You Are Not Your Anxiety

Anxiety can be an overwhelming experience, trapping us in immobilizing feelings, thoughts, and bodily reactions. The first step in dealing with anxiety is identifying it and separating it from your sense of self.

Picture this: you’ve been working on a presentation for weeks, fine-tuning every detail until it feels just right. You know your material inside and out, and you're confident your presentation is strong. Yet as the moment approaches, you feel a mounting sense of dread. Your palms start to sweat, doubts creep in, your heart races, and your body begins to tremble. The opportunity to share your vision feels like it's slipping away, melting into a pool of overwhelming emotions and a body that doesn’t feel under your control.

The experience of anxiety can feel deeply disabling. For those who struggle with it, anxiety disrupts, restricts, and sabotages the capacity to express who we are and how we connect with the world.

The first step in managing your anxiety in the moment is to build awareness around it. Note the language I’m using: anxiety is a separate entity, and it helps to recognize it as such. You are not anxiety, and labeling yourself as “just an anxious person” places you in a space of passivity and surrender. Recognizing that you are experiencing anxiety or feeling anxious allows you to manage it in a more empowered and constructive way. Once you have this awareness of anxiety as a separate “beast,” the next step in day-to-day management is to start identifying what this beast looks like.

Anxiety is generated and maintained by the cyclical influence of anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on one another. If left unchecked, these interlinked elements feed into each other and intensify the experience of anxiety. By asking yourself the following questions, you can start to get a handle on it: When do I experience anxiety? What do I feel? What do I think? How does my body react? How do I attempt to cope with feeling anxious?

It’s also helpful to rate your level of anxiety from 1 to 10 throughout the day or in different situations, with 10 being the highest level. In other words, start to notice and define the experience of feeling anxious. At this stage, you are not trying to change or control it. Awareness begins with acceptance. By denying your anxiety, you may start to feel anxious about feeling anxious, which makes it even more overwhelming. Ideally, write down your observations, but even just noticing and defining the experience will help you gain control. Continue this process of self-monitoring as you begin to implement strategies to manage anxious feelings.