Example:
Sara lives in a cozy little apartment near some rude and abrupt neighbors. She loves being inside her cozy apartment. Whenever Sara arrives home and walks toward her apartment she is greeted by her neighbor, Karen. Though instead of a friendly quick greeting, it’s usually complaints about how hard Karen’s life is and how Sara listens to her. This happens every single day when Sara comes home from work. Without fail, Karen will come outside when she gets home and greet Sara to tell her how bad her day was. Sara, being the kind person she is, listens to Karen. As the months start to pass, Sara starts feeling anxious about coming home. She knows she will be happy in her cozy apartment, but she feels uncomfortable walking from the parking lot to her apartment.
Not too long after, Sara begins to create stories in her head about how to avoid Karen. Sara even begins to create stories in her head of telling Karen that she no longer wants to hear her stories or talk to her. As she plays these stories in her head, she imagines Karen screaming and yelling at her. Sara’s anxiety begins the moment these stories are created in her mind. Then Sara’s anxiety begins to grow as she builds out more scenarios for this story. Soon the number of scenarios in her mind becomes overwhelming and she begins to alter the way she lives her life. She begins to spend more time out of the apartment to prolong seeing Karen. She becomes afraid to walk outside her apartment because she may get stuck in another conversation with Karen.
Sara begins to play scenarios in her mind about Karen every day on the way home from work and whenever she is leaving the apartment. Soon, these thoughts begin to seep into her mind at work and her mind at home. Sara soon finds herself having difficulty concentrating at work and when she’s at home she just can’t seem to relax. After a few months of these thoughts, Sara begins to have difficulty doing regular tasks and actions that she used to do all the time. She is confused and doesn’t understand why everything seems so difficult. If only her anxiety would go away.
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is when your mind creates a negative story about something that hasn’t happened. First, it creates one piece of the story, then it creates another piece, then another piece, and so on. Your mind is layering negative scenarios on top of each other. If this cycle continues, it will give this sense of spiraling out of control and having no control of your own thoughts. Once your mind has layered a section of the story, it will create branches to begin layering other areas. Left uncared for, this can lead to a paralyzing effect (Crippling Anxiety). When your mind is busy thinking of negative scenarios, there is no room left to do anything else.
What is the difference between functional anxiety and crippling anxiety?
Functional anxiety is when your mind is thinking of these negative scenarios causing you to feel fear, worry, or uneasiness. With functional anxiety, you are still able to do your regular tasks and actions.
Crippling anxiety is when your mind is hyper-concentrated on negative scenarios. It feels nearly impossible to pull your mind away from these scenarios as your mind begins to feel that they are the true reality. It then becomes extremely difficult for this person to do regular tasks and actions.
The reason why Sara feels anxiety:
Anxiety comes from the need to take an action, but not taking the action. The best-case scenario is to take the action before your mind begins to create stories. In the example above, Sara should have spoken with her neighbor immediately after she began to feel uncomfortable. Her goal is to stop the negative scenarios in her mind immediately. Once the stories start to play in Sara’s mind, she can either take action to speak to her neighbor or she can let the stories persist. If she lets the stories persist, her anxiety will grow. If she speaks to her neighbor, her anxieties will cease to exist.
What anxiety means to you:
The emotion anxiety is trying to tell your body an action should be taken now. Strong feelings of anxiety are saying that you’ve already waited a long time and you need to take the action now. If you wait longer, anxiety is going to grow and fester inside of you. Anxiety is not going to go away it’s my own. You need to figure out what action needs to be taken and you need to take it. Work out a resolution or speak to someone else (if you speak to someone else you must go into the conversation with the intent of receiving assistance to understand what action should be taken – then you need to take those actions).
Understand:
Anxiety is an emotion that helps us take action. We can let our emotions control us or we can work on better understanding them. I say “work” because it takes time and effort to understand our unique emotions. The terms like “anxiety, depression, and stress” are words created to better help us communicate about them. Though even a word with a definition can be broken down and dissected in various ways. These terms are highly unique to every individual, though they give us a great starting point into understand the emotions related to these terms.
If we can begin to see anxiety as a feeling that is telling us to take action, we can better listen to our anxious thoughts and work to figure out what action needs to be taken. The more we take action, the easier it becomes. If we train ourselves to take action quickly and decisively around things that would normally make us anxious, we are living a more free life. A life where we are doing the things we want, where we’re not letting people walk all over us, and where we’re saying the things that are true to us. We become our truest selves. We become the “self” that makes us most happy. And best of all, the feeling of anxiety does not scare us anymore.
All I ask is that if you found this article helpful or know someone who may benefit from reading this, please share it. If you’re sharing it with an individual please only share it if you feel that they want assistance or will enjoy reading it. If you feel someone doesn’t want assistance, they may take this article as an attack. Always be gentle and kind in your approach. And thank you for reading 🙂