Anxiety is just a feeling and feelings are just vibrations. All feelings are just vibrations that we feel in our body. These vibrations might make our heart race, or give us a stomach ache, make our minds race. But these are all just vibrations in our body. Pause for a second and digest this.
Nobody ever died from anxiety. It is harmless and it is our reaction and our resistance to it the anxiety that make anxiety a problem. You might want to get rid of anxiety, but anxiety can help to spur us on, help us stay alert, make us aware of risks and motivate us to solve problems. Anxiety can also help us to learn and grow. Not all anxiety translates into danger. And when we are in burnout, we spend a lot of time in the emotion of anxiety.
What do you do when you’re feeling anxiety?
Sometimes when we anticipate an emotion it gives us an upper hand on it and we can feel empowered knowing it is coming. This gives us time to prepare. When you feel anxiety, call it what it is (give it a label) and name it (anxiety, worry, fear). These two things will help us when we get a wave of anxiety. Anticipate it (say to yourself, "this always makes me feel anxious"), and then label it (this is anxiety). Where do you feel anxiety in your body? Does it have a color? Is it shiny or dull? Anxiety
can sometimes be sneaky and hard to identify.
The best way to deal with anxiety is to get comfortable and relax with it. Try to relax into and and just be with it. Let it sit next to you, carry it with you in your purse and take it to work with you. Breathe in and out which is the opposite of what our bodies want us to do. What most of us do when we’re feeling anxious is increase the tension and fall into the fight or flight mode. We have to learn to allow ourselves to truly experience anxiety while remembering that YES! It is uncomfortable. Nobody is going to argue with that. When we start to worry about feeling anxiety things just amplify and we loop in it, over and over again.
Opening up to anxiety (or any emotion) and owning it will give you authority over it.
One of the best, most descriptive things I’ve heard said about anxiety is that it thrives on vagueness.
As soon as you separate yourself from it and create some distance with it, you will begin to have power over it. Overcoming anxiety is accepting it.
When you begin to feel anxious, ask yourself why. When you trace back and ask yourself why, you will find that it is always associated with a thought. What thought is making you anxious?
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