Anxiety - if we resist, can it persist?
How I work with anxiety
As humans beings, anxiety is part of our makeup. We live in a world where we once had to fight to survive – and our physiology keenly adapted to help us. We also, I believe, instinctively move towards comfort. Why wouldn’t we fight against the symptoms that make us feel discomfort? However, the feelings of anxiety and symptoms of panic attacks are natural.
Often when I work with clients with anxiety, I like to talk about radical acceptance. But what do I mean by this? One may think that surely, I shouldn’t just accept feeling this way?
Radical acceptance isn’t about resignation or sitting back. It’s not admitting “defeat,” so to speak. Instead, it’s about working on the inclination to fight against what we are going through, or what challenges us in a particular moment.
Take someone who is struggling with public speaking. They’re expected to speak at a conference and this triggers intense feelings of anxiety. They spent the weeks in the lead up to the speech worrying, impacting their concentration, their confidence and triggers real genuine fear.
There are many factors at play here and many things could be going on for this person. However, one tool for working with this is admitting – and more importantly accepting – that public speaking triggers anxiety. Accepting what is going on for you can be a powerful way to think. For example, it’s not a sign of weakness that someone may get anxious in front of lots of people. That’s arguably quite a stressful, unusual thing to do – not many people have to do it. It doesn’t make you weak to being feeling anxious. You’re a human being.
“Wait a second – this IS in fact quite a daunting thing. So, it’s OK that I’m concerned about it. In fact, if nerves get to me, I MAY very well fumble. But what is the likelihood that this will have any real impact on anything – people will be sympathetic, people will understand. I’m accepting right now that this is a peculiar thing being asked of me and it does feel demanding. But that is OK.”
What we fear could happen, or the consequences of how we think, can very often be the catalyst for a spiral of thought that leads us to expect the worst. It’s how we work with acceptance, and being human, that can make all the difference.
