Step 5: Process Your Anxiety
This is the final installment in my series on how to reduce your anxiety. Up to this point, I’ve talked about things you can stop doing or possibly start doing to help you feel less anxiety on a day-to-day basis. This week, however, things are going to be a little different.
This week we’re going to talk about processing your anxiety. A lot of my clients place anxiety near the top of the list of feelings they don’t enjoy. In fact, many believe that something has gone wrong when they are feeling it and, as a result, they work hard to make it go away. Most of these strategies, however, result in resisting the anxiety or using external distractions to stop feeling it. Unfortunately, this strategy leads to more anxiety because now, not only are you feeling anxiety due to the initial thought you were having, but you’re also feeling anxious about your anxiety and, thus, you can’t stop feeling anxious!
We know that part of the human experience is feeling all the human emotions. So, what if nothing has gone wrong when you’re feeling anxious? What if that anxiety is just a normal part of life and it can be processed and experienced just like any oth How to Reduce Your Anxiety in 5 Simple Steps
Step 5: Process Your Anxiety
This is the final installment in my series on how to reduce your anxiety. Up to this point I’ve talked about things you can stop doing or possibly start doing to help you feel less anxiety on a day-to-day basis. This week, however, things are going to be a little different.
This week we’re going to talk about processing your anxiety. A lot of my clients place anxiety near the top of the list of feelings they don’t enjoy. In fact, many believe that something has gone wrong when they are feeling it, and as a result they work hard to make it go away. Most of these strategies, however, result in resisting the anxiety or using external distractions to stop feeling it.
Unfortunately, this strategy leads to more anxiety because now not only are you feeling anxiety due to the initial thought you were having, but you’re also feeling anxious because you can’t stop feeling anxious.
We know that part of the human experience is feeling all the human emotions. So, what if nothing has gone wrong when you’re feeling anxious? What if that anxiety is just a normal part of life, and it can be processed and experienced just like any other emotion?
When we “allow” our emotions, they will run their course. This is just as true for anxiety as it is for any other emotion. So, how do we allow our emotions? We do this by acknowledging them and letting them be present. We sit with them and feel them.
Let me describe to you what this looks like for me when I’m feeling anxious.
First, I close my eyes, and I ask myself what I’m feeling in my body. When I’m anxious, I often feel like my skin is crawling. There’s a tightness in my chest and jaw. I feel a need to move. It’s hard to sit still. Our emotions are vibrations in our body caused by our thoughts. This is what the vibration of anxiety feels like for me.
The next thing I do is just allow that vibration to be present in my physical body. It may not be pleasant, but i know it won’t hurt me. This is the moment where I’m just allowing the anxiety to be there.
Then I ask myself, why am I feeling anxious right now? This will often lead me to the thought that is creating the anxiety for me. The funny thing about most thoughts that create anxiety is that they are stories that your brain is telling you about something that might happen in the future.
Our brains tell us these stories to try to protect us. We’re hardwired to look for threats in our environment, and, from an evolutionary standpoint, this has been very helpful for our growth. Unfortunately, it’s less helpful when our brain is coming up with worst case scenario after worst case scenario.
When I realize that this is what is happening, I ask myself 2 questions:
1. Is this happening right now? (99% of the time the answer to this is no)
2. If this did happen, would I be able to figure out a way to handle it? (I choose to believe that I can handle anything so the answer to this question is always yes)
After that I typically thank my brain for trying to protect me. Because that’s all anxiety really is. It’s a feeling created by thoughts that our brains have created to try to protect us. If you really think about, anxiety is actually an evolutionary advantage. Of course, though, that’s not what it feels like in the moment.
Processing and working with anxiety are things that we specialize in during the Unicorn Doctor coaching program. We’d love to help you learn more.
