In his book the Concept of Anxiety, the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
“…the courageous person does not shrink back when anxiety announces itself, and still less does he attempt to hold it off with noise and confusion; but he greets it festively, and like Socrates who raised the poisoned cup, he shuts himself up with it and says as a patient would say to the surgeon when the painful operation is about the begin: Now I am ready.”
Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety
An anxiety disorder functions like a trickster. It convinces us that we are in danger when we are safe. And any effort to force it away only makes it stronger. Whether we try to numb ourselves with alcohol and drugs or attempt to tame our anxiety with healthier tactics like exercise or positive thinking, the more we try to eliminate it, the more firmly it takes root.
“…anxiety symptoms cannot be vanquished with effort.”
Martin Seif and Sally Winston, What Every Therapist Needs to Know about Anxiety Disorders
It is because anxiety can be so deceptive that anxiety disorders are difficult to overcome. Yet there is reason for hope, as anxiety disorders are among the most treatable psychological conditions. But to effectively treat them requires a shift in how we understand and respond to anxiety. Instead of falling for its deceptions, we must learn to see through them and call anxiety’s bluffs. In this video, we explore techniques that make this possible.
“…anxiety can come on so suddenly that almost everyone’s initial response to it is the same. We resist it. It’s human nature to want to avoid an uncomfortable experience like anxiety. We’d rather run away from it or try to block it out. Unfortunately, no one has ever told us that’s the wrong response to have. It’s the wrong response because when we fight anxiety, that effort traps us with the same force we put into trying to fight it. When we run from it, it chases us with the same speed of our escape.”
Barry McDonagh, Dare: The New Way to End Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks
The first step in overcoming an anxiety disorder is to break the association between feeling anxious and being in danger. For rather than serving as a reliable warning of threat, the anxiety experienced in an anxiety disorder is most often a false alarm.
“Anxiety makes patients believe that feeling anxious is the same as being in danger. The goal is to erase the association between feeling anxious and being unsafe. They are not the same.”
Martin Seif and Sally Winston, What Every Therapist Needs to Know about Anxiety Disorders
One way to erase this association is to label anxious thoughts and sensations for what they are: not signs of objective danger, but simply anxiety. When a wave of anxiety arises, we can remind ourselves: “This is anxiety trying to trick me into feeling unsafe. Just because these thoughts feel frightening does not mean they are true. My anxious feelings are making the threat seem real, but this is simply anxiety sounding a false alarm.” Or as Martin Seif and Sally Winston write in their book What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety:
“Labeling anxiety is the first step towards disabling anxiety…So the first job is to put the label of anxiety on all fearful distress that is not caused by an objective danger. Feeling frightened is not the same as being unsafe. Labeling anxiety is the first step towards breaking this connection.”
Martin Seif and Sally Winston, What Every Therapist Needs to Know about Anxiety Disorders
But an obvious question lingers: what if anxiety is alerting us to real danger? A physical symptom we are anxious about may signal a serious health problem. The fear that something terrible might happen to someone we care about could be an accurate prediction of a future tragedy. Or the worry that we will make an embarrassing social blunder may come true. “…every dread which alarms may the next instant become a fact.”, Soren Kierkegaard observed. Part of what makes anxiety so convincing, and anxiety disorders so difficult to overcome, is that uncertainty is woven into the fabric of existence. We can never be completely certain that the bad things we are anxious about won’t happen. This is a reality we must learn to face and accept.
“The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear.”
Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
Or as Lee Smolin writes:
“On a personal level, to think in time is to accept the uncertainty of life as the necessary price of being alive. To rebel against the precariousness of life, to reject uncertainty, to adopt a zero tolerance to risk, to imagine that life can be organised to completely eliminate danger, is to think outside time. To be human is to live suspended between danger and opportunity.”
Lee Smolin, Time Reborn
To help us tolerate uncertainty, the psychologist Jonathan Grayson introduced a thought experiment he called the gun test.
