I’m a clinical psychologist trained as an anxiety specialist. For over 20 years, I’ve helped thousands of people with their anxiety in sessions, through my writing, and in the first video of this series. But there are still more insights from my years of treatment that I want to pass along.

The Body’s Reply to Anxiety

So, today, here are 12 more facts about anxiety that can convert the way you think and the way you exist.  Let’s go. Number first, anxiety is just your shape saying, “I’m ready to take action.” When worry hits, it feels as if your body’s gone sturdy. Heart run, sweating, fight or flight pumping. A lot of us feel pressure about those sensations, but they’re firstly the same as when we exercise.

The Purpose of Anxiety

Your threat system doesn’t want to give you a warm-up period. It wants you in instant full workout mode to help you survive. If you were managing a tiger, you don’t want to get a slow start. That’s why anxiety can feel like you just run 100 m.

The delusion of Anxiety

The problem is that you’re seated in a meeting or waiting for a test, not running on a treadmill. So, although that discord makes the sensations feel painful, they’re not wild. And the good news is you can use this.

Using Exercise to Engage Your Body

We can do exercise to provoke those body reactions and get more used to them. Or you can try practicing tasks while your body’s all revved up. I’ve had clients do push-ups and then practice speeches. Show yourself that you can function fine in that state.

From Journaling to Journalism

Number two, don’t just journal. Be a journalist. Everyone’s heard that writing can help when you are fearful. But if you just pour your ideas onto the page, you many times end up getting angry at your anxiety or finding it difficult to prove it wrong, and that gets in the way.

The Importance of Perspective

As the interviewer, you are not tangled up in the thoughts. You’re just documenting them. Then, once you’ve got the transcript, switch perspectives. Write about the topic again, but from another less emotional point of view, the way that an editor would balance a one-sided story.

Calming Anxiety Through Process

This two-step process helps anxiety to calm down without being suppressed. So, don’t just journal, be a journalist.

Feelings and Their Origin

Number three, strong feelings aren’t always about today. In therapy, I’ll often pay attention when someone’s reaction feels way too strong for the affairs they’re describing. And that’s when I ask, how much of this is about what’s events now? And how much is historical, but it reminds you of things from the past?

When Anxiety Reflects the Past

So, anxiety tries to save you, but it struggles to admit when the situation has changed. Right? You might be 10 years older with new powers, dealing with different people in a whole new city, but our anxiety gets pushed and it reacts like you’re right back there in the past.

Evaluating Current Situations

So, here’s a question I use with clients. If we took the past out of this and you just look at the present situation and these individual people, how big of a problem is it? Remember, strong feelings aren’t always about today.

Anxiety as a Storyteller

Number four, your anxiety is a fiction writer. People often tell me they are not creative, but I point out that the anxious part of their brain is constantly writing short stories full of drama, disasters, betrayal, villains, like Netflix level creativity.

Creative License of Anxiety

That’s what anxiety does. It has been given the task of imagining what could go wrong. But since it doesn’t actually know the future, it takes a lot of creative license. It writes dramatic plots where everything goes badly.

The Fallacy of Anxiety’s Stories

And because our brains love stories, we find them convincing. But think back. How many times has your anxiety written a story about what would happen and that turned out to be completely different in real life? Probably all the time.

Recognizing Fiction in Anxiety

That’s the key. Anxiety is a great writer of fiction. It only becomes a problem when we mistake its stories for reality.

The Origin of Negative Thoughts

Number five, those negative thoughts aren’t yours. Here’s something most people don’t realize. Many of the most upsetting or self-critical thoughts you have probably aren’t yours.

Absorbing Negative Voices

So over time we absorb these voices in our lives and we replay them and then we forget where they came from. But recognizing the original source of that voice changes things.

Creating Space from Negative Thoughts

Instead of assuming this is what I believe you can say I am just imagining what they would say. Of course, that’s how they would look at this. And that small shift creates space between you and those negative thoughts.

Discovery of Personal Perspective

It gives you the freedom to consider how you see things from your own perspective.

Connecting Body and Mind

Number six, if you’re stuck in your head, go to your body. Anxiety is the combination of thoughts and body sensations. Most people, when they get anxious, they go straight to the mind.

Observing Physical Sensations

Physical sensations are never static. They always move. They’re always changing. So observe them with curiosity. Like where is it strongest? Where are the edges of that feeling?

Paying Attention to Changes

Does it come in waves? Is it heat? Is it tight? Is it heavy? And as you watch, where does it change first?

Redirecting Focus

So, I use this with clients all the time. You’ll need to redirect your attention back to your body whenever you get pulled back up into the mind. But when you keep watching, the intensity tends to fade after a while.

The Power of Non-Resistance

Not because you fought it, but because you stopped fueling anxiety back up in the mind.

Opinions: Understanding Their Impact

Number seven, don’t overvalue the opinions of others. So, we give so much capacity to what people think of us. But if somebody says you are amazing and other people say you are terrible, who’s right?

The Subjectiveness of Judgment

Well, neither, right? They’re just people with opinions. And let me tell you, those opinions can come from all sorts of places that have very little to do with you, like their mood that day, their past experiences, their weird personal hang-ups.

Personal Bias in Opinions

Sometimes they are based on nothing. So, I once met someone new who I thought was really likeable, but one of the people I was with had these strong negative results.

Irrelevant Opinions

When I asked why, it turned out he just looked like someone she hadn’t liked in high school. Not his fault at all, just an, you know, irrelevant opinion.

The Variability of Acceptance

Some people are easy to please. Some people are almost impossible. What someone thinks of you can have surprisingly little to do with you and a lot to do with them.

Questioning the Weight of Opinions

So, why treat opinions like verdicts on your worth? Don’t overvalue opinions. You never know where they come from.

The Cycle of Worry

They don’t have a stop sign. The mind just keeps generating what ifs. And because there’s always another possible problem, the process never ends. So, I worked with someone who wouldn’t start conversations until he’d mapped out every possible thing he might say wrong and then how to prevent it.

The Trap of Overthinking

But, of course, every solution presents new problems. And so, he never had those conversations. That is a trap. Without a stop, worry just takes up more and more space.

Making the Decision to Release Worry

Pick your stop sign. Know when it is enough and trust yourself to handle what comes next.

Challenging Own Faiths

Good scientists do not just assume they are right. They gather evidence to challenge and then update their ideas. And you can do the same. Often the hardest part is naming the prediction clearly.

Gathering Evidence Against Anxiety

I see again and again how meeting just a little counter proof can loosen stress grip.

Embracing Anxiety as good time

Number 11, chase your stress. Most people who see me don’t just feel anxious. They feel anxious about their anxiety. That secondary fear is what creates the real problems.

The Shift in Perspective

But what if you flipped it? What if every surge of anxiety was good news? If you can make that shift, you can have sudden improvements.

Exposure Therapy in Action

I once worked with someone whose social anxiety improved in a single session because he made this change. He came in asking how to avoid getting anxious in conversations.

The Necessity of Feeling Fear

He had to show his emotional brain that situations weren’t as dangerous as it assumed and he couldn’t do that unless he was able to feel the fear. So that insight was enough for him.

Leaning Into Anxiety

Social affairs still triggered him, but instead of contract away, he leaned in. If we can come to see it as an opportunity to improve, you move from fleeing to chasing your anxiety.

The Shift in Perspective

The shift comes when you learn to tolerate whatever feeling shows up. If you knew you could easily handle sadness, fear, or anger when they came, how differently might you live?

The Power of Emotional control

It is easier to control your emotions than to control the world. And now for a bonus insight. I want to let you know the deepest insight that I found for removing anxiety. Some people won’t like this one, but I know that some of you will get it.

Understanding Rigid Beliefs about Anxiety

Most anxiety comes from holding rigid beliefs about what must or must not occur going forward. We engage our nervous order in this constant battle with the past, the present, and the future, difficult to force life into this narrow set of tolerant outcomes.

The Role of Unreliability in Anxiety

But the less okay we are with uncertainty, the more anxious we become. The hard work is in widening your range of what’s acceptable in your life.

Navigating Life’s opposition 

Sometimes it means that life has seasons, as hard days, calm days, and tough short times pass. Other times it means looking back and noticing how apparent setbacks eventually triggered new growth.

Expanding Your Window of Tolerance

So the wider we open our window of tolerance on life, the fewer outcomes can knock you off balance and the less worried you need to be about what will happen.