How To Deal With Your Anxiety?
and why we worry
Hello friends,
Last Tuesday, I returned to university teaching after a three-year break.
I felt quite anxious before stepping into the classroom, wondering if I’d lost my edge. Had I become outdated, slow, or lost my energy? Today’s students are sharp and quick – would I bore them? When I told my colleagues I was nervous, they reassured me:
“Don’t worry, they’re undergrads. They don’t bite...”
“Yeah, they don’t (bite), they usually just send length emails instead.”
“Face your class like how you faced your drinking game, fearless!” (referring to our School Planning Trip in Phan Thiet last weekend, where we played drinking games until 2 AM and had a blast!)
Have you ever felt that knot in your stomach before something important?
That's what we'll explore today - understanding anxiety and how to transform it from an enemy into an ally. Instead of letting anxiety control us, we can learn to use it as a tool for personal growth.
Anxiety is a thought tied to fear.
It is simple that way. It is fear mixed with thoughts about what might come tomorrow.
Long ago, our fears kept us alive. We feared starving in winter when we could not hunt, so we stored fat in our bodies. We feared being eaten by predators, so we planned escapes and learned to fight back.
But modern humans worry about different things. Our brains are bigger now, especially the frontal lobe. We think more. We imagine more. We have more tools to think with. Writing came five thousand years ago. The Internet came less than 50 years ago. Now information floods everything. Life moves fast. Our new comforts bring new worries.
Why do we worry?
First, anxiety helps us solve problems.
It lets us see danger coming and make plans. But when we get lost thinking about uncertain futures, the worry eats at us. We feel helpless. We want that negative feeling gone at any cost. Our brains hate the discomfort of not knowing what comes next. If the pain becomes unbearable, the Internet and social media are here to comfort us from our anxiety for a moment.
Instead of fixing problems, we cling onto our anxious thoughts in hope that everything will be fine when we have done our deeds worrying.
Second, we inherited anxiety from our ancestors.
In the wild, the calm ones became prey. Only the fearful ones lived to pass on their genes because they are scared enough to run early on. Over millions of years, our brains learned to reward worry. Anxiety is our ancient legacy.
The bad habit of anxiety works like this: You worry. Things turn out fine. Your brain connects worry with reward. It thinks if you keep worrying, bad things won't happen. Most of the times, the bad things don't happen anyway. Maybe because you studied hard. Maybe because you prepared well for the presentation. Maybe because the interviewer liked your candor more than you thought.
The relief when things go right rewards the endless worry that came before. This is how the bad habit grows. You get addicted to worry without knowing. It's like someone dropping a burning match in the forest at dawn, and by afternoon the whole place is on fire. Your first small worry is like that match. Too small to notice. Easy to ignore or avoid in busy days. The worry grows heavier each day like a boulder.
Thirdly, anxiety helps us cope with uneasy emotions.
However, anxiety is a bad way to handle feelings. We use it to avoid uncomfortable emotions. When sad or stressed, we distract ourselves with thoughts and analysis, trying to regain control of the situation, but to no avail. In anxiety's spiral, we fall into thinking traps that make us suffer more than we need to. Little do we remember that, pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.
So instead of facing worry and using it to solve problems, we fall into the habit of anxiety and avoid looking at uncomfortable feelings.
How do we deal with our anxiety?
Anxiety is a part of our evolution and we can not avoid it altogether, but we can learn how to use it to our advantage. There are three key ways you can start mastering your anxiety instead of letting it lurking from behind and prevent you from living your life they way you want to. I call this the ABC approach to anxiety.
#1. Accept Uncertainty: Anxiety often stems from our need for control and certainty about the future. Instead of trying to predict and control everything, practice accepting that uncertainty is a natural part of life. This shift in mindset can help reduce the brain’s need to fixate on “what-ifs” and allows you to focus more on the present. Document your daily decisions and their results can help reducing the fallacy of uncertainty and embracing the power of the unknown.
#2. Break the Habit Loop: Anxiety can become a habit where we associate worry with safety. Recognize when you’re stuck in this cycle and challenge the link between worrying and good outcomes. Remind yourself that positive results often come from preparation and hard work, not from excessive worrying.
#3. Curate Anxiety as a Problem-Solving Tool in Your Toolbox: When anxiety arises, try to direct it toward constructive planning rather than dwelling in negative thoughts. Notice your anxiety patterns and use these as feedback to your actions, and change them accordingly until your anxiety fades.
Humans are the most anxious creatures on Earth. Accepting this truth is the first step toward making peace with our worry. We cannot make worry disappear completely. What we can do is step back from anxiety, observe it, accept it, put it aside, and take action, one step at a time. Only when the boulder of anxiety is not weighing on our hearts, we can save our energy for things that truly matter.
When I understand my anxiety better, I learn to be curious about it instead of dwelling on it. Anxiety often teaches me something interesting about myself that I do not know before. For example, the fact that I was nervous before class last Tuesday told me that I enjoy teaching more than I previously thought. But, more on that later :)
If you find this article helpful, please do not hesitate to share it with others.
Thanks for reading, and until next week.