Anxiety is part of everyday life. It has a purpose, it is forward motion. The extraordinary thing about humans is our excellence at survival. We have anxiety to thank for that. However, I’m not saying anything new when I assert that the cables that connect us to our instincts for anxiety are twisted in an environment where we are not hunted. This idea has, in my view, pretty thoroughly permeated the zeitgeist. We accept that modern life makes humans more a victim of anxiety than master.
Yet there is mastery to achieve. If you were to become master of the anxiety that pulls you along, that urges you to complete tasks, or have a hard conversation with someone, or go for a new venture, or rethink your plan - it could look like having a regular coffee date. To partner with anxiety is to understand its signals, and understanding would come with the appropriate amount of time and focus, just like anything else. It can be transformative to count on anxiety’s presence in your schedule, invite it there, give it air time, and come away with a solid sense of what it means.
Personally, I have had a tough road with anxiety. I find it to be an overpowering force. I find that I can’t fight it, in fact. What happens when I try? It grows stronger, zapping my energy away to build on itself. Then, when I’m weaker, when anxiety has the upper hand, it lies to me and I believe it. From there it’s a slippery slope to a total unravel.
Anxiety gets nasty when it’s neglected. Like a stray dog. Like a good woman.
Becoming a master at handling your own personal anxiety comes with knowing yourself. The practice of inviting anxiety as if it were a regular coffee date between the two of you is easier to plan for when you know what things in your life will trigger it. So when that trigger hits, your time with anxiety is anticipated and, hopefully, brief. Rather than take you by surprise, you let it in, sit with it, and pass it along after receiving its message. It can be humbling to accept what anxiety has to say, but it won’t let up until you listen.
The challenge is to think about anxiety differently. It does mean something, there is a message inside it. That message could be kind of ugly, it could be inconvenient. But it is part of you, very deep inside with your survival instinct, buried underneath a host of modern contradictions. The challenge is to meet it with grace. Give anxiety a coffee date. Let it reveal something to you. After that, a special type of magic can happen. After you have heard anxiety’s message, you get power, you get choice. You will be the one to make the decision in light of what anxiety reveals.
Do you spend time thinking about what anxiety is trying to tell you? Are you curious about what it could be useful for?