Anxiety: Friend or Foe?

I'd like to propose a radical idea.

Anxiety and I are no longer enemies. Don't get me wrong. We are also not friends who go antiquing together on Saturday mornings. We're more like coworkers who share an office and have agreed upon some very important boundaries.

It took us a while to get here.

For years, I thought anxiety was a problem to solve. If I could just think harder, prepare more, organize better, or become an Olympic-level overachiever, maybe I'd finally outrun it.

Spoiler alert: I did not.

Turns out, anxiety is suspiciously athletic. The faster I ran, the faster it ran. The more I fought it, the stronger it became. Go me. Self-high-five.

The funny thing about anxiety is that it often disguises itself as responsibility. It whispers, "If you worry enough, you'll be prepared." It says, "If you rehearse every possible outcome, nothing can surprise you." It nudges, "Let's revisit that awkward thing you said four years ago. Surely there is unresolved business there."

The truth is, anxiety often mistakes endless thinking for problem solving.

But thinking and solving are not the same thing. I can sit in a rocking chair for hours. I'll be moving the entire time. I also won't be going anywhere.

Anxiety can be like that. Lots of movement. Very little mileage.

One of the first things I've learned about managing anxiety is to ask myself a simple question:

Am I solving a problem, or am I feeding a problem?

Those are different things. If my smoke detector goes off because there's an actual fire, let's do something about that. If my smoke detector goes off because someone burned toast, perhaps we don't need to evacuate the entire neighborhood.

Our brains, unfortunately, are not always excellent at telling the difference. They are excellent storytellers, though.

An anxious brain doesn't ask, "What is happening?"

It asks, "What if?"

What if they don't like me? What if I fail? What if I'm making the wrong decision? What if something terrible happens? What if I forgot something important? What if this weird pain in my shoulder means I have six minutes to live?

Our brains can take us from a shoulder ache to writing our own eulogy in under thirty seconds.

Honestly, impressive. Concerning, but impressive.

One thing that's been enormously helpful for me is to interrupt the "what if" spiral with a different question:

What do I know for certain right now?

Not tomorrow. Not six months from now.

Right now.

Right now, I am sitting in a chair. Right now, my feet are touching the floor. Right now, I am safe. Right now, I can breathe. Right now, I can take one next step.

Anxiety lives in the future. Our bodies live in the present.

Sometimes managing anxiety means gently escorting ourselves back home. Back to the body. Back to this moment. Back to reality.

I know. It sounds suspiciously simple. But simple is not the same thing as easy.

One of my favorite techniques is the world's least exciting scavenger hunt. I look for the following: Five things I can see. Four things I can feel. Three things I can hear. Two things I can smell. One thing I can taste.

It's astonishing how quickly this reminds my nervous system that I am here and not inside the fictional disaster movie my brain has created.

Another thing I've learned: movement matters. Our bodies were designed to move. Anxiety creates energy and lots of it.

Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is give that energy somewhere to go. Take a walk. Stretch. Dance badly in your kitchen. Emphasis on badly. Nobody is auditioning for anything.

Sometimes a ten-minute walk around the block can accomplish more than an hour-long debate with your own thoughts. Which, by the way, you will never win. Anxiety has unlimited free time, so don't engage.

I've also become a huge fan of tiny pauses. Not hour-long meditation retreats on mountaintops. Tiny pauses. Thirty seconds. One minute.

Three deep breaths before opening my email. Stepping outside between appointments. Looking at the sky for no reason whatsoever.

Our nervous systems need evidence that we are safe. These small moments become evidence. I think we underestimate how powerful that is.

There's another thing anxiety hates: naming itself.

When I say, "I am anxious," it can feel as though anxiety has become my entire identity. But when I say, "I'm noticing anxiety right now," something shifts. I am no longer anxiety. I am a person experiencing anxiety. There is distance. There is space. There is choice.

Language matters. So does kindness.

Imagine your best friend came to you and said, "I'm worried. I don't know what to do." Would you yell, "Get it together! Why are you like this?" Probably not. At least, I hope not.

Yet many of us speak to ourselves exactly that way.

Anxiety thrives in harshness; compassion quietly disarms it.

I've discovered that saying, "This is hard right now," is infinitely more helpful than saying, "What's wrong with me?"

Because nothing is wrong with us. Our brains are trying to protect us. They're just a little overenthusiastic sometimes. Like an intern who created a 400-page emergency preparedness manual for a trip to the grocery store — their heart is in the right place, their execution needs work.

I recently heard someone describe anxiety as trying to outrun waves at the beach. A wave comes, you jump. Another wave arrives and you jump again. Then another. Then another. Eventually, something beautiful dawns on you: the ocean is not going to stop making waves. Your job is not to eliminate them. Your job is to learn how to stand in the water.

Maybe anxiety management isn't management at all. Maybe it's partnership and acceptance. Maybe it's learning that peace isn't the absence of anxiety but the ability to continue living beautifully alongside it.

The poet Mary Oliver asked, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

I've always loved that sentence because anxiety desperately wants us to postpone our lives. It says: Wait until you're certain. Wait until you're fearless. Wait until every possibility has been accounted for. Wait until you feel ready.

But certainty never arrives. Fearlessness is a myth. And readiness is often something we discover while we're already moving.

So perhaps courage looks different than we imagined. Maybe courage is saying: I can be anxious and still send the text. I can be anxious and still take the trip. I can be anxious and still attend the meeting. I can be anxious and still ask for help. I can be anxious and still live.

Perhaps that's the secret. We stop asking, "How do I get rid of anxiety?" And we start asking, "How do I build a life that's bigger than anxiety?"

Because anxiety may always ride along with us from time to time. But it doesn't get the steering wheel. Absolutely not. It can sit in the back seat. It can even complain about traffic. But it does not decide our destination.

And somehow, that realization is incredibly freeing. Life was never meant to be a perfectly rehearsed performance. It's messy. It's skiwampus. It's occasionally held together with duct tape and leftover coffee.

And somehow, despite all of that — or maybe because of it — it's still breathtakingly beautiful.