Anxiety
Anxiety can look like:
Irritability
Perfectionism
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Emetophobia (fear of throwing up)
Panic
Health anxiety
Avoidance
Rumination
School Refusal
Can I tell you a secret about anxiety?
It’s lying to you.
Anxiety doesn’t care about the people and experiences that are important to you.
It doesn’t care about your goals. In fact, it doesn’t even know that those things exist.
Anxiety is a very normal human experience. Its job is to show you what to pay attention
to, such as crossing a busy street, a championship match, making a good impression, or
meeting a deadline. When it’s working, we actually perform better when we have a little
adrenaline in our system.
However, for many of us, anxiety doesn’t stay in its lane. Instead it starts to tell us that normal or fun things are dangerous enough to be avoided. Talking to new people, driving, dogs, losing a game. It can even send signals that feeling anxiety itself is dangerous. We get worried about whether we can cope with being worried.
Anxiety’s biggest weapon is uncertainty. “What if they don’t like me?” “What if I fail?” “What if the doctor made a mistake?”
However, there is ALWAYS a sliver of uncertainty in everything we do and anxiety can alert us to these small slivers and insist that we eliminate them, resulting in avoidance, perfectionism, and constant reassurance seeking.
I’ll teach you to differentiate between normal anxiety and disordered anxiety, notice for yourself how it works, and how to start giving your brain new experiences to draw from.
Full disclosure: The goal is never to eliminate anxiety. We’d fail every time. The trick to reducing anxiety in a meaningful way is to be willing to feel it.
Depression
If anxiety is busy warning us that we can’t handle things, depression is telling us that they’re not worth it anyway. It attacks our self-esteem and it impacts how and what we remember. When we look at our lives through depression colored glasses, everything feels heavy, hopeless, and like it’s all our fault.
If depression is what is bringing you in, we’ll take an honest look at how depression is working in your life. We’ll start to notice it more easily and call it out when it shows up. We’ll challenge the things it’s telling you, gradually shift your vantage point from pessimism to something more realistic, and experiment with behavioral changes in spite of not feeling like it.
I know what you’re thinking “That’s not going to work. It’s not that easy.”
I know it’s not easy, but depression is telling you to not even try.
Why Anxiety and Depression tend to hang out
There’s a reason that anxiety and depression hang out so much. They work together and there’s a strategy they use to keep us…well, anxious and depressed.
Here’s one typical way they team up:
Anxiety cares about keeping you safe. Keeping you comfortable.
At the expense of things that you need and want to do. It tells you that you can’t handle certain situations, people or emotions.
And when we aren’t able to do things that we need and want to do, are closed off to specific emotions like regret, embarrassment, worry, or guilt, or are unable to show up for the people we care about in the way that we want to, this makes us feel bad about ourselves. Enter depression.
It’s my goal to demystify anxiety and depression. Expose the ways that they are keeping you stuck. So you can see them more clearly and recognize their tactics. My hope is that this will enable you to decide for yourself how much you are going to let them guide your decisions and behavior.
