The Anxiety Trick

Have you struggled to overcome an anxiety disorder only to get disappointing results—or even feel worse over time? If so, you’re likely being fooled by the “Anxiety Trick.”

The Anxiety Trick is behind most of the trouble people have with chronic anxiety. It is a very common occurrence and people mistakenly blame themselves for it.

Here’s a more accurate and helpful way to understand this frustrating problem.

You Experience Discomfort and Get Fooled into Treating It Like Danger

What do we do when we are in danger? We only have three choices: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. If the threat looks weaker than us, we fight it. If it looks stronger but slower than us, we run away. And, if it looks stronger and faster than us, we freeze and hope it doesn’t see us.

That’s all we have for danger.

When you experience the fear of a panic episode, phobic encounter, or obsessive thought, you instinctively treat it as a danger. You try to protect yourself with some variation of Fight, Flight, or Freeze.

If you choose one of these protective measures when there was no potential catastrophe, you tend to believe your choice “saved” you from catastrophe. This can make you worry even more about “the next time” a threat will occur. It convinces you that you are terribly vulnerable and must constantly protect yourself.

This is how the problem gets embedded in your life. You think you are helping yourself, but you are actually being tricked into making it worse. That’s how sneaky the Anxiety Trick is.

How Can You Overcome the Anxiety Trick?

The thing that makes fears and phobias so persistent is that virtually anything you do to oppose, escape, or distract yourself from anxious feelings and thoughts will be turned against you. This often just makes anxiety a more persistent part of your life.

You may even say to yourself, “The harder I try, the worse it gets.”  This common feeling is a result of overreacting—essentially, you’re putting out fires with gasoline.

If you’ve been throwing flammables on your “fires,” you may not know what to do next. But, the first step to take is always the same: Put down the buckets! Stop throwing gasoline on that fire!

Talk to yourself (silently!) about what is happening and what you need to do. One question you may find helpful is this, “Is it danger or discomfort…right now?” This is important because what is good for danger is precisely the opposite of what is good for discomfort.

Protecting yourself from danger is a good thing, but protecting yourself from discomfort is a bad thing. Anxiety tricks you into reacting in a way that gives it more power and ultimately makes it worse.

If you’re motivated to protect yourself from a problem, what does that tell you about the nature of the problem? Would you distract yourself by balancing your checkbook while you were in the middle of a bank robbery? Obviously not. That’s because you are in real danger in that situation.

On the other hand, would you distract yourself by listening to music if you were worried about an upcoming social event? Yes, you might. That’s because there is no real danger in the situation.  If you feel the need to distract yourself, it’s not danger. It’s just discomfort.

The way to disarm the Anxiety Trick is to increasingly spend time with anxiety. Spend time exposing yourself to your thoughts and sensations to allow them to subside over time.