.jpg?itok=YCVFqWfW "Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash")
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash
A 25-year-old graduate student, I’ll call Alara, sought therapy with me for severe panic and anxiety symptoms. She often awakened in terror. With a racing heart and a sense of impending doom, she couldn’t shake the symptoms. On many nights, she cried, prayed, and called members of her family to find comfort from a familiar voice.
Alara’s family lived in three different countries. With tears in her eyes, she described how much she loves the freedom the United States offers. That freedom comes at the cost of not living near her beloved family. She missed familiar foods like the delicious olives she cannot find in the U.S.
Alara feared her anxiety would keep her from doing well in school. Sleep-deprived and drained of energy, she noticed her concentration slipping. It only fueled more anxiety and panic. She felt pressure to optimize her keen intelligence, achieve success, and make her family proud.
Anxiety and panic symptoms can make us feel like we’re in a battle with an invisible enemy. That enemy can surprise us with symptoms like tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, fear of going crazy or losing control, nausea, stomach aches, and tingly or numb hands.
When we feel out of control emotionally and physically, we experience embarrassment and shame. The inner monologue goes something like this:
“I’m so weak. Why can’t I cope better? Everyone will think I’m crazy if I start shaking in public. I can’t bear the thought of crying in front of my boss.”
Most highly successful people experience anxiety. Unless you’re a sociopath, you will likely experience social anxiety, performance anxiety, or existential anxiety from time to time. Changes in jobs, relationships, health, or home can trigger feelings of distress and worry.
Anxiety Offers Surprising Benefits
If you find yourself suffering from a panic attack, it’s hard to find anything beneficial about the sweaty palms, racing heart, and feelings of dread. Yet research shows that anxiety offers many positive benefits.
- Anxiety improves performance. Studies show that stage fright, performance anxiety, and moments of panic before a presentation offer an energy boost to improve our focus and performance (McGonigal, Kelly, 2015).
- Anxiety helps you spot dishonesty and better protect yourself and your family (Ein-Dor T. et al., 2018).
- Anxious individuals spot danger more quickly and protect those more carefree individuals from harm (Gutierrez-Garcia, A. et al., 2013).
- Anxiety about the COVID-19 epidemic contributed to more protective behaviors such as mask-wearing, hand washing, and social distancing, which produced better health outcomes (Salali, G. et al., 2021).
Our senses notice far more than our conscious mind notices. If we listen to the message anxiety sends us through our nervous system, we can reap the positive benefits of anxiety. For example, pay attention if you feel uncomfortable about a coworker who seems dishonest and manipulative. Once you get the message your anxiety symptoms send you, “This person is not honest or trustworthy,” then you don’t need the anxiety any longer. You act accordingly and protect yourself.
Welcome the Wisdom of Anxiety
I asked Alara about times when she did not feel anxious. She said she felt little or no anxiety during the day when she felt mentally engaged at school and work or socialized with friends. After explaining the beneficial effects of anxiety, I asked her,
“What benefit do you think you get from panicking in the middle of the night?”
It was hard, at first, for her to find anything good about her feelings of terror.
Finally, she said,
“When I’m anxious, I call my family. It’s the best time to reach my sisters and my mother because of the difference in time zone. We had good talks once I stopped crying. I don’t want them to worry about me, but I feel so comforted after we talk.”
“So, your anxiety gives you permission to call them in the middle of the night and feel closer to your family,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “and I wouldn’t do that if I slept through the night.”
Armed with that knowledge, we constructed a plan. I suggested she decide which nights of the week were best to call her family and schedule the call rather than waiting for her anxiety to give her permission.
“You mean I should set my alarm and plan to wake up to talk to them?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Schedule regular calls with your family that work with your schedule and theirs. If you do that, you won’t need your anxiety to wake you up.”
Alara and I worked on a plan to add anxiety and stress management tools to her daily life. She discovered that the relaxing and restorative practice of yoga nidra helped her feel calmer and more peaceful. She incorporated daily neighborhood walks and nature hikes with her new friends.
Because Alara’s anxiety had made her fear going to bed, we discussed how to make her bedroom more inviting and relaxing. Her mother sent a potpourri with scents that reminded her of home. She purchased a new, attractive, weighted blanket to help her feel more secure. We discussed including a bedtime ritual that included a comforting cup of herbal tea, a good book written in her native language, and soft pajamas.
After a few sessions, Alara reported no panic attacks and a significant reduction in overall distress. She felt more connected to her family and herself with the new behavioral changes. She still feared another attack of panic. I invited her to think of her anxiety as a helpful teacher rather than a callous tormentor.
I asked Alara,
“Is your anxiety requiring you to increase your connection with family? Is it helping you find better ways to manage loneliness and stress? Can you feel grateful that your anxiety demands that you take better care of yourself?”
Gratitude for Anxiety
I recommended she thank her anxiety for giving her valuable and helpful information. If another attack happens, I suggested she engage in deep breathing exercises, gentle yoga stretches, and journaling before calling a family member.
“Go deeper into what your worry is trying to tell you,” I said. “Then your conversations with your family will more likely feel relaxed and gratifying, and you won’t feel guilty for worrying them like when you call crying.”
Three Easy Ways to Tackle Anxiety
- Surrender and accept anxiety. Anxiety can feel like you’re tumbling in a giant wave. Tossed in the curl of spinning water, you may not know up from down. Frantically swimming wastes oxygen and energy. You might even find yourself swimming in the wrong direction. Instead, relax into the massive wave. Let it pass over you. Soon, you will feel the wave subside. You will then have more clarity about which direction you should pursue. Fighting anxiety makes it persist. Relaxing into acceptance helps you gain valuable lessons from the anxiety.
- Don’t ask yourself, “Why am I so anxious?”. When you ask yourself, “Why do I feel so worried and upset?” it’s as if you opened a file drawer in your mind titled “Reasons to be worried and upset.” Going through that file drawer, you think about all the suffering going on in yourself, your family, the world. You open the file with all the future bad things that could happen. You think about all the things in the recent and far past that make you feel bad. This digs you deeper into the anxiety, providing further justification for the suffering. Instead, ask yourself, “How can I feel calmer?” You can open the metaphorical file in your mind called “Calming Tools.” Calming tools include deep breathing, gentle stretching, focusing on the present moment, a hot bath, a walk in the park and talking to loved ones. This helps anxiety symptoms pass more quickly.
- Imagine calm. When anxiety strikes, it can feel overwhelming. You forget that your own imagination creates your envisioned worst-case scenarios. Instead, allow yourself to visualize feeling relaxed, confident, calm, and focused. Write about how you feel when you function at your best. Sharp, calm, well-rested, and content, you can better focus on what you care about. Studies show that when we imagine ourselves operating at our best, the body cooperates, and we perform better (Loveday, P. M. et al., 2016). Imagine yourself calm, relaxed, and peaceful. The body follows where the mind focuses (Schneider, G. 2022).
The 13th-century poet and scholar Jalaluddin Rumi wrote The Guest House. In it, he suggests we treat every feeling like a welcome guest in our home. He writes:
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
Every emotion is a temporary guest offering us an opportunity to learn about ourselves and the world. When we welcome even the most painful feelings, we remove much of the internal conflict that fuels anxiety. We then make room for the new delights awaiting us.