Does Anxiety Stop You From Living a Meaningful Life?

Anxiety is an inevitable part of life. Anxiety serves as our built-in alarm system, but sometimes, due to various factors such as genetics, past experiences, and psychological traumas, some individuals' alarm systems remain on high alert constantly. When this happens, it becomes challenging to differentiate between what constitutes an emergency and what does not. Everything, from life's minor obstacles to serious situations, is perceived as equally distressing. It's clear that living in this constant state of alertness is extremely difficult. However, when we begin to fight against this pain with thoughts like 'I can't handle this' or 'Is this too much to bear? I need to feel better,' we only compound the issue. The attempt to eradicate our pain only leads to further complications.

What if the solution is to allow pain to exist and respond to it in a different manner? Perhaps by using strategies that propels us forward rather than leaving us paralyzed in the cycle of attempting to rid ourselves of something that may be better left alone. To address anxiety and move forward, consider the following strategies based upon Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT therapy), which is a type of mindful psychotherapy that helps you stay focused on the present moment and accept thoughts and feelings without judgment.

Below are a six strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that you can learn and practice right away:

1. Cultivate psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility’s aim is to be able to generate a myriad of ways to respond to uncomfortable emotions and situations rather than avoiding or suppressing them. You can learn and practice this skill by first taking a step back from intense emotions, then secondly consider alternatives for your thoughts and actions. Cultivating a non-judgmental and curious attitude towards your thoughts and emotions is key for learning how to increase the number of ways to respond to unwanted internal experiences while also allowing those experiences to just be.
2. For example imagine you’re stuck in traffic and running late for an important meeting. You can practice psychological flexibility by accepting your present reality (you cannot control traffic jams) and then shift your attention and focus to what you can control-such as using the time to listen to a podcast or practice your talking points for the meeting.
3. Lean in to your feelings. Make a deliberate choice to not push away what feelings show up. Instead be open and willing to experience them, learn about them and stay present with them. In a nutshell, pushing internal experiences away doesn’t reduce our feelings. Instead, allow yourself to notice and feel your emotions. Often times our fear of feeling anxiety itself is greater than the actual feeling itself. When we spend our time focused only on trying to get away of our anxiety we are only engaging with our imagination and all of its attempts to keep us safe. However, we are actually missing out on engaging in behaviors that can bring us the things we want. When we act on behaviors that truly help us we are engaging in the realities of the world.
4. Be Present. Think about the last time you went for a walk in nature or a long car ride. Often times we are on autopilot, lost in our thoughts. Practice being present throughout your day by paying attention and noticing your environment. For example, the next time you take a walk notice the leaves on the trees, the feeling of the wind on your face, and the chirping of the birds. Being present means living in the external world rather than living in your mind listening to rules that may not apply. Living more often in the external world is the goal.
5. Defuse thoughts from feelings. Sometimes anxiety is supercharged when our feeling are thought to be facts. When we experience this we fuse with our emotions making it hard to decider what is real or reality and what is just our feelings based on our anxiety. Taking a step back allows us to see our intense thoughts as "possibilities" rather than as “truths”. The goal of this strategy to help with perceiving internal “rules” as “maybes” so we can get the distance and time to skillfully figure out if our thoughts are accurate.
6. Let your values guide you. Since our internal experiences aren’t always our best guideposts, our values can provide us with a more stable set of directives for how we make choices. Leaning on our values for making decisions also lowers our chances of being a victim to our irrational thoughts and feelings.
7. For example, if one of your values is to be a good partner, engaging in behaviors that are in accordance with this value, rather than engaging in activities to suppress anxiety or or other negative feeling, allows one to spend their time on meaningful activities and to engage externally with the world rather than internally and disconnected.
8. Commit to action. Committed actions are the actual steps one can take to live the life they want. It’s important when taking committed actions that your actions line up with your values. In doing so, you’re less likely to feel that your actions are obligatory tasks. Keep in mind, you will always gain from the actions you take that are in line with your values.