomfort. However, it turns out that anxiety is a paradox: the more we fight with our anxiety, the more intense it gets. Here’s a quick exercise to illustrate this: take a minute and don’t think about chocolate cake. You can think about anything else, just don’t think about chocolate cake.
What happened? You probably thought about chocolate cake. Similarly, when we tell ourselves, “Don’t feel anxious,” or “don’t think those worry thoughts,” we’ve increased the likelihood that we’ll experience more anxiety and worry thoughts.
Fighting with anxiety is like pouring gasoline on a fire in an effort to extinguish the fire: the gasoline will magnify the fire, and fighting anxiety will intensify our anxiety.
If fighting anxiety isn’t the solution, what can we do?
Think back to when you were a kid playing tug-of-war. You and your teammates struggled to bring the opponent to your side. Every once in a while, a team would play a joke and drop the rope at the same time. The other side would then tumble over one another, as their efforts were no longer met with resistance. There was freedom in dropping the rope. We can approach anxiety in a similar manner. Rather than making our lives about trying to defeat anxiety, we can stop struggling with it. When we “drop the rope” with anxiety, it provides us the freedom to do the things that matter most to us, even in the presence of anxiety.
It’s important to note that stopping the struggle with anxiety is not the same as liking or wanting anxiety. No one wants or likes anxiety. But, if you’ve spent most of your life trying to fight anxiety and it just seems to get bigger and your life is getting smaller, it could be helpful to consider an alternative to fighting it. We may not be able to cure anxiety, or control it, but we can learn how to experience it AND still do the things that matter the most to us. We can create a new relationship with our anxiety so that it has less power over our lives.
Learning how to experience your anxiety rather than fighting it is a skill like any other that takes practice. At Hope with ME, we are all trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is an evidence-based therapy model that teaches you how to develop a new relationship with your thoughts and feelings, so that your anxiety and worries no longer have to dictate your actions or determine your well-being. Our mission is to help people master their stress and worry and strengthen their relationships so they can win in life.
Anxiety doesn’t have to have the final say over your life anymore.