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Key points
- Anxiety is a fairly common but complex emotion to manage.
- Metaphors can visually highlight a decisive point with fewer words than an explanation might provide.
- The "What-If Express" metaphor compares anxiety to a train racing ahead to imagined future scenarios.
Anxiety is one of the most common challenges for humans. Anxiety and worry have some evolutionary value, helping us to be attentive to what might or could happen if we don’t continue to pay attention to safety or fail to recognize an approaching sabertooth tiger, for example. However, there are times when anxiety becomes so excessive that it can interfere with effective coping and comfortable living.
Getting stuck on a nonstop hamster wheel is exhausting. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder are examples of different types of anxiety disorders that can become debilitating. Still, even periodic or lower-level anxiety or apprehension can be problematic for some.
Making any type of positive change does involve being uncomfortable, particularly with anxiety-related issues, and metaphors can be a helpful tool to consider in approaching anxiety, apprehension, and worry. Metaphors on their own can’t cure a panic disorder, nor are the only tools needed for addressing obsessive-compulsive disorder. Still, individuals who can find key ways to remember important anchoring principles seem to progress more. The only way out is through.
Metaphor 1: Get Off the What-If Express
Many people notice that their anxiety presents in the format of “what-if” worrying, cycling around ideas of what may or may not happen. Like being on a train that is racing 100 miles ahead to a city you may or may not visit, anxiety often gets way ahead of itself. We often need to mindfully get off of the runaway train and come back to the now.
Anxiety, often to seem helpful, tries to get us to figure out all possibilities or prepare for worst-case scenarios. While there can be helpfulness in some planning and preparation, the process of over-thinking and over-planning is more of a detriment than a help.
And if we are only looking at the future, we are missing the gift of the present. The focus is on finding a way to return to the station of life where someone is at this moment and to cope with the issues at hand. We are finding a way to come back to present-moment attention with mindful intention.
Self-reflection questions:
- Do you have a runaway train pattern that comes up for you at certain times or in certain situations?
- How do you pause and come back to the present most effectively?
- Can you envision the steps of a train slowing and eventually stopping at a here-and-now station?
Metaphor 2: Burnt Toast and Fire Departments
Anxiety is a drama queen. It’s wired into us as a means of our bodies trying to alert us about possible emergency situations, as we are much more likely to become activated and ready for action if a situation seems dire. But the problem is that anxiety is trying to call the fire department when the smoke is only because some toast has been left in the toaster too long.
There may have been an unfortunate, scary, or disappointing event, but unintentional over-activation blurs the reality of the situation and makes functioning effectively much more confusing. When we realize that we might be experiencing a burnt toast situation rather than a house fire, we are then in a much better position to manage the situation at hand.
Self-reflection questions:
- What type of situations create “fire alarms” for you?
- Are they indeed the type of circumstances requiring higher intensity intervention, or are they often ones later discovered to be less emergent than first realized?
- Can you identify some of your body signals that the alarm is ringing internally?
Metaphor 3: Snow Globes
Anxiety can be likened to the ongoing shaking of a snow globe. If we hold a beautiful snow globe with a miniature scene or character in the interior, it is very difficult to see if we are continually shaking it. And then we might panic more because we can’t see the tiny interior scene and so often end up shaking it harder.
But if we settle, breathe, and let the snow settle to the bottom of the snow globe, we can often see things much more accurately. Coping with anxiety can be similar. We often need to settle ourselves slowly, mindfully, and deliberately to be able to see what is going on, what is needed, and what next step to take. No one can think clearly in a dysregulated state, and expecting this of ourselves is not fair or appropriate. Settle first, then think.
Self-reflection questions:
- When was the last time your snow globe was blurry and shaken up?
- What happened once the shaking stopped and the snow settled internally and externally?
- What are your favorite settling methods that are possible to do at the moment without using any special tangible objects or complex steps?
