How to Make Anxiety Your Ally

What if your anxiety wasn’t your enemy – but your most reliable bodyguard? Living with anxiety and yet fulfilling daily tasks can be a challenge. You have to manage racing thoughts, make extra effort to focus, be aware of certain situations and activities to avoid. You may need to say No to things you would love to be doing if not anxiety. Life can shrink in a way down to those situations you know how to manage. A huge variety of coping skills such as noticing negative thoughts, breathing, moving, meditating, distracting can be within your pocket for constant use. Yet it might feel like you are living with an enemy within you in need of constant effort and negotiation. What if there is a way to understand the positive intention of anxiety and turn it into an important ally?

The power of “Welcome”

Many people would agree that anxiety is not the most pleasant feeling to feel and it can be quite disruptive within day-to-day life. It’s like a new born, crying and asking for attention and they won’t stop until heard. Clinical practice of working with people, who experience daily anxiety shows that in most cases there is a negative attitude towards it. People would say: “I am so tired of managing it”, “I hate having to feel it”, “I feel ashamed that I am so sensitive”. Difficult feelings like anger, shame, sadness and event hatred can arise in response to having anxiety. When those feelings occur, people try to push anxiety away, block it, distract from it, do anything they can to not feel it. All this resistance and attempts to ignore use up a lot of energy and attention and lead to exhaustion.

What if I would tell you that anxiety does not want to hurt anybody and it is not there to bother, annoy and make life difficult for you? What if we look at it with curiosity and compassion and say “Welcome. I see you. That is interesting”. What if we would assume anxiety is here to help, even though choosing not the most obvious way to do that.

Practice shows that a certain release happens right away when anxiety gets truly notices with acceptance and curiosity.

3 steps to understand the positive intention of anxiety

Step 1: Welcome

When the symptoms of anxiety show up, such as faster heartbeat, pressure in the chest, difficulty breezing, narrowed attention, remind yourself that that’s ok to be anxious. Remember that anxiety is just a signal and doesn’t want anything bad to happen. Say: “welcome. I see you”. In the beginning while this practice is still new it might require taking a pause within the activity or communication happening in the moment and doing a conscious effort to welcome.

Step 2: Acknowledgement and appreciation

Remembering anxiety is there for a reason, take a moment to acknowledge there is a positive intention and you appreciate the effort. Even though anxiety might choose not the best time to show up and isn’t the most comfortable to feel, there is a way of trying its best to be helpful and supportive. Sometimes the acknowledgement itself allows some relief. For example, one of my patients once noticed her anxiety before a big presentation was actually reminding her to prepare a few supportive notes – this small adjustment gave her more confidence and calm.

Step 3: Curiosity

While there is welcoming and acknowledgement, get curious about the anxiety. If it would be willing to warn you, tell you about something important, what would that be?
Common 3 ways anxiety tries to protect us are:

1. Reacting to a trigger from the past: once there was a situation, which was too much, too fast, too unbearable for the nervous system to handle, naturally everything, which can be evaluated as similar, gets a label of danger. In this way anxiety is trying to protect you from being hurt more.
2. Letting you know about present danger: our nervous system is assessing the situation every given second. Listen, is there actually something right in the moment, which feels dangerous or not ok? Did someone just break your boundary? Is there an actual threat to pay attention to? Something you feel uncomfortable about in the situation. That discomfort may come from the body (there is a tension/weird sensation/something hurts/lack of energy) or from a relationship (some discomfort from the person or people around) or the space (uncomfortable sound or wrong light or some movement…)
3. Future worry: in this case anxiety may want to let you know you are needing some more information or some more support with some future plans or wants you might have

There are many ways anxiety tries to protect. Use this menu to start with and add to it as you learn your own anxiety needs.

Step 4: Addressing the need

As the reason for anxiety is identified, allow yourself to be creative with what it might need.
If it’s reacting to past triggers, it might need some reassurance and reality check to know that the current situation is different. If there is an actual discomfort in the moment you might need to shift the situation and attune to that. If that’s a future worry, ask yourself what kind of support you might need more off and where and who you may ask.

Benefits of treating anxiety as an ally

1.   Saves energy

When the anxiety is met with a welcoming attitude, there is no need to use energy to engage in coping strategies, trying to hold the anxiety back. Natural relief happens by itself.

2.   Sustainability

Once anxiety is welcomed and the need below it gets attuned to, there is no need to repeat coping strategies again and again. The system simply remains calm.

3.   Investment into the future

With time as anxiety get used to being listened to, the process of welcoming shifts to the level of unconscious competence. It starts to happen more and more fast. It gets easier to identify the need below anxiety and it takes short moments for the system to calm down.

Conclusion

Anxiety is not an enemy, it is an ally, a signal, which wants to help in its own way. This ally can be harmful or helpful depending on your attitude to it. While met with welcoming and curiosity, it might become a great support in day-to-day life, tracking safety and comfort for you. Why not try it today? The next time you feel anxiety rising, pause, welcome it, thank it, and get curious about its message. You may be surprised at how much lighter you feel.

About the Author

Yulia Abramova holds MA in clinical psychotherapy from Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia and MA in Somatic Psychotherapy from Californian Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA. Associate Marriage and family Therapist (AMFT) number pending. Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC)  number pending.

Yulia currently works at the Process Therapy Institute under supervision of Jennifer Weisse, MFT.  With more than 16 years in the psychological field and 10 years of practice with clients and groups, she specializes in helping people transform anxiety and trauma into sources of resilience and connection.