Anxiety As An Ally And Not As An Enemy
Many people suppress and deny their anxiety in order to avoid feeling it. They are so ashamed of this discomfort that very often they do not think twice and struggle to fight against it. However, the anxiety remains there. It does not disappear nor does it diminish in intensity. That’s why experts recommend seeing anxiety as an ally, not an enemy.
Seeing anxiety as an ally is something that, at first, may seem difficult for many people. They ignore the benefits that this approach could have on their lives. On the other hand, they may be afraid to try to make certain changes.
Let’s dig deeper into this fascinating subject.
Anxiety is well known but not always well understood
The concept of anxiety has been widely known for a relatively short time. We live in a fleeting society of stress, routines, obligations and highly regulated habits that do not allow us to connect to ourselves.
We live connected to the outside. A changing exterior, full of surprises and uncertainty, and often beyond our control. This way of “running” around the world usually prevents us from stopping for a moment to ask ourselves the following thing: What do we need?
We move forward with autopilot engaged, without questioning things and, even worse, being settled in complaint and negative thoughts. Sometimes we even end up thinking: this is not the life I chose.
In order not to face this fear of uncertainty, we settle into a comfort zone that is neither comfortable nor healthy, but which, at least, is well known to us.
Thus, the famous Better is a known evil than a good which remains to be known leads us to conformism and, therefore, to anxiety, because we do not do or experience what we need, being inconsistent with us- same. What we think, feel and do is not consonant.
Even if we don’t believe it, there is something we can do about it. We have the power to make certain changes, even if they scare us a little.
As frowned upon as Maleficent
Anxiety has a bad reputation. And this is normal, because it produces unpleasant symptoms like: tachycardia, dry mouth, pressure in the chest, headaches or stomach aches, difficulty in breathing, among others.
Like other emotions, the more we fight against it and consider it an enemy, the more it will accompany us in our daily lives. Experts therefore recommend that we try to reverse its image and meaning, trying to understand it and to live it as an ally, as someone who “plays in our favor”.
How do you start to see anxiety as an ally?
We see anxiety as a feeling that alerts us that something is emotionally wrong (and that we can contain and correct). In other words, we can think of it as a kind of alarm, as a set of physical symptoms that warn us and remind us that we are not doing what we need, that we may be. in the wrong way, without listening to us or paying attention and hurting us.
Think of anxiety as a warning: the one telling us that we are forgetting ourselves and that we are overemphasizing the outside world.
Let’s take an example: if we work too much and don’t allow ourselves to spend time with our family, our spouse, our friends or even alone, it may be because of ourselves, because that we are too self-demanding and think that by stopping we will be overwhelmed with guilt.
In order to make us try to stop, our body will send us unpleasant physical signals, which we must slow down. In this case, the anxiety message is this: we need to listen to ourselves and take care of ourselves, rest and have free time to recharge our batteries.
Stopping is scary, isn’t it? We avoid doing this because we know that if we connect with ourselves we will be able to see that something in our life is not pleasing to us. We will then have the responsibility to change it. However, these decisions are sometimes difficult to make. Why ? Because they involve change and uncertainty. We therefore think that it is better not to see anything because “if we do not see it, it does not exist”.
Anxiety and change
What if anxiety didn’t warn us? Well, we would keep doing things to avoid looking inward. The physical and emotional consequences would therefore be much more important than anxiety. We wouldn’t stop and we would hurt each other more and more.
Let’s listen to our anxiety so that we can be realistic and not deceive ourselves. Consider her as an ally. Let us welcome it and appreciate the benefits it can bring us. Only in this way will she be able to go away.
Our thoughts An innocent stimulus… and our anxiety increases. A situation in which we need cognitive adaptation and our muscles fill up …
