When Anxiety Feeds On Itself

When people feel Anxious, they often don’t attempt to face it and cope with it themselves, but look to others to take away their Anxiety by asking for reassurance. The more we look for reassurance, the worse our Anxiety becomes, we are likely to develop a habit of constantly asking for reassurance and gradually this can convince us that we can’t deal with it ourselves.

It is a natural human instinct to stop ourselves experiencing physical or emotional pain, so if we are experiencing it, we will automatically try to stop it. We tend not to accept that there is no reason why we shouldn’t experience pain physically or emotionally; in fact when it comes to Anxiety, we actually benefit by increasing our tolerance for it. The faster we are prepared to ACCEPT ANXIETY for what it is, and don’t try to stop it or control it, but STAY WITH IT until we have a balanced and accurate interpretation of it (i.e. be prepared to CHANGE OUR DISTORTED INTERPRETATION OF IT the sooner it will decrease).

If we practice building up our tolerance for EMOTIONAL DISCOMFORT we develop greater emotional resilience AND INCREASED CONFIDENCE IN OUR ABILITY TO COPE WITH ADVERSITY  the more we actively practice this, the less Anxiety we experience.

If we keep insisting to ourselves that our Anxiety is impossible to cope with, that constant repetition alone will mean we are likely to do everything possible to AVOID IT, which, paradoxically, will create more of the very Anxiety we are trying to prevent.

strategy, what do we do to manage it?

 This is extreme thinking and is inaccurate and unhelpful, because it makes it worse, we convince ourselves that we shouldn’t have to tolerate it and we come to strongly believe this.

By realising that we are in fact OVER ESTIMATING ANXIETY this enables us to make the choice to take on the CHALLENGE of STAYING WITH IT, which subsequently proves that we can in fact DEAL WITH IT OURSELVES

How avoidance works (or doesn’t) 🤔

Results:

Rapid increase in both short term and long term Anxiety

How staying with it (or confronting Anxiety) does work

This is really difficult to endure and I tend to think that it’s impossible to do anything about it. But the more I think this way, the worse I feel.

The sooner I ACCEPT ANXIETY FOR WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS, UPSETTING AND REALLY UNPLEASANT, BUT NOT ACTUALLY AS AWFUL AS I AM TELLING MYSELF and prepare to increase my tolerance for the emotional discomfort of it, the easier IT WILL BECOME.

People often believe that choosing not to avoid Anxiety is a risk, but this isn't the case at all. The belief that it's a risk is further extreme and inaccurate thinking. Try to establish and practice an accurate thinking balance about Anxiety. Realise that it is upsetting to be Anxious, but not a disaster. The more you focus on the task in hand rather than on your Anxiety, the more you will find your Anxiety is not a problem, because you are focussing on the task in hand and not on your Anxiety.