6 Ways to Use Anxiety as a Source for Growth

"1. Label it.

Anxiety thrives on absolutes. All-or-nothing. Black-or-white. This creates the illusion of safety through certainty. The ultimate goal is to not only embrace uncertainty but learn to accept and live with it (the good and bad aspects of people, situations, and circumstances) as necessary conditions in life. Whenever you find yourself thinking in absolutes or extremes (e.g., always, never)—label that you’ve been cast under the spell of anxiety.

2. Address it.

Chronic anxiety causes you to abandon your emotional experience, leading to a state of detachment. Instead, think of anxiety as a messenger that something requires your attention. Next time you feel anxious, become curious about your inner experience. This requires a continuous internal check-in. Identify the anxiety and how it shows up for you (e.g., where do you feel it in your body? What thoughts are connected to it? And most importantly, how are those thoughts linked to your sense of self?).

3. Stop resisting and embrace anxiety.

Meet anxiety with compassion. This is when you breathe in the "unwelcome" (e.g., pain, insecurity, inadequacy) and breathe out the "desired" (e.g., relief, contentment, fulfillment). This practice reverses the habitual avoidance of pain and rewires how to process discomfort by demonstrating a capability to hold and manage difficult emotions. Exploring anxiety with curiosity can teach you something about yourself. Ignoring it will allow it to remain a shadow in your day, arising as intrusive thoughts and consequent physical symptoms.

4. Break down intrusive thoughts.

Intrusive thoughts are recurring, unsolicited, and persistent thoughts that cause suffering and take you out of the present. At the core, intrusive thoughts are a mental addiction (Kelly & Kahn, 1994). Learn to interrupt intrusive thoughts by widening the space between thoughts and your response to them (Frankl, 1985). What you focus on will propagate. Googling, perseverating, talking with friends, and seeking reassurance only feeds the fear, allowing it to sprout.

5. Learn to interpret intrusive thoughts as symbols.

First, name the anxious thought. Because observing requires a witness, a separation forms between the thought and yourself. With distance comes perspective to dismantle anxiety and reduce its credibility.

Once you have distance, allow yourself to experience the underlying emotion. Usually, there is an underlying feeling of incompetence, self-doubt, helplessness, or unhappiness. Sit with the emotion and consider how anxiety might be protecting you from this pain through the notion that you could resolve it through perseverance or action.

6. Check in with yourself regularly.

To experience emotions as they come, you must believe you are safe to face whatever pain comes from them and, in doing so, experience healing on the other side. If you refuse to experience an emotion directly, it will only return in other ways (Paul, 2019). This necessitates checking in with yourself, processing how you’re feeling, and responding to it. You could do this through journaling, tuning into your body, or setting a check-in reminder on your phone. These are ways of getting comfortable emotionally attuning to yourself and making accurate and descriptive self-assessments."

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

In what ways has your anxiety helped you grow?

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