Anxiety - making it an ally, not an enemy
Surviving to Thriving
I was listening to Mel Robbins’ podcast today and she had on Dr. Maron Ross, a Harvard professor, and he was talking about anxiety.
He said that the two things to start with are the following:
1-Stop judging yourself for the anxiety - let it be as it is - you can’t change that you have those feelings. It’s normal and your body and mind is trying to protect you.
2-Use it as an ally. It can make you better, stronger.
The ‘how’ he outlines in these following steps:
1-Identify what it is causing you anxiety
2-Share your emotions on it
3-Embrace it - so face your fears.
4-Let go - there is a degree of surrender, because we have to accept that we can’t control anxiety - how we feel.
We can only control what we do about it and how we respond to it.
I appreciate this, as well -
In the reframing of the conversation surrounding anxiety - it’s a moment of uncertainty and doubt as to your ability to handle.
So, what that means is this -
The anxiety is not the effects themselves - regardless of whether they are cognitive, behavioral or physiological.
The deep fear and grip that anxiety has on us is that we won’t be able to handle it or deal with it, how we’re feeling.
That we can’t/won’t be able to function. To do the thing - whatever that thing is for you.
And I think it makes all the sense.
The need to thrive with it -
We have to embrace it and to have a degree of - I can’t control this.
We can’t outrun the bad feelings surrounding anxiety (or, I would imagine depression, but often depression is a dulling and lethargy and hopelessness, whereas anxiety shows up as more immediate - in the moment, at least for me.)
I am also reading another Dr. Brene Brown for a class I’m taking on Leadership, Daring Greatly. And in it she quotes Stephen Covey, who says that -
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Anxiety may not be fear, as Dr. Martha Beck teaches us that they are different in her recent book, Beyond Anxiety. Fear is a true immediate threat and anxiety is the distant worry or fear you won’t/can’t - often times we’re not in true mortal danger with anxiety, but we feel that we are.
Because we’re existing in the future. Not in the present.
Many forms of anxiety can’t always exist in the future - it almost always has to borrow into some aspect of the future and lies/tall-tales told about it.
Sure, we can feel physiological effects in the moment -
But, the perpetuation of the spiral that keeps anxiety going - that has to exist in the future.
I think many of us fear anxiety - over some thing or another, some topic, and we may have cognitive, behavioral, physiological effects as a result- or, perhaps, a combination of all of them.
However, as hard as that all is, we can survive and use it to feel more incontrol and like we can trust ourselves with it.
That - even if this_____ happens, I’ve got it.
In that way, it is also about building trust within yourself.