In this article, I discuss how accepting anxiety goes a long way toward managing it.
One of most important elements of success in managing anxiety is acceptance of this emotion. Conversely, one of the biggest obstacles to success in this endeavor is lack of acceptance. This lack of acceptance takes the form of ‘secondary anxiety’ in which a person is ‘anxious about having anxiety’.
In other words, lack of acceptance of anxiety manifests itself as perceiving any experience of anxiety—no matter how mild or intense—as negative. This, in turn, leads to the futile exercise of attempting to eliminate anxiety. It is also often accompanied by negative self-talk focusing on a view of yourself as defective because of the erroneous belief that you have anxiety and others don’t. This negative sentiment is epitomized by thoughts like, ‘People will notice I have anxiety and think I’m weird because of it.”
Moving toward acceptance of anxiety as an emotion which you and everyone else experiences makes managing it a much easier proposition than futilely trying to eliminate it. In the following sections, I will provide ideas on how you can use this ‘accept and manage’ approach to anxiety.
View anxiety as a necessary and helpful emotion
Contrary to popular belief, if managed properly anxiety is a necessary and helpful emotion. It is a signal, built into use through evolution, which alerts us to dangers and concerns. Without this signal, we would be less likely to pay attention to matters such as our physical safety and well-being, how our families are faring, financial matters and job tasks to which we need to attend.
Think of anxiety as akin to a smoke detector. Both these signals alert you to real dangers which are your best interests to heed. When you act on the anxiety signal by addressing the concerns, think of anxiety as working for you. Having this view of anxiety as a necessary and helpful signal is one way to move toward acceptance of anxiety.
View anxiety as a performance-enhancer
Many athletes and other performers incorrectly believe that having any anxiety before and during performances is a detriment. In actuality, having a moderate amount of anxiety has been shown by research to produce the best performances in sports and other areas. So whether it’s competing in an athletic event, giving a presentation or performing in music, dance or other areas, welcoming anxiety as a performance-enhancer will make it much easier for you to manage it so that you perform well.
Develop skills to manage anxiety–not eliminate it
Managing anxiety is a much easier task when you accept it and don’t try to eliminate it. Doing so involves using skills to manage the intensity of anxiety. Although anxiety is a helpful signal and performance-enhancer at a certain level of intensity, sometimes anxiety is so strong that it can create significant distress and interfere with performance in various areas.
Anxiety-management skills therefore focus on lowering the intensity of this emotion to the point that it is serving its purpose as a helpful signal and performance-enhancer. Skills of this type include the following:
(1) Distraction: Distracting yourself mentally or by engaging in an activity lowers anxiety intensity by switching your attention from anxiety-producing thoughts.
(2) Relaxation: Reducing your body’s stress response through diaphragmatic breathing and other relaxation methods lowers anxiety intensity by targeting the physical manifestation of the emotion.
(3) Cognitive restructuring: For many people, anxiety is too intense because of the way they think about their dangers and concerns—by overestimating the likelihood of their occurrence and underestimating their ability to cope if they were to occur. Practicing cognitive restructuring skills lowers the intensity of anxiety by helping you to accurately estimate the occurrence of dangers and concerns and by increasing your belief that you can cope.
In-depth discussions of these anxiety-management skills appear in other articles on my blog which focus on anxiety counselling. I teach clients these skills in my work as a Calgary psychologist and a Cochrane psychologist.
May you improve your ability to manage anxiety by accepting it,
-Dr. Pat
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