AWARENESS, ANXIETY, AND ACTION

I hear it repeatedly. Anxiety is hijacking our attention. Even teenagers are struggling with anxiety. It is the black sheep of the mental health conversation. Many feel dismissed by the message that “it’s all in your mind.”

When we are told we are wrong for being anxious, we hide and isolate, which can cause us to feel stuck. Maybe you can relate, or maybe your story is different. The point here is not to fit your anxiety into a box.

Many try to manage anxiety by ignoring it or distracting themselves with activities. To cope with the heightened energy, it can help “burn it off” with movement like walking or running. Others try calming the mind with meditation, which most find challenging. Some resort to self-soothing with food, alcohol, or other substances. Instead of masking and managing, let's transform our relationship with anxiety instead.

I encourage people to practice awareness and acceptance of what we cannot control. Easier said than done, I know. What we cannot control is exactly what causes anxiety.

Essentially we humans crave certainty; however, we cannot control what happens. We can only choose how we respond to what happens. That's how we can shift from feeling paralyzed by fear to feeling more confident.

AWARENESS

Awareness is a powerful tool because it gives us more information to choose how we want to respond. However, many feel that awareness can cause even more anxiety. Awareness makes us notice more how we think and feel, our surroundings, and others. Therefore many choose to try to ignore or numb out the sensitivity to this constant consciousness.

Empathetic people, for example, can feel overly stimulated by their awareness of others' emotional state. We want to be more aware, but how much can we pay attention to? We encourage more empathy in the workplace, especially for leaders. We want to be aware of what’s happening in the world, and yet we can feel powerless in the face of the troubling reality around us. How do we find peace and power in our awareness?

PAUSE, PEACE, AND POWER

Awareness of others, surroundings, and ourselves can seem like a lot. Since I was a child I have been highly sensitive and tried to pretend I wasn't. The reality was that I was (and still am) hyper-aware of everything. I was an only child and I was bullied when I first started school because I cried too easily. I had also been through several near-death accidents by the time I was 7. That all added up to a heightened importance of paying attention.

As you have heard me share before, my mother was struggling with her mental health. I made it my job as a kid to know her mood and be her cheerleader when she was down. The problem was she didn’t communicate how she felt and I had to figure it out, which made me hyper aware. I understand today that she was not able to identify and communicate her emotional state. I'm not suggesting it's easy to know, but we can learn to listen and ask questions, both of ourselves and others.

That’s part of the challenge of awareness. We take it on as our job to help others and can neglect to pay attention to how we think, feel, and what we need ourselves.

So, isn’t it easier not to pay attention? I don’t believe so. Without awareness, we can get stuck in a cycle of reactivity leading to more anxiety. Instead, learning to pause and listen, we can reclaim agency over our innate human advantage, ––to make choices with discernment and care.

Learning to pause, listen and ask more questions has helped me reclaim peace and power over situations. Those that happen around me and within me.

ANXIETY

You have probably heard that anxiety comes from worrying about the future. And yes, we worry about the future and regret the past. That’s where our mind spends most of its time, and it can take away our sense of agency over how we live our lives and do our work. Not only because our mind is somewhere other than here in this moment, but also because we can only control what we do in this moment.

There are many different tools that we can use for anxiety, and though aspects of anxiety are related to mindset, just thinking positively is not a tool. Sorry, "positive thinkers," but saying to someone that “it will be ok, it always works out in the end, you got this,” is not how we overcome anxiety. More recent research into emotional health finds that dismissing how we feel is neither helpful or healthy.

When we are scared of a monster under the bed, saying there are no monsters doesn’t stop us from being scared; it just puts the burden of trust onto the people who tell us so. And if the fear persists, we just feel more alone. Instead, we look under the bed together to feel assured that there are no monsters right now.

As you might have heard me say, what we worry about is also what we care about. That’s why we can use our awareness to reset our attention and refocus on what matters so we can take action with C.A.R.E. = confidence, agility, resilience, and empowerment.

The key to changing our relationship with anxiety is to accept the situation for what it is and work from there. I know - that’s not what you wanted to hear because that’s exactly what you are most challenged by.

Emotional freedom lies in the acceptance of what we cannot control or change.

It might be that we are trying to figure out how to deal with a problem and predict its outcome, that we are concerned about what might happen in the future, like being laid off, or that we are simply confused about a decision we have to make.

You can look forward to my soon-to-be-released new TEDx talk, in which I discuss anxiety and fear and how to shift towards clarity and confidence by using Power-Pausing.

When we can accept that we cannot control the situation, even when it sucks, even when it’s not optimal, even when it hurts, even when it’s scary, even when it’s a big change we don’t want, that’s when we reclaim agency over how we act and make decisions. I dive into this more deeply in my book, The Self-Care Mindset.

ACTION

It might seem like I’m contradicting myself now. Above, I talked about how some of the activities we do might help us manage and avoid feeling anxious, and now I’m going to suggest that you ask yourself what you need.

The change is to ask what you need so that you can… what it is you want to achieve instead of what you want to avoid. It might still mean you need to go for a walk or a run to clear your head, but the intention matters.

When we ask what we need so that we can… whatever we are trying to achieve, we will reset, refocus, and reengage with what we can control: how we respond.

When my dad was dying, as much as it was challenging to accept, as much as I was scared about what to expect, the moment we chose to stop wishing it was different, we took back control over our shared and individual anxiety, and we asked: what do we need so that we can make this time we have left the most meaningful time it can be. In this way, we could change our conversations, deepen our relationship, and transform our fears and worries into care and compassion. For ourselves, each other, and the situation.

PAUSE TO EMBRACE THE DISCOMFORT

We cannot avoid change and challenges that cause us to feel anxious, but we can change how we respond.

What if it’s normal to feel uncomfortable and awkward, scared and uncertain when we face something new or unknown? Could you pause for just a little longer to see what could change?

Instead of getting pulled into the vortex of reactive patterns of behavior, thoughts, and emotions that come with anxiety, practice pausing to notice the discomfort, and instead of fixing it, let it be for just a little longer and see if something changes.