How to manage anxiety - a transformative approach.

7 minute read

Heart pounding, chest feeling tight, stomach churning, breathing fast, dizzy, tingling, can’t think clearly… sound familiar?

So what would you think if I told you this is a normal, healthy response to stress? Doesn’t feel healthy, right? In fact, it can feel like you might die from it, or like you are losing your sanity. It can feel totally out of control and therefore really frightening.

Believe me, I’ve been there, I get it. So we try everything we can think of to make it go away. We try distracting ourselves, keeping busy, meditating, trying desperately not to think about it and not to feel it. But then it seems to happen more and more often. We feel like we’re free-falling, out of control of our minds and bodies. Living in fear of feeling anxious. This fear can leech away all the joy and pleasure in life and is totally exhausting. We get lost; trapped inside our own miserable thoughts, feeling isolated, scared and alone.

We’ve got it all wrong.

I believe that the approach that our society has traditionally had to mental health troubles, and anxiety in particular, is deeply damaging. We see anxiety as an illness - a disease; something that has happened to us and is causing us harm. We try to “manage it” with distractions, breathing techniques and drugs. Don’t get me wrong, these strategies can all be really helpful but only if they are used in the right way. Otherwise, all they do is reinforce the belief that we have to make the feeling go away and that we can’t tolerate it.

There is a different approach that can completely set us free from this fear and let us get back to enjoying our lives.

So what is this approach? How do we actually do it differently…

The most important thing is not to avoid feeling anxious. When we avoid feeling the sensations of anxiety, or avoid even thinking about anxiety, we reinforce the belief that we can’t tolerate it. Even with strategies that can in themselves be really supportive, like breathing exercises and meditation, if we are doing them with the aim of stopping ourselves feeling anxious, we are still just reinforcing that belief.

For most of us, there will be an unconscious belief or fear behind that avoidance. It might be the belief that we can’t survive it, perhaps we worry that those intense physical sensations might actually harm or even kill us. On some level, do we fear all the stereotypes of insanity? Or maybe the sensations just feel so intense and scary that we believe we “can’t cope” with them (whatever that means).

So the starting point is to recognise that anxiety is a healthy response to a stimulus (we’ll get to that bit later) and will not harm us.

On that note, it’s worth checking out your general health with the doctor to rule out any concerns that it could be a physical problem rather than simply anxiety, as this will give you peace of mind.

But once you have the all-clear from the doctor, you can remind yourself that the sensations you are feeling are simply sensations and can not harm you. In fact, they are the same sensations that we feel when we go on a date, or a rollercoaster, but then we label them “excitement” and seek them out!

The problem with anxiety is not the sensations themselves, it is the thoughts and fears behind those sensations. These are what feed our fear and keep us locked in misery.

The next step is to start to notice what tends to trigger our feelings of anxiety. Maybe jot it down in a notebook, so that you can spot any recurring themes or patterns. Is it worse when you are tired, hungry, or stressed, for example, or do those feelings of anxiety come when you think about a particular issue, or have a particular thought?

What if there is no trigger?

A common problem that we encounter with anxiety is that we might not know what the trigger or stimulus is. Ever find you have jumped out of the way of something running across the carpet before you realise it’s a bit of fluff not a huge spider? Or maybe that’s just me… This is because there is a nifty little system in place in our brains that bypasses conscious thought when we are in danger, so that we react faster.

This clever system sometimes gets a little carried away. If our subconscious believes there is a threat, it will activate the fight, flight or freeze response, without bothering to check in with our conscious brain. This can mean that we’re happily going about our business, when suddenly we are flooded with adrenaline, generating sensations of anxiety. It can feel totally out of control and therefore pretty scary, but all that has happened is that our subconscious has picked up on a perceived threat and is trying to protect us.

Sometimes, we might just be run down, exhausted, or generally stressed. This will mean that there is more adrenaline in our systems already and we don’t need an additional specific trigger inorder to be feeling those sensations. Whatever the case, the important thing is to remember that those sensations will not harm us.

Now for the next step. I warn you that this bit can feel daunting and many clients are pretty horrified when I suggest it…

Move towards the sensations of anxiety, not away from them.

Yep, seriously. And trust me, I know how hard this can be. I’ve been there. But I truly believe, from my own experiences and from my professional experience, that the only way to be free from the fear of feeling anxious is to learn to tolerate those sensations. That way, we have the confidence to know that we can handle feeling anxious in the future. Because we will feel anxious at times. Of course we will - anxiety is part of the human experience.

So what do I mean by this? In practice, it means simply to allow yourself to feel those sensations. It’s really that simple. Rather than avoiding them and distracting yourself, or trying to calm yourself down so that the feelings go away, try just noticing them.

In mindfulness, people talk about an “internal spotlight”. This is a helpful technique as you can picture yourself shining that internal spotlight on wherever the sensations are in the body. The trick is not to try to change the sensations at all. You are not trying to make them get smaller, or go away. You are just noticing them.

You can then notice if there are any changes, or any thoughts that come up as you do this. Again, it can be helpful to note these down if so. Try really hard not to engage with those thoughts, whatever they may be. Just stay focusing your attention on the sensations themselves. This is tricky to do and takes practice but is so worth the effort.

It can feel quite daunting to do this at first, as many clients fear that the sensations will get worse if they allow themselves to focus on them. They might. They might not. Either way, they are still just sensations, arising from chemical signals within the body, and they will pass.

Essentially, what you are doing is retraining your mind. You are learning that you can tolerate those sensations. The more that you do this, the more confident you feel about your ability to tolerate them, the lower the fear of feeling anxious.

This is when the magic happens…

It’s not that you stop feeling anxious all together. As I said before, we’re human, of course we feel anxious. But rather, we stop feeding those sensations of anxiety with our fearful underlying thoughts and beliefs.

And that’s basically it. This way of working with anxiety is both incredibly simple and really demanding. It takes real courage to move towards the sensations in this way and it takes work and practice for it to become a habit and for the change to occur.

It is a huge relief to know that we can feel anxious without anxiety then filling our days and our lives. To feel an appropriate amount of anxiety and to notice it calmly, allow it to be there and then for it to shift gently into whatever the next emotion is…

For those of you who have really struggled with this, you will know exactly what I mean when I say that this feels like a true revolution. From someone who has been there, and who has had the privilege of witnessing this liberating process in many, many clients over the years, I can tell you it is perfectly possible.

If you have found this helpful and would like to know more, feel free to get in touch.