How to Overcome Your Anxiety in Three Steps

If you’re like me, you’re no stranger to anxiety. It’s that sickening feeling down in your gut telling you that you are not ok. It’s painful and it seems to wage war against your happiness. For much of my life I have tried to escape this feeling. I’ve tried to numb it. I’ve tried to fix it. Nothing worked. Sound familiar?

Today I am happy to report that anxiety no longer infiltrates my happiness. I still feel anxiety - but I’m good with it. The secret? I made it my friend - and you can too. Here’s how…

Step One:

The first step in overcoming anxiety is in realizing that it’s not an emotion. Anxiety is simply a response to unobserved emotion. Your emotions are your own personal messengers. Painful as they can seem, they are trying to get you what you need. In this way, your emotions are your allies. You must let them in. For the longer you ignore them, the harder they will try to get your attention. This is the experience we call anxiety. Once you honor what you’re feeling and obtain what you need, the emotion will subside. Knowing this, you’ve just made a major step towards overcoming anxiety.

Step Two:

The second step in overcoming anxiety is in realizing that it comes in two types:

The first type of anxiety is a deep awareness of the existential gravity surrounding your life. It is often an unspoken intuition – but it’s there. This type of anxiety is your inner self grappling with the fear of the unknown things about you. Just who am I exactly? What do I really want? Why am I here in the first place? What happens when I die? Why am I suffering? These can be scary questions to be sure. Like it or not, we are each reckoning with them somewhere inside us. Do not be afraid. Many have gone before us in this reckoning and have left behind breadcrumbs to help us find our own meaning to it all.

I like what Søren Kierkegaard had to say about this first type of anxiety in his 1844 treatise, “The Concept of Anxiety.” He writes:

“Anxiety is a qualification of a dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology—Anxiety may be compared to dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself.”

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Isn’t freedom what you’re after? It can be scary to look down the yawning abyss of your inner self. But freedom takes courage and you can’t have courage without fear. This is the first type of anxiety – the echo of your own freedom.

The second type of anxiety is the inner awareness over things that are in your control which you are currently neglecting or ignoring. The good news about this type of anxiety is that it is quickly resolvable. It just takes a dose of mindfulness and action. Are you acting in opposition to your values? Come back. Are you neglecting that thing you said you’d do? Do it. Do you need to make amends with someone you have hurt? Make them. Are you holding on to something you must let go of? Let it go. These decisions may not be easy – but they’re usually simple. This second type of anxiety will remain until you decide to act. It’s trying to help you. Why wait another second to be free?

Step Three:

The third step in overcoming anxiety is to turn it into genuine curiosity. Though they may feel like opposite experiences, I submit that anxiety and curiosity are one in the same. Your experience of anxiety is simply your inner self being curious about some aspect of your life without your conscious intention.

Chip Conley, in his book “Emotional Equations” posited the following formula about anxiety:

Anxiety = Uncertainty + Powerlessness

Makes sense, right? Anxiety is the experience of feeling powerless in the unknown. Notice how this makes you feel.

Now compare it to this formula:

Curiosity = Wonder + Awe

Do you notice the shift in how this second formula feels? Yet it’s the same as the first - accept this formula contains within it an invitation for your conscious intention. You can’t be curious without intention.

Compare the word Uncertainty with the word Wonder. Both words describe an experience of the unknown but only the second word brings conscious intention to it. Do you feel the shift? The same is true for the difference between the experience of Powerlessness and Awe. The first word can feel hopeless. The second is an invitation to revel.

The next time you notice yourself feeling anxious, try turning your Anxiety into Curiosity. This process involves redeeming your imagination in real time. It’s often the case that what you are experiencing as anxiety is simply the result of your own imagination running off the road with you asleep at the wheel. Fear and speculation are imagined scenarios. Grab the wheel. Bring your conscious intention to the room. For me, this shift in curious awareness often looks something like this, “Hmm…I notice I’m feeling shaky. I wonder why I am feeling this way. Could it be I’ve missed something important here? Inner self, what are you trying to show me? Will you open my eyes to the wonder of this moment?” When I take a moment to redeem my imagination in real time like this, the shakiness of my anxiety evaporates instantly. What a relief! Then I go back to steps one and two above and assess what I may have missed. It can take practice, but it works every time.

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The truth is, anxiety is an important part of your life. Don’t try to avoid it - the more you try the heavier it becomes. The secret to overcoming your anxiety is simply to make it your friend. See that it’s part of you trying to help you. Become curious about it. Allow it to move you to new experiences and greater perspective. It may just be after all your own freedom calling you out.

*Sometimes it helps greatly to have a trained therapist walk with you through your process of overcoming anxiety. If you would like someone to accompany you on your journey, click here: https://www.nashvilletherapy.co/counselors. We’d be honored to be of service.

Authored by: Brent Campbell, LPC-MHSP