Understanding the root cause of your anxiety is genuinely a good sign. After all, if you don’t know where your worry comes from, you cannot address it. Identifying the cause is the crucial first step.
However, understanding it alone is not enough. If you do not handle it properly, your anxiety will continue to be triggered.
This article will guide you through the correct approach so you can finally break free from anxiety.
Why Understanding Anxiety Is Not Enough (2 Common Mistakes)
Anxiety is an internal signal alerting you to a threat to your safety. As long as that threat remains present, anxiety will keep being triggered. When dealing with anxiety, most people fall into two major traps:
Mistake 1: Forcing positive thinking and using willpower to fight anxiety
For example, imagine you have an upcoming bank loan payment due but lack the funds, or you hear rumors that your company is planning lay-offs. You tell yourself: “It’s okay, everything will be fine!” or “I need to stay positive, a solution will come!”
You try to force positivity, but when you lie down at night, your heart still pounds furiously, and you suffer from sleepless nights. Your brain is not stupid: it realizes the actual threat has not disappeared, making all positive reassurances feel like self-deception.
Mistake 2: Suppressing and ignoring anxiety
You put on a cheerful, happy front for the outside world while suppressing your internal anxiety.
For instance, you throw yourself into work, binge-watch movies, scroll endlessly through TikTok, play video games, or go out drinking to forget your worries. But the moment you stop being busy and face yourself again, the feeling of anxiety returns exactly as before.
The Correct Process to Resolve Anxiety
So, what is the correct way to deal with this?
Step 1: Acknowledge your anxiety without resistance
The first and most important step is simply admitting to yourself that you are feeling anxious. You recognize what you are anxious about—plain and simple. No avoidance, no suppression, no ignoring.
You do not necessarily have to show your anxiety in front of others; knowing it within yourself is sufficient. Whether you choose to share this with someone else is entirely up to you and does not affect the success of this process.
Step 2: Bring your body back to a state of safety
Very few people know this: when you feel anxious, energy is drained away from your cerebral cortex and concentrated in the limbic system, which controls emotions and bodily responses. Right now, you no longer have your intelligence. Every thought you have at this moment is garbage and wrong.
That is why positive thoughts fighting against anxiety or solutions you try to devise while anxious always fail. Therefore, the second crucial step is resetting your body back to a state of safety. Take 10 deep belly breaths to re-establish safety for your brain. Only then does energy flood back to your cortex, restoring your intelligence. Your thoughts will now be logical enough to solve the problem. Most people skip this step—they use an anxious brain to solve an anxiety problem. That is why they stay stuck in anxiety for so long.
Step 3: Use your restored clarity to eliminate the threat
After returning to a state of safety, use your restored intelligence at this moment to eliminate the threat:
If the problem is easy: Resolve it immediately.
If the problem is difficult or you are tired: Set a regular schedule when your brain is at its clearest to tackle it. For example, dedicate 30 minutes every morning to reflect on a solution.
In this case, even if the threat isn’t fully resolved yet, you have a plan to handle it without avoidance. Your brain will stop alarming, and your anxiety will pause.
Summary
In short, these 3 non-negotiable steps work together to help you break free from anxiety:
Acknowledge: Recognize that you are anxious and pinpoint what you are anxious about.
Reset: Take deep belly breaths to bring your body back to safety. Without this step, your attempts to solve the problem will be irrational, leading to endless ongoing anxiety.
Resolve: Use the clear intelligence restored from Step 2 to address the threat. If the issue is complex, break your time into regular sessions to handle it until the threat no longer exists.
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