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What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a future-oriented emotional response to a perceived threat. If you anticipate that something bad will happen and believe you won't be able to cope, you'll probably experience sensations of internal arousal and the urge to protect yourself. Collectively, these inner experiences indicate the presence of anxiety.
If you struggle with this difficult emotion, it's likely that you respond to it with avoidance. This means that to prevent, reduce, or control anxiety, you distance yourself from certain situations or activities, try not to think about uncomfortable ideas, or participate in activities to feel calm again. There may be instances in which these responses are useful, but committing to these tactics regularly can lead to problems in living when we devote so much time and effort to managing anxiety that it becomes difficult to function effectively in important areas of our lives.
This is why it's so valuable to identify and practice a number of productive responses that you can selectively turn to whenever anxiety emerges. We don't always have control over anxiety — when it appears, its intensity, or its duration — but we do have options for responding more effectively to it. Instead of always working so hard to avoid this difficult emotion, the five suggestions below can help you clarify the emotional challenge in front of you, reduce discomfort, think in more realistic and useful ways, prioritize value-driven action, and relate flexibly to anxiety.
1. Know what you're working with
When you feel anxious, it's helpful to take a few moments to notice your STUF (sensations, thoughts, urges, and feeling labels), so you can determine how you want to understand and relate to it.
Most of us don't operate that way. Instead, we feel anxious and respond immediately with worry, distraction, or a coping strategy to try to calm things down. And because these responses are so well-rehearsed, we turn to them again and again, without ever giving much thought to the nature of the emotion, our options for responding, and which responses would be most useful.
When we're overwhelmed by anxiety, it can be difficult to figure out how to proceed, but a good starting point is to bring greater awareness and clarity to your unique experience of the emotion.
If you often notice your STUF and react as if you're in danger and won't be able to cope with a situation, an uncertain future, or the emotion itself, see if you can slow things down a bit and remain focused on the feeling. Consider the sensations in your body, the thoughts that suggest you're in danger, the urges to respond or avoid, and the feeling labels you use to identify the emotion.
Suppose, for example, that you're a good driver who inexplicably feels anxious about driving on the freeway. When you feel anxious before or during a drive, you might understand the anxiety as a signal to take seriously, a message that you must pull over, a reason to cancel plans until a friend can do the driving, or a justification to avoid driving altogether.
On the other hand, with practice, you might be able to look at your STUF and understand it objectively, as nothing more than a collection of responses to a perceived threat. From there you might decide that anxiety is merely a false alarm, a harmless annoyance, what your body does when you're presented with a challenge, or an urge you don't have to act on. You might even acknowledge that, in some instances, the anxiety you feel is a useful cue to action that reminds you to take an upcoming challenge seriously, or an opportunity to learn, grow, and improve your ability to cope with difficult feelings.
Once you take these perspectives, you might become more willing to get in the car, take a low-risk drive, and practice working through the anxiety instead of fighting it so much. Of course, this scenario won't be relatable for everyone, but the point is that, after noticing and labeling your STUF, it becomes much easier to tap into your many options for responding productively to anxiety.
2. Emotion-focused coping
Most of us intuitively respond to the unwanted discomfort of anxiety by searching for ways to reduce it. It's fine to turn to emotion-focused coping strategies like cardio, breathing exercises, eating a favorite meal, visiting with friends, or other activities that feel good, but these strategies aren't always practical and the effects can be weak and temporary. Not only that but committing only to these responses whenever you feel anxious can strengthen the belief that anxiety is intolerable, which can lead to a dependence on safety behaviors or hopelessness if they fail to have the impact you want.
There's no question that, for boosting mood, stress management, and occasionally reducing acute anxiety, emotion-focused coping strategies can be wonderful. But there's a subtle difference between impulsively turning to these tactics whenever you feel anxious and making a conscious decision to engage in a meaningful activity despite the presence of anxiety.
For example, if you feel anxious and think, "I have to take a yoga class to get a handle on this," then the yoga class is being used to reduce anxiety, which could reinforce the unhelpful belief that anxiety must be addressed before you can function. On the other hand, if you feel anxious and think, "I really want to take this yoga class, and I'm going to go, even if I feel anxious," you're prioritizing an activity you value over anxiety management.
Participating in relaxing or pleasurable activities can be helpful options for short-term relief or distraction, but for long-term anxiety management, it's valuable to practice facing anxiety directly, so you can choose responses that help you function effectively, even when anxiety makes an unwanted appearance.
3. Realistic and useful thinking
Although most of us recognize anxiety as a feeling, it's important to notice the thoughts that accompany the feeling, so you can make sense of the problem in front of you and figure out what to do about it. A good question to ask yourself when you feel anxious is "What do I think will happen?" This brings attention to the idea that anxiety is a future-oriented emotion, and it makes it a little easier to understand why you feel that way.
If you aren't clear on what concerns you, or if you're juggling many different concerns, see if you can pinpoint one or two that trouble you most. If you get stuck on biased, catastrophic predictions about the future, consider the likelihood of other outcomes, and see if you can think in more realistic and useful ways. You might find it helpful to ask yourself a series of questions:
- How do I know this bad thing will happen?
- Is there any evidence to suggest it won't?
- Are there other things that might happen? What's most likely?
- If any of these things happened, would I be able to handle them? What would I do?
- Would it be helpful to plan or problem-solve to make things a little easier or more predictable?
- What do I think I should do now?
4. Take on meaningful challenges
Instead of avoiding important but difficult experiences because of anxiety, consider whether it would be useful to prioritize value-driven activities — social, vocational, academic, creative, health-promoting, or spiritual — even if anxiety is likely to make an appearance. When you prioritize action over avoidance, you have the opportunity to learn that you can live with meaning and purpose and also tolerate difficult emotions that get in your way.
If the prospect of moving toward a meaningful challenge seems overwhelming, it could be that the challenge is too big or the cost of failure is high. In these cases, it's a good idea to start making small changes instead of trying to accomplish too much. For example, if you felt anxious about meeting with your doctor to discuss some health concerns, writing down the questions you want answered and making a call to schedule an appointment are productive first steps that can boost confidence and strengthen your commitment to change. And if you struggle with anxiety related to ongoing challenges, it pays off to make consistent changes. For example, if conversations with new people or big work projects are anxiety-provoking, lower-risk challenges, like saying hello to a few new people or committing to 30 minutes of work each day, will increase your chances for success and prepare you for taking on bigger challenges when opportunities present themselves.
5. Change your relationship with anxiety
If you're struggling with anxiety because the emotion itself is unpleasant and difficult, or you're grappling with uncertainty rather than a predicted setback, that's where it's helpful to remember that anxiety is a normal emotional response to a predicted threat, whether it's realistic or not. Instead of working so hard to control or reduce anxiety, it's helpful to be kind and supportive with yourself as you would with a friend who's dealing with the same emotional challenge, and then respond with acceptance and self-compassion. I find it helpful to remember that, yes, anxiety can feel uncomfortable and overwhelming, but it's also just a feeling, and it's okay to have feelings. Instead of being self-critical and scrambling to find a way to reduce anxiety, see if you can respond with warmth and patience while you explore ways to work through an authentic but difficult emotion.
