When people come to therapy for anxiety, they often say that their goal is to not have anxiety anymore.  This makes sense as a goal -- the anxiety is uncomfortable and gets in the way of things you want to do, so of course you want it to not be there anymore.  This can make it all the more frustrating when you learn that a more realistic goal might be to learn ways to handle the anxiety even while it is still there, so you don’t feel taken over by it.

It is, of course, possible to decrease anxiety, so if you have a high amount of anxiety, please know that this doesn’t have to be your experience.  There are ways to limit how frequently and severely those feelings come up.  But you won’t be able to make it go away totally.  

And when you think about it, maybe you wouldn’t actually want the anxiety to disappear completely -- anxiety actually does some good things for us, though that can sometimes be hard to believe.  For example, when you are anxious about a test, anxiety leads you to study for it.  If you had no anxiety at all about bills, you might not ever pay them.  And neither of these scenarios would work out well for you.  Anxiety motivates us to do things we need to do; It’s a necessary part of our life.

Problems with anxiety happen when those feelings take us over -- when they happen so frequently and strongly that they determine what we do in negative ways.  For example, you might avoid hanging out with friends because you are afraid that they will judge you, or you avoid trying something new because you might not do well at it. This kind of anxiety limits our experiences and takes away from how we want to live our lives, rather than giving us the motivation we need to keep moving forward.  This is the kind of anxiety that we want to limit.

You might notice, however, that when you push anxiety away, it just becomes stronger and more difficult to deal with.  And just ignoring the anxiety isn’t very helpful either.  We need a middle ground.  Some ways we might attain this is through meditating and helpful self-talk, along with other strategies such as distraction.  The goal is to have the anxiety still be present, but to have you be in control, rather than having the anxiety be in control.  It’s the feeling of having to do what the anxiety says that leads to so much discomfort.  When you can have the anxiety be present but not “in charge,” you can acknowledge that the feeling is there but still make decisions based on what you actually want to do, rather than what the anxiety wants.  It changes the experience of having anxiety and helps it to feel more manageable.

This image I found on Instagram shows this perfectly.  In the first diagram, the person is being controlled by their anxiety, while in the second diagram, the anxiety is still present but the person is in control.  It is a better, more empowering experience.

If you are struggling with anxiety, I encourage you to work with a therapist to identify what might help you to put your anxiety in the “passenger seat” -- you deserve to live a life where you are in charge of the destination.