A helpful way to think about anxiety and what can actually make it go away

A guy walked into my therapy room once and, like many other people who haven’t been to therapy before, asked me:“Can you just fix this?”

At this stage I had nothing to work with. No story, no build up. I hadn’t even really said hello. So I slowed it down and asked him what he meant.

“My anxiety is doing my head in, it won’t stop” he said. “My head is broken and my wife said you can fix it.”

And if you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, that probably makes a lot of sense because that’s exactly what it feels like.

The idea that something is wrong with you

Most people I speak to about anxiety carry about this ‘broken’ idea, even if they don’t say it out loud.

“Why am I like this?”
“Other people seem fine, why can’t I just get on with things?”
“Why does my brain do this to me?”

So naturally, if you think you’re mind is broken, your focus becomes getting your mind fixed.

Calm it down. Switch it off. Get control of it.Whatever the hell I need to do to get this feeling to stop switching on at random times.

That’s where all the usual advice comes in, isn’t it?Here’s a breathing technique, a distraction, a way to avoid triggering this feeling, a way to try to think differently.

And to be fair, some of that can help…in the moment.

But if you’re constantly managing your anxiety just to get through the day, you will be knackered!And even more annoyingly…

The goddam anxiety is still there!

A different way to look at anxiety

Let me give you a new way to think about it.

Imagine an AI driven smoke alarm in your kitchen.

When it works properly, it’s brilliant. It keeps you safe. It lets you know when something’s actually wrong. It could save your whole family by alerting you to some sort of unseen danger.

But what if it learns to go off every time you make toast (like many office smoke alarms leading to frequent toaster bans!).

Now it’s not safe, it’s doing your nut in, it’s annoying, it’s disruptive. The alarm becomes the problem rather than the helper.

But it’s not broken. It just learned the wrong thing and got confused.

Somewhere along the way, it decided that something that we all know is harmless means danger.

And now it reacts. Like it was programmed to.Every time.Annoying or not, your smart smoke alarm thinks it’s fulfilling it’s purpose and doing it’s job every time you stick a couple of slices of bread in the toaster.

Whereas you are swearing at it and eventually rip it off the wall/roof because it wasn’t working properly.

That’s much closer to how anxiety works (although unfortunately you can’t rip your anxiety out quite so easily!).

Anxiety is learned, not faulty

Anxiety is never random, it’s not a fault and, even though many may disagree with me, I promise it’s not trying to mess your life up.

It’s just something your mind has learned to do.

At some point in your life, most likely when you were too young to do anything apart from get scared, your mind linked certain situations, thoughts or feelings with some kind of emotional danger.

I don’t know how your anxiety works obviously but heres some common things I hear:

• worry about being judged

• worry about getting something wrong

• worry about letting someone down (really common)

• worry about feeling or getting embarrassed

• worry about not being in control

And once that link is made, your mind does exactly what it’s designed to do.

It tries to protect you. So it sends a signal.Depending on how your anxiety shows up it might be a really, really, loud signal.

That signal is what we call anxiety.

The problem with minds is, they don’t receive updates easily.Especially when, like the smoke alarm, it thinks it’s doing a great job.

So what happens?You end up feeling anxious in situations that aren’t actually dangerous anymore and thinking you’re broken.

Why coping only gets you so far

A lot of people who come for anxiety therapy have already tried to deal with it themselves.

They’ve avoided certain things. Pushed through other things. Tried to stay in control everything. Talked themselves down when life gets heavy.

And again, none of that is wrong. In fact, most therapists will see it as really inspiring. You’ve been working really hard just to keep things steady.

But it’s tiring.And often fruitless.

Constantly manage something means that ‘something’ still has a grip on you.

I meet many people who tell me they are over painful things from their past while crying uncontrollably about them.Your saying one thing but your emotions are betraying you.

Here’s a silly example.Have you ever been on holiday and tried to hold a beach ball under the water?

It’s not as easy as you think it would be. It fights you. It takes effort. You need to stay focused ‘cos it’s constantly trying to escape and do what physics tells it to do.

And the second you take your attention off it, that’s what happens Science takes over, the beach ball comes flying back up to the top of the pool with a splash and a crash and nature wins again.

That’s what all your coping strategies are doing.

They’re just holding it under the water, trying to avoid the nature of a protective emotion that our mind hasn’t realised is hitting your life with splashes and crashes every single time.

What actually changes anxiety

So what do we do about it?

This will sound bonkers but the real shift happens when you stop trying to fight the feeling directly and start looking at what’s driving it.

Because whatever you may think, anxiety doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.

There is always something underneath it.

That meaning your mind has attached to the ‘something’.

For example, your mind isn’t just going:

“I feel anxious in meetings”

It’s thinking (for example):

“If I speak up, I might say something wrong and people will judge me and I’ll look like an idiot”

That is the key.

And most people never get shown how to find it, never mind change it.

That’s where good therapy for anxiety comes in.

Good therapy isn’t just helping you feel better in the moment.Good therapy helps you:

• See your patterns

• Understand where those patterns came from

• Begin to unpick why your mind created them

• And, crucially, get those patterns changed so they no longer trigger the same response

Anxiety is not random

I have worked with so many people who think their anxiety is “random”.

Like it just shows up and ambushes them.

One minute they’re OK, next they’re not, and the confusion that brings is a huge part of the problem.

However, and you're beginning to understand, anxiety isn’t random at all.

It is always following a pattern.

It’s just really hard to see that pattern when you’re right slap bank in the middle of it.

That’s why trying to work anxiety out on your own can feel like you’re broken. Nothing will work because it’s difficult to know what you’re working with when you’re always looking at the world through the eyes that created the problem in the first place.

But once you see it, once you spot the pattern, and once you know where it comes from, things start to make a lot more sense.

And when something makes sense, it becomes much easier to change.

So, can anxiety be fixed?

Yes but not in the way most people mean.Because I don’t think you’re broken.

But can your anxiety be treated, reduced, and in many cases significantly changed to the point it’s as good as eradicated?

Yes.100%.

I’ve seen people go from balancing their entire lives around managing anxiety to living in a way that feels calm, natural and much more like themselves.

Not because they learned to cope better.

But because they understood what was actually going on underneath, got the help they needed and changed it.

A final thought

If you’ve been dealing with anxiety for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve started to build your life around it.

Avoiding certain situations. Overthinking.Turning down invitations and opportunities because of your worry about how you might feel and whether you can handle your own mind.

It doesn’t have to stay like that.

It’s time to stop constantly managing how you feel just to get through things.

If you’re looking for help for yourself, support as a parent, or you want more info on therapy for anxiety, the starting point is always the same.

Understanding what’s really going on.And we can help with that.

If this sounds familiar, you’re welcome to reach out to us at HeadStrong for a chat about therapy. No pressure, just a conversation to see what might help.