Anxiety Management?

What comes to mind when you think of anxiety? Worries about bankruptcy or family members dying. Heart racing. Sweaty palms. Shallow breathing. I’m guessing you seldom think of these experiences as good. Of course anxiety is not meant to feel good. The discomfort of anxiety is there to alert us of some potential threat. But it often fires off when it’s not needed like a fire alarm set above a toaster oven.

However, when we always approach our anxiety with this perception of “danger” and the sense that it needs to be gotten rid of, something important gets lost. (And I’m not attempting simply to reframe anxiety as good, as I know personally and from years as a therapist just how difficult it can be). What may get lost in our instant reaction to anxiety as something negative and chaotic to be managed, is its shadow role in indicating to us something that we care about.

If you are anxious about others’ judgements of you, perhaps you value close connection and your reputation. If you are anxious about your health, perhaps you care about maintaining your fitness. If you are worried about going bankrupt, perhaps you find importance in maintaining a secure lifestyle. If all our effort is put into managing the anxiety, we might actually find ourselves avoiding the thing that it signals as important to us.

For instance, if in my attempts to manage my social anxiety I withdraw from others or focus on just breathing or trying to change my thoughts, “they are probably just thinking about themselves,” well all my focus and action gets directed towards the anxiety and away from actually connecting with my friends. When I feel a tension in my chest after a brisk walk and conclude that it’s no longer safe to walk despite my doctor’s reassurances, then I may be walking away from taking care of myself in an attempt to take care of my anxiety.

So maybe it’s not so much about managing our anxiety. Maybe it’s more about respecting the role anxiety has to play in our lives in orienting us (granted, in a backwards kind of way) towards what actually matters to us. We might welcome the anxiety not as something we find fun or pleasurable to have, but as an internal radar that point us in the direction our soul wishes to travel.