Don't Let Anxiety Hijack Your Life

Absolutely no one volunteers themself for any hardship, let alone something that can prevent happiness daily. Anxiety is living in a prison you never asked to be trapped in. It’s the kind of butterflies that squeeze your chest so tight you feel like you can’t breathe. It’s scary and can be panic inducing for reasons that are not based in logic or reality.

Almost everyone experiences anxiety at some point in their life. Whether it’s that moment before stepping on stage during a class play, or the buildup before you finally tell that person you like how you feel, or even the classic job interview. It’s a common occurrence that can be conquered, or an anchor that slowly drags you down into the ocean. It’s all a matter of how you handle it. If you are not mindful, you won’t realize how fast it hijacks not only your autonomy, but your life. It can and will ruin great things for you.

Imagine this. Your anxiety is like a campfire burning in the middle of a campground. You look around and can see everything that scares you surrounding you. You are overwhelmed and intimidated. You feel stuck, trapped in your own body, borderline paralyzed. You are somehow more afraid of what surrounds you and what could happen than the fire that is already burning. You think it’s more comfortable around the warm fire, so you stay there. But the longer you stay there, the bigger the fears become and your avoidance becomes fuel. The fire gets bigger along with your fears and you haven’t moved.

The fire is raging, and soon you will be burned alive. What you didn’t realize is that if you had moved towards some of the things that scared you and away from the fire, not only would the fire shrink, but so would your fears. What makes anxiety so cunningly deceptive is that avoidance often feels like relief. In the moment, deciding to deal with it later, or even not at all, does lower your discomfort. When you do this, your brain actually rewards you for escaping. Unfortunately, that relief comes with a price tag. Every time you pay the fee for comfort, you won't realize that it starts becoming more and more expensive. Eventually, it will feel unaffordable.

Psychology shows that exposure therapy is the most effective form of treatment for anxiety. What is exposure therapy? Essentially it is the concept of exposing yourself to what you are scared of. It is confronting your fears repeatedly until they are no longer hard to deal with. Avoiding a feared situation brings immediate relief which actually misinforms your brain that it was the “appropriate” response. In actuality, the brain is being taught that avoidance is the correct response to the fearful stimuli. This removes the chance to teach your brain that the feared outcome won’t happen or that it can be handled. Every time you avoid the situation due to the discomfort of anxiety you are wiring your own brain to surrender to fear. You are locking yourself away from potentially great things, even without that being your intention.

Use the buffalo mentality. Buffalos will run towards a storm because they know it will end sooner, whereas every other creature in their attempt to escape or avoid the storm will often run “away from it” not realizing they are actually creating a bigger problem rather than solving it. It takes some bravery. It feels like that moment you are trying to decide whether or not to jump into a pool. 

Anxiety will always promise you safety. It will always tell you to wait for a better moment. The problem is that day rarely comes on its own. Confidence is built by action, not before it. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is deciding that what waits on the other side of fear is worth pursuing anyway. We only make the shots we actually take. Sometimes we miss, but every shot we make is a bigger victory than the ones we never attempted. In the face of fear, we must have hope in successful outcomes. We must never stop trying, always keep shooting. Without hope, we are nothing but trapped and stagnant inside ourselves. 

Jump into that pool.

Seriously, just think about it. Please don't forget to vote for the next topic on the vote page.

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