How To Manage and Overcome Anxiety

Anxiety is really difficult, and if you’re here reading this material, you’ve probably already felt how debilitating anxiety can be in your life. I am going to share with you some secrets to manage and overcome your anxiety so that you can begin to take back what you may have lost.

Studying as an intern, I wanted to know why is it that my clients were struggling so much. They would tell me they always felt anxiety. I thought, do they always feel anxiety? As I did some research and I dug a little deeper, what I learned is that anxiety isn’t actually a static state. We’re not always anxious – which means there is some kind of causal factor in effect. 

What is Anxiety? 

Anxiety is your body’s physiological response to a perceived threat -whether that threat is real, imagined, conscious, unconscious, physical, or to your identity. When people come into my office, they want to talk to me about their anxiety and how much it’s affecting them. I have to be able to get them to understand that their anxiety is a response to something else going on. Because it’s a physiological response to a perceived threat, that perceived threat is what is really, really important here. Without that perceived threat, you’re just simply not having anxiety. But then you might be saying, ‘I don’t really feel like I am perceiving a threat.’  You are absolutely right. Your brain is so smart that you may not actually realize that your perceiving threat until it is there. Your body will start its response before you become consciously aware that there is a threat out there. That’s how smart you brain really is.

The physiological response that is actually happening here is coming from your body’s autonomic nervous system, which is controlled by two things: your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is activated while you are going through your anxiety response. We call it “fight or flight,” and sometimes we add in “freeze.” So, it is ‘fight, flight or freeze.’ When this is happening, we feel like the world is coming to an end, we get tightness in our muscles, we have racing thoughts, we can’t really control ourselves, we get tons of energy, we’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to do something right now.’ You might even get stomach problems. You might even have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).

All kinds of these things are constantly going on because of your actual physiological response, which is just the way your body is supposed to work. If we took away your anxiety completely, what you would have left is zero perception of threat – and that is dangerous, because in that case you would walk out into the street and cars would hit you. So, we do actually need to have this response; it’s important to our survival. 

The problem is when this response starts happening too frequently, too often impeding your life, and taking away from you the things that you would actually like to do and engage in. That perception of threat, is actually a feeling of unsafety. It does not feel comfortable but it also is not necessary.  What we are most often dealing with here is the perception within ourselves that we lack ability, confidence or esteem to take on the daily struggles.

Anxiety Therapy Tip: Rebuild Your Confidence

There are three pillars that are going to make a difference in your life in your attack against anxiety: your ability, your confidence and your esteem. You’re taking back your life. When we perceive that we lack those things, it might sound like this:  ‘I’m not good at,’ or ‘I’m not the kind of person that can do that.’ Have you ever said those things? 

In addition to that insecurity causing our anxiety, it can actually cause us to have depression;  those feelings of negative self-talk and that degrading, critical inner voice that brings us down. With it, comes avoidance. When our anxiety starts going up, up, up, we want to get out. We want to get rid of that anxiety as quickly as possible – avoidance is a really natural response. 

This avoidance comes in a couple of different forms, because really this is just a defense mechanism (Freud wasn’t too far off with his ego defenses). We see some of those in play when we’re actually trying to avoid our anxiety – we really want to get that anxiety away as quickly as possible. We are looking for an immediate reduction, so those defense mechanisms become things like actual avoidance, isolation, anger, and/or substance use. And with those, we are going to be pushing people away and avoiding situations. 

This is where social anxiety often starts to enter the picture. When other people are around and you feel, ‘I don’t want to be a part of that.’ When we hit the moment we are actually avoiding, we inadvertently reinforce our feelings of insecurity. So now, we are right back to that point of insecurity. Right? This creates a loop where we go from insecurity to anxiety to avoidance back to insecurity. This vicious cycle can lead anyone into a path of self hate if you allow it to consume you.   

For example, this may have happened to you; your friend calls you up on the phone and they say, ‘hey let’s go to this party.’  You’re thinking, ‘oh a party – that would be cool. Who’s going to be there?’ They start naming off all these people and you haven’t really met them and don’t really feel comfortable with them. And all of a sudden, your anxiety starts to tick up.  So then, you’re thinking in your head, ‘Ah what am I going to do with this anxiety?’ and you make a decision, you say, ‘I am not going to go’ and immediately you feel better. Your friend is bummed out and says, ‘I really wish you would have come, but okay, catch you next time.’ Then, you are sitting at home and you’re thinking, ‘why didn’t I go?  I could have gone. I should’ve gone, what is wrong with me?’ You start checking your Facebook or your Instagram, and you’re looking at their pictures and they are having such a great time. You think, ‘I could have been there, that could have been me. Why can’t I go and do that kind of stuff? What’s wrong with me?’ You’ve now taken away from yourself any ability, confidence and esteem that you were starting to build.  Then we’re back again to that insecurity, which is going to lead you to more anxiety and depression.

We need to discover that moment that breaks us out of that cycle – otherwise, we’re going around and around. The more our insecurity is being reinforced, the greater our anxiety is going to be. But at some point, we have to manage, and this is the hard part. This is where things get really tough. This is the part where you’re thinking, ‘I can’t manage.’ But you can. You probably have already – you just don’t really realize that. 

We start to manage through our situation regardless of the difficulty; whether we can go for a minute, five minutes, ten minutes, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you did it and you tried. When we do that, we have some factual results that happen: ability, confidence and esteem.

This is the other pillar of this concept. On one side of it, we’re lacking, but on the other side, we are actually building.

Anxiety Therapy Tip: How to Manage Anxiety 

Managing anxiety is about building ability, confidence and esteem.  That first time that you manage it, you actually did have ability. But then you might say, ‘Clint, I really don’t have the confidence to do this reliably.’ Okay, but you can build that, right? See, I believe that we can build confidence through persisting in spite of failures. This is the story of riding a bike, right? You crash so many times, but you still want to ride that bike. You keep getting back on. If you want to overcome your anxiety and feel more confident, you’ve got to just keep trying. It is hard. 

But then you might say, ‘I am not a good person.’ But you’ve been reading this blog for a bit now, and you’ve stuck with it. ‘Maybe I can change. Maybe there is hope.’ And I believe that you actually do care about and value yourself, deep down inside.  That’s esteem; it is value. We build that, and then we utilize that ability, confidence and esteem.

Here’s the problem. If you at this point do it once, manage once and give yourself credit, you are going to go straight back to insecurity and you’re going to say, ‘I can’t,’ ‘I’m not good at,’ ‘I am not the kind of person that can do that.’  So, all you did was a hard thing. Congratulations, you did a hard thing. But we actually have to take this and use this more often.  

We have to find a way to reward ourselves frequently. If you are not rewarding yourself, then that behavior is probably not going to stick. Reward comes in a lot of different ways. It can be reinforcement, it can be incentive and validation. Sometimes it is just somebody telling you, ‘Wow! You are really doing a great job.’ We’ve got to be able to find a way to start doing that for ourselves. 

We are relying too much on other people to validate us.  While I do want other people to become better validators, we first have to start with ourselves – to be able to say, ‘I did that,’ ‘I moved myself through that.’ That is going to be super valuable for you.  As you build ability, confidence and esteem, you will be able to actually reduce your feelings of insecurity. This is going to make your anxiety response less intense.

Through your own choice, you can actually manage through that moment. Regardless of the difficulty, you can do it; you can prove to yourself that you can actually make and do hard choices and hard things. In doing this, you will be able to overcome this. You will be able to reclaim those parts of your life that you feel like you have lost. It might be hard, but be patient with yourself. Give yourself a chance. I believe in you. I believe that through this work you can actually overcome the challenges that are in your life.

Overcome Anxiety with Support in Las Vegas

If you’re struggling with anxiety, feel free to share with me – I would love to be able to answer your questions about these things and be able to validate and reinforce why you should continue to try to work and push forward. We don’t have to struggle alone. You don’t have to isolate yourself – we can build a community together right here at Headway inSight. Call me today for an appointment, 702-682-6080. I have immediate openings – I can’t wait to support you.