Why Fighting Anxiety Often Makes It Worse
If you’re familiar with the intense feelings anxiety brings, you’ve probably had an impulse to try to make your anxiety go away. This is a common experience – you don’t want to suffer, so of course you try to manage anxious feelings. On top of that, many of us receive cultural messages around maintaining calm, not showing strong emotions, and keeping it together.
However, trying to make your anxiety go away has a paradoxical effect of keeping it around (and sometimes even worsening it). By fighting your anxiety, you are getting caught up in a game of tug of war between you and your anxiety. This tug of war leads you to treat your anxiety as something big and scary, which gives it a lot of power.
What Anxiety Can Look Like Beyond Worry
Anxiety can manifest in many ways and can include mental, emotional, physical, and behavioral symptoms.
Some ways anxiety shows up are:
- Intrusive thoughts
- Fixation on maintaining perfection
- Sense of impending doom
- Nervousness
- Fear
- Increased heart rate or breathing
- Muscle tension
- Trembling
- Feeling weak
- Overworking and keeping busy
- Engaging in avoidance, like mindless scrolling or substance abuse
Why Self-Criticism Does Not Actually Calm Anxiety
Many people who struggle with anxiety also experience a critical inner voice. Anxiety and self-criticism often become a feedback loop – you attempt to manage your anxiety by criticizing yourself for having it, which doesn’t help the anxiety and can actually increase your anxiety as the attempt to manage it this way fails, leading to even more self-criticism.
You might find yourself caught up in the false belief that being hard on yourself will make you better at solving your problems. However, maintaining a harsh inner voice sends yourself the message that you’re never good enough, and that you’re not allowed to make mistakes or rest. It’s no wonder this leads to more anxiety – that kind of pressure is not easy to live with!
The Difference Between Accountability and Self-Attack
As a therapist, I often hear from people worried that if they let go of their inner critic, they’ll lose all sense of accountability. They worry that the minute they stop criticizing themselves, they’ll become lazy, bad at their job, or a bad friend or family member.
However, dropping self-criticism usually doesn’t lead to these fears coming to fruition. When you give yourself some space away from the harshness, you allow yourself the chance to approach your goals from a more supportive place. Practicing self-compassion instead of self-attack is like having a gentle, supportive coach or teacher who encourages you to do the things that matter to you.
What Self-Compassion Looks Like When You Feel Anxious
Self-compassion is the practice of treating yourself with kindness, support, and inner wisdom. When anxiety arises, practicing self-compassion allows you to respond to your anxiety in a gentler way than trying to fight it or control it.
Practicing compassion towards anxiety is like inviting an annoying neighbor inside for tea. Like your annoying neighbor, anxiety may not be your favorite visitor. But your experience will go much better if you practice acceptance for this visitor, rather than trying to put all your effort in trying to make the visitor go away.
Bringing this kindness to your experience of anxiety involves recognizing that anxiety is simply an experience that you can bring kind thoughts and warm feelings towards, which in turn reduces the shame you may feel about having anxiety.
How ACT Helps People Relate to Anxiety Differently
Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT (pronounced like the word “act”), is an approach that guides you to stop fighting your thoughts and emotions, and instead accept that having a range of thoughts and emotions is a part of being human. This therapy recognizes that anxiety is an inevitable part of being human, and therefore not something to reject or fight.
ACT does not ask you to like your anxiety or resign yourself to it, but instead find ways to make room for these experiences when they come up. ACT also maintains a focus on connecting to what matters to you – recognizing that if you spent all your time fighting anxiety and trying to make it go away, you wouldn’t have any chance at creating a meaningful life for yourself.
Acceptance Does Not Mean Giving Up
Acceptance is a difficult word to hear when you’ve been struggling with the intense and uncomfortable experiences that anxiety brings. But acceptance does not mean giving up when anxiety arises. Instead, acceptance simply means that you drop the struggle with trying to manage and control your anxiety.
Practicing acceptance is like going on a hike and recognizing that experiencing bugs and the hot sun come along with experiencing beautiful views and encountering interesting wildlife. If you spent all of your time waiting for the bugs to go away or the sun to not be as hot, you might never set out on your hike. Acceptance is recognizing that we can make space for the uncomfortable parts of our experience while also moving towards what matters to us.
Values-Based Action in the Midst of Anxiety
Acceptance and commitment therapy prioritizes values-based action because this is how we create a life worth living. Anxiety can send the message that you should hunker down and seek safety at all costs. But you miss out on a lot of life if you give in to these messages.
Pursuing your values in the midst of anxiety recognizes that you can experience anxiety and still connect to what matters most to you. For example, you might want to try a new book club, but are afraid that you’ll say something awkward or people will notice that you’re anxious. If you try to wait around until your anxiety goes away, you might never make it to the book club. Practicing values-based action allows you to make space for your anxious thoughts, bring kindness to them, while also being willing to go to the event and risk saying something awkward.
How to Start Responding to Anxiety With More Compassion
Bringing more compassion to your anxiety can feel overwhelming if you do not have a lot of experience trying it. If you’re new to this, there are some small ways you can get started.
Bringing compassion to your anxiety can involve:
- Naming negative self-talk when you notice it
- Speaking to yourself as you would speak to a friend
- Naming your anxiety-related emotions as they come up
- Grounding in the present by noticing what you see and hear in the moment
- Asking yourself what type of support would be helpful, and offering yourself this support or seeking it out from someone
When Therapy Can Help With Anxiety
Often, people downplay their anxiety, finding ways to handle it the best way they can on their own. However, directly addressing your anxiety with a therapist can assist you in moving beyond simply getting through your anxiety to fully shifting your relationship with anxiety.
If your anxiety feels persistent and ongoing, or disrupts your daily life, this may be a sign that therapy for anxiety is a helpful next step for you. Anxiety therapy gives you a place to build skills to respond to anxiety differently, understand anxious patterns that you’ve been getting entangled in, and build a more supportive relationship with yourself throughout this process.
Anxiety Therapy Rooted in Self-Compassion and Acceptance
If you’re tired of feeling tossed around by your anxious thoughts, working with an anxiety therapist can give you the skills, empowerment, and self-trust to take charge of your life. You’ll work together with your therapist to build acceptance for anxious thoughts, self-compassion for your struggles, and a committed stance towards doing the things that matter to you in life.
I’m a licensed professional counselor specializing in using acceptance and commitment therapy and compassion-focused therapy approaches for anxiety. If you’re in Texas, book a call at the link below to explore working together with me in therapy.