In order to say goodbye to anxiety, you need to develop a friendship with it!
Have you ever noticed that you’re feeling anxious about something, and then you feel anxious about the fact that you’re so anxious? If you’re a chronic worrier, this “meta” level of worrying about having anxiety is very common. Maybe you’re afraid you’re going to keep spiraling and won’t be able to sleep that night, or that it’ll reach a level that feels intolerable and you won’t be able to stand it. If this is you, you know that when we respond to fear with more fear, it just gets amplified.
For me, networking is something that makes me anxious. Whether it’s showing up to an event, or hopping on a Zoom call with someone I’ve never met in person, I inevitably feel some physical anxiety in anticipation. Earlier in my career, I used to feel very anxious about this anxiety. What if someone noticed or I said something awkward because I was so anxious that I couldn’t focus? I would try to block it or push it away, which always seemed to backfire. Further, I would sometimes avoid the experience altogether, which ultimately went against my goals for myself and what I value in life.
Being afraid of experiencing anxiety (“fear of fear”) does often lead us to try to suppress or push away the emotion. Unfortunately, this tends to be completely ineffective because of something called the “the suppression effect.” In psychological science, the classic “white bear” experiment illustrates the suppression effect: the more you are told not to think about a white bear (or a jelly donut), it ends up being all you can think about!! The same thing can happen with our thoughts or our emotions: the more we try not to have them, the more they can intensify and take up all our attention.
If you fear your anxiety, you might also start to avoid things that make you feel the slightest bit anxious. In the same way that someone with a dog phobia can benefit from gradual and consistent exposure to dogs to get over their fears, someone with a fear of having anxiety can benefit from exposure to anxiety. Intentionally putting yourself in anxiety-provoking situations and letting yourself experience anxiety may sound like an unconventional suggestion. Yet, the more you learn to accept your anxiety instead of completely rejecting it, paradoxically, the less likely you are to experience spirals of anxiety.
Next time you feel anxiety coming on, pay attention to the messages you’re telling yourself about your emotion, such as, “Oh no,” “I can’t stand this,” “I’m going to have a panic attack,” or “This can’t be happening.” Instead, what would it be like to just notice your anxiety without judgment? Maybe try welcoming it in like an old friend—“Hello! We meet again!”
What does it look like to allow anxiety in? It means allowing the heart to race, the palms to sweat, without trying to stop the sensations or fight them. It’s taking a breath and opening yourself up to the feeling. It's naming it: “I’m feeling anxious.” Accepting that it’s happening. And acknowledging anxiety’s existence without judging it as good or bad. It just is.
In the earlier example I provided about networking anxiety, nowadays, I try to just observe what’s happening in my brain and body and label the experience (“I’m feeling anxious at this moment, this makes sense.”) As my anxious feelings in this type of situation are so predictable, I find that I can welcome them in. A metaphor I frequently use is the idea of welcoming in that family member who frustrates you but you inevitably have to invite over to your house a few times a year… In doing this, I notice my heart starting to pound a bit and my breathing to feel a little quickened. When this happens, I try to just allow this to be the case as I’m entering the event, and I remind myself that the feelings are not dangerous.
What if we took it a step further to not just accept our anxiety, but befriend or even learn to (gasp) love it. Notice I didn’t say the word “like.” We might not like it, but we can learn to love it. The family member who frustrates you may again be a good reference point, here!
The idea of loving one’s emotion(s) comes from a therapy approach called dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT includes various innovative (and effective) coping skills that promote emotion regulation, including doing the “opposite” of what a painful emotion tells you to do. For example, if anxiety tells you to run away, instead, run towards it! Embrace your anxiety and take the radical step of loving it. In doing so, you teach your body that anxiety is not “the enemy” and nothing to be afraid of. In fact, anxiety can be awesome in that it serves a function of giving you information about how you are feeling, and lets you know that it would be helpful to take skillful steps to feel more regulated, such as being kind to yourself and taking a breath.
One way that you might practice loving your anxiety is to recognize the very cool function it serves for you. Anxiety is evolutionary; it is a necessary feeling our bodies require in order to anticipate and prepare for threats and to solve problems. Feeling nervous about an exam motivates you to prepare rather than slack off, for example. Feeling anxious on a first date motivates you to put your best foot forward. Without anxiety, we wouldn’t be able to anticipate real danger or be prepared when threats are present. Sometimes anxiety is a false alarm (i.e. writing an email is not going to lead to sudden death) but even so, anxiety lets us know that something is challenging for us and that we may need a little help. Seeking support (i.e. from a good friend or therapist) is a very skillful action to take, as well as using coping skills such as deep breathing or soothing self talk (“No one cares how this email sounds. It’s going to be fine!”)
Many people come to anxiety therapy hoping to get rid of their anxiety — this is incredibly common. However, the problem with this is that we need anxiety to function. If I didn’t have the emotion of anxiety, I might not be intentional about how I present myself in a professional networking setting, or might not put effort into the conversations I have. So as much as I hate the feeling, I try to embrace what it does for me and why it makes sense in this context… and lo and behold, I even consider anxiety to be a friend of mine…one with many benefits!
This post has been co-authored with Kristen Roman, Psy.D., Founder and Director of Elevate CBT.
Portions of this post have been excerpted from my book, Goodbye, Anxiety: A Guided Journal for Overcoming Worry.
Blog as published in Psychology Today on 02/24/25.
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