Thinking Differently About Anxiety
In dealing with dangerous events in real life, it is often very useful to just get away and escape. If your house is on fire, the first thing you need to do is get out. But in the internal world of thoughts and feelings, the harder you try to “get away” from difficult feelings, like anxiety, the worse the results. What you automatically do, reacting to a thought as though it is actual danger, is exactly the opposite of what you need to do.
Anxiety is not danger. It is only discomfort. It doesn’t need to be run from, suppressed, denied, comforted or placated.
Acceptance and acknowledgement of difficult emotions can be extremely helpful: “I am experiencing anxiety right now. This is what it feels like in my body. I also know that I am not in danger, I am only experiencing discomfort. I can be curious and investigate what this anxiety feels like. And I know it will pass.”
Breathing Into the Diaphram
Anxiety will pass on it’s own. But while you are waiting for it to pass, you can make yourself more comfortable by practicing a variety of breathing techniques to activate your sympathetic nervous system, that part of the nervous system that is designed to help you ‘rest and digest.’ Here’s one:
1.Place one hand on your belly and the other on your chest.
2.Begin with an audible exhale. Sigh. Let your shoulders and upper body relax and collapse slightly forward.
3. Pause
4.Inhale slowly through your nose by pushing your belly out. Feel it pushing out with your hand.
5. Pause
6. Exhale slowly through you mouth by pulling your stomach in,
7. Pause.
8. Repeat the inhale and exhale, with the belly rising and falling, as needed.
The Principle of Opposite Action
It is easier to change your feelings through your actions than to wait for your feelings to change in order to get on with your life. One of the most useful rules of thumb in dealing with severe anxiety is to do the exact opposite of what it is telling you to do. Fear tells you to fight, flee, resist and struggle. What if you instead accept and acknowledge the feelings without being afraid of them? For example, fear might tell you to hold your breath, resist the fear, tense the body, stand still, hide, or flee. The opposites: breath into your belly, accept the fear, relax the body, move your body, and hang out.
What you may find is that the discomfort might not go away. But you can be freed from the tyranny of responding to scary thoughts as though they were reality. You can stop contributing to the anxiety cycle with your own reactions and anticipations.
More About the Principal of Opposite Action
Someone struggling with anxiety may try to process it away in therapy, meditate, use affirmations and try lots of strategies to make the anxiety go away, to no avail. Inevitably intense feelings will tell them to get the heck out of the situation that is so difficult for them.
Instead of fleeing, the first thing you can do is change the way you talk to yourself. Tell yourself that this is discomfort and not danger. Can you tolerate and accept some discomfort?
The second thing you can do is to practice doing the opposite. Notice the instructions the anxiety is giving to you, and used them as precise but opposite instructions of what you actually needed to do. For example, with social anxiety the anxiety may tell you to be quiet, just observe, and get out. Instead you might try to introduce yourself, speak up, hang out, and interact with others.
It will not be a comfortable experience, but you may find you are no longer victimized by the anxiety. You can change your actions, and this will ultimately change the way you are feeling in the long run.