The Traits of Anxiety Fighters

OK, so I said in my last post I was going to do some more examples of Flight or Fight responses and what unplugging looked like. But I’ve changed my mind. 🙂 I’m going to focus instead on something that might be as useful for some of you (my excellent readers) in your fight with anxiety. I’m going to talk about what seem to be the common traits that we all share AS anxiety fighters – those qualities that appear to be universal to us.

Please do me a favor in this reading and don’t decide whether or not these traits apply to you until you’ve finished the blog post and given it a little time to roll around in your head. We can be so dismissive of anything that smacks of us being capable or smart or gifted in some way (when we’re in the grip of anxiety) that we can be terrible self-assessors. Give me a chance before you decide whether I’m right or not, OK?

So, let’s talk about you for a while…

You’re SMART

In the book “Free From Fear” by Ann Seagrave and Faison Covington (the book associated with the program CHAANGE, the first good partial set of tools I found in my long fight with anxiety back in 1995) the authors contend that two clear traits are possessed by everyone who fights chronic anxiety. The first is that we’re a little smarter than the average bear.

I can already see you shaking your head with a small smile on your face. “Oh no – that’s not me – I’m just your average Joe” (or Jane, or whatever you call yourself.) But the truth is that you ARE in fact pretty bright. You have to be.

If you were not packing around some serious gray matter to spend all the time and energy you do theorizing about the future, creating various dark scenarios about what might happen if everything goes to hell, well, you couldn’t wrestle with anxiety the way you do…

That isn’t your cue to go out and get a lobotomy (although it might be tempting if you start thinking that this is the sole cause of anxiety – it isn’t a cause, just one of the conditions that makes anxiety possible in the first place.) Nope, you’ve got some capacity in the thinking department. You’re using it every time you get lost in anxious thinking.

There is a wonderful irony in this essential pre-condition of anxiety. (After all, is your cat or dog worried about the future? Nope. Not enough gray matter to make that possible. Sorry – I know you REALLY think your dog or cat is smart!) It is ironic in that it is also the central key in ENDING anxiety. So in some respects your high-powered brain is both the cause and cure of anxiety.

I’m also not saying that people who don’t fight anxiety are stupid. I didn’t say anxiety fighters were all Einstein in the making. 🙂 No, I’m just saying we’re a little stronger in that department. That might sound proud or arrogant. It is neither! It is just an acknowledgement of what is.

You have a dang good brain. With a little training it can easily manage anxiety. Long years of worry and fear may make that seem implausible at the moment, but it is the simple truth.

But that’s not all we anxiety-fighters share.

You’re SENSITIVE

This poor word gets a bad rap these days! If you’re a guy then it means you’re weak, soft, not a man, etc. If you’re a woman then it’s just expected, right? Women are always too sensitive, too fragile, too emotional? Just a character flaw of being female…

Pardon this next word, but bullshit. Sensitive isn’t bad or good by itself. Sensitive is just a quality. And in the case of anxiety-fighters we are a little more receptive, a little more aware of what’s going on around us in our environment. We’re “less blind” to the noise, the light, the crowd, the blaring TV, the loud radio, the cold, the heat, etc.

Sensitive isn’t fragile. Sensitive is aware. And that’s also an element that feeds into our anxiety when we’re caught up in anxious thinking. We’re already stressed, tired, drained when we’re in the grip of an anxiety battle, and then, with our lower threshold to stimuli around us (noise, light, odor, you name it) then we can feel even more stressed and crowded than we already do…

That sensitivity is a great gift. It makes us more aware than other people – more aware often of people’s feelings, of the beauty of the moment, of something we could do to improve the mood and the situation we’re in. It is a capacity to experience the world more fully, more richly.

It is also a challenge when our thinking is lost in anxious fears of the future. Smaller things can become bigger things. We can over-read the situation, add meaning where there isn’t easy, become hyper-sensitive. It can feel like the world is simply too much when we’re in the middle of our anxiety fight.

It doesn’t have to be a burden. It can in fact be a great warning signal when we’re at the edge of our capacity that we need to take a break, slow down, get some space, take care of ourselves to the extent our situation permits.

There’s something to really focus on in that last paragraph. Our increased capacity to experience the world can also be a great tripwire for us to notice when we’re overloaded with stress and worry. This is why I call one of the 4 essential skills of managing anxiety self-care. More about that later…

The bottom-line is that we have two remarkable traits – a little bit extra in the brains department and a little bit extra in the sensitivity department. Gifts – that’s what these are. Gifts that can turn into burdens if we’re lost in anxiety.

But there’s a problem with that given ANOTHER trait we all seem to share, and that is

You’ve Got Seriously High Personal Standards!

Unlike the first two qualities of this blog post I don’t believe this is natural to us, this relentless push to self-perfection that anxiety fighters carry around with them. No, I think we learn this from our world as we grow up and take on that world.

It has something essential to do with our perception of safety. We come to believe that we have to always be calm, or always be happy, or never be angry, or never let another person down, or always do 120% at everything we do, or all of the above (heaven help us.) We come to believe that if we DON’T do that terrible things will happen.

In other words, we’ll fail. And of course, as Susan Jeffers says, the fear of failure lies at the heart of ALL of our fears. So we set these insanely, impossibly high standards for ourselves, and then hammer ourselves when we don’t reach those lofty heights.

In a very real sense we expect to be superhuman. Because only superhumans are never angry, always happy, always give 120% to everything they do, etc. We’re human. Part of the essential work of ending the reign of anxiety in our lives is deeply embracing our humanity, our strengths and our weaknesses.

That can be a scary process for those of us who battle anxiety and fear and depression. It means turning and facing our fears, and we’re trying VERY hard to run from those in the first place. This is at the center of the work of recognizing where we have turned a problem (how we come off to people, how hard or diligently we work, how we manage our feelings) into a crisis (never, always, must, should, etc.)

We are human. Humans with incredible gifts, and humans who make mistakes, don’t always or never do ANYTHING, but have ups and downs, better and worse days.

You’re Really Pretty Remarkable…

And it’s about time you acknowledged it! 🙂 Smart and sensitive – you can live with that, can’t you? And as far as your personal standards and beliefs – well, that could stand some examination too, couldn’t it?

Fighting anxiety means slowing down and coming to know ourselves better, more deeply. It means work that can be disconcerting or even a little scary (OK, a lot scary sometimes), but it is also work that helps us really come to appreciate and care for who we actually are.

It means learning to “live in our skin.” It means not running from who we are, but turning and accepting who we are. It means, as I say a lot in this blog, coming out of the future and coming into the present – where YOU are.

So what does all this mean? It means that you have some pretty nifty gifts. Smart and sensitive – great package. And it means that you have some work to do in examining and re-evaluating that stack of personal rules and standards that you cart around with you.

But perhaps most importantly it means that you have the capacity to take on and beat anxiety. It may not FEEL that way – but then you didn’t really appreciate how smart or sensitive you were, did you? 🙂 You are really pretty remarkable. Embrace your gifts, scale back those impossible personal standards, and you have all you need to make chronic anxiety a thing of the past.