In previous posts, I discussed the first two factors that fuel the presence of anxiety in your life. The first factor was fusing with your thoughts. This happens when you buy into and believe the thoughts that are created by your anxiety. The second factor was evaluating your experiences. This happens when your mind determines which thoughts and feelings related to the anxiety can be harmful or threatening, so you can come up with strategies to deal with them.
One of the most common strategies used to deal with these threatening thoughts and feelings is to avoid them.
This is a common strategy because, first of all, it seems to work. Let’s say you are entering a situation that causes you anxiety. You feel the anxiety in your body. You have memories of what this anxiety did to you in the past. You have thoughts about what will happen to you in the future if you don’t do something about this anxiety. You decide to avoid the situation that creates the anxiety. Guess what? As soon as you make that decision, your anxiety goes down.
So avoiding the anxiety seems to work. But only for a while. Studies show that the relief is only short term, and when it returns it will be even stronger than before. This is not because you are weak and have failed; it is because anxiety is something that is part of life, not bad or threatening (remember evaluating).
Another reason avoiding anxiety is a common experience is because it seems to make sense.
After all, if something is threatening, if it has the potential to harm you, I would recommend that you avoid it. In fact, if you could live your life avoiding unpleasant emotional experience in a healthy way, I would say go ahead and do it. But again, unpleasant emotions do not mean they are bad, because anxiety is a part of life.
In their book, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety, John P. Forsyth and Georg H. Eifert invite you “to consider the possibility that the pain that lies beneath your ‘bad’ anxiety and fear may not be so bad after all. It may actually serve a purpose and be a type of ‘growing pain.’ You may need it to get you moving toward the life that you so desperately want.” They go on to share a simple tale that illustrates this point.
What Avoiding Pain Cost the Emperor Moth
One day, a man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. Being curious, he took it home, hoping that one day he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. Then, on the fifth day, he noticed a small opening appeared. The man dropped everything he was doing and sat and watched the moth for several hours, just watching as the moth struggled to force its body through that little hole. “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” or so he thought. But it wasn’t long before the moth stopped making any progress. It appeared to have gotten as far as it could. It just seemed stuck.
Then the man, in his kindness, decided to help the moth. So he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The moth emerged easily, but it had a swollen body and small shriveled wings. The man continued to watch. He expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge, fan out magnificently, and be able to support his body. None of this happened! The little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. Sadly, this moth would never be able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste didn’t understand was this: In order for the moth to fly, it needed to experience the restricting cocoon and the painful struggle as it emerged through the tiny opening. This was a necessary part of the process to force fluid from the body and into the wings so that the moth would be ready for flight once it found freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would come only after allowing painful struggle. By depriving the moth of struggle, the man deprived the moth of health.
Hopefully, this story can give you a new perspective on your anxiety. Forsyth and Eifert wonder: “Could it be that your worries, anxieties, and fears aren’t your enemy? Is it possible that you need anxiety to ‘force fluid from your body into your wings’ in order to have the kind of life you so desperately want?”
It may seem like the only option to avoiding your anxiety is to get caught in it and overwhelmed by it. In counseling you can learn some skills that allow you to simply be present and be mindful of the anxiety, so you have enough psychological flexibility to make decisions that take your life in the direction you want to go. My anxiety treatment page will give you more information about how counseling can help you develop a different relationship with your anxiety.