The Trick To Feeling Less Anxious
The Trick To Feeling Less Anxious
Anxiety is exhausting. It’s worrying about events outside your control and worst case scenarios that’ll probably never eventuate - often at 3am, peak worry time - but it’s not just that, it’s physical too - headaches, nausea, feeling tense and on edge, they’re all part of the package as well.
And when it’s bad, it’s all consuming. Which is why where you can, you avoid the things that make you anxious. You delay starting the work presentation you’re dreading, you push speaking to your boss about a pay rise to next week’s to-do list, and you have excuses ready to go to get out of large gatherings with friends.
Anxiety is horrible, so not wanting to feel anxious makes sense. But avoidance won’t help you to not feel anxious. Well it will for a second, but then you’ll remember that the thing you’re anxious about is still there, you haven’t dealt with it, and it’ll feel more stressful than it did before, because the longer you avoid something, the bigger it becomes in your head and the more competition it has. While you’re waiting/avoiding, more things get added to your ‘things I’m feeling anxious about’ list, and as that list grows, so does your anxiety.
Avoidance isn’t the key to feeling less anxious. It sounds backwards, but what will help you to feel less anxious is doing the opposite of what your anxiety is telling you to do. When you’re anxious and you want to avoid something, face it head on instead. Break the task down into small steps if you have to, or modify it somehow to make it less anxiety-provoking - give yourself permission to go to your friend’s party for 35-minutes instead of 2-hours for example - but face it, don’t avoid it.
And yes, facing up to whatever’s making you anxious will make you more anxious initially, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because not all anxiety is equal.
There are two different types of anxiety – ‘wasteful anxiety’ and ‘productive anxiety’. The difference? Wasteful anxiety is the anxiety you’re living with right now. It’s relentless and exhausting, and it serves no real purpose other than to make you feel bad. Productive anxiety feels just as bad, but it serves a purpose – it’s anxiety that will help you to feel less anxious in the future.
How? Because when you confront an anxiety provoking issue head on one of two things happens: after all your worry, headaches, and sleepless nights, the outcome you were worried about doesn’t even happen, or it does, but it’s not nearly as bad as you thought it would be and you get through it. You learn through direct experience, which is always more powerful than learning from what others’ say, that your anxiety is misleading. It tricks you into thinking worst case scenarios are more likely than they are and it makes you under-estimate your ability to cope. The more you challenge your anxiety and confront issues head on, the clearer all that becomes, and the power your anxiety once had over you starts to diminish.
Still sceptical? Try it.
Next time you’re anxious, instead of avoiding the issue, see if you can confront whatever it is that’s making you feel that way head on. What have you got to lose? You’re anxious already – why not see what happens when you convert wasteful anxiety into productive anxiety.
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