It is easy for problems like anxiety to push us around.
That is hard to admit; in fact, you may resist the idea. But it really can happen. It can begin the moment you start to feel the anxiety. The world around you says that anxiety is not a good thing. It tells you that the presence of anxiety is a problem, and it might even suggest that you are a problem for having it.
When anxiety is framed in this way, the only option you have is to get rid of it. And so, your mind goes to work. You come up with all kinds of strategies to make the anxiety go away, or at least keep it at bay. You decide that you need to figure out where the anxiety comes from: something going on in your life now or something from how you grew up. Once you understand it, you will know what to do with it. Or maybe the best thing is just to avoid it completely, which means avoiding all those activities and relationships where it may show up. And before you know it, your anxiety is pushing your around. That is, it is telling you how you have to live and how you have to be.
What ends up getting lost in all this is your ability to make choices about your life that give you vitality and meaning. When your life is doing all you can to not experience anxiety, you also lose the ability to feel positive and nurturing feelings like love and compassion for others and for yourself. So you stop going places or being with people that enrich you. Even simple, everyday activities lose their meaning.
One Client’s Discovery
Several years ago, I had a client who learned this lesson. He was struggling with anxiety. During one of our sessions, he was talking about the events of his life. He talked about having to go to a conference for work and having to take care of some financial matters for his elderly parents. He talked about having to go to a parent meeting at school and having to do some work on his rental property. Now, we use that language all the time; we talk about “having” to do something. But as this client talked, the words, and his demeanor, felt heavy.
I pointed out to him how often he framed his life in terms of “have to.” I mentioned that it had a feel of duty, in an overbearing way. And then I made this suggestion, “Between now and our next session, be aware of when you say, ‘have to’, and change it to ‘get to.’” I wasn’t sure where the idea came from, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure how much difference it would make, but I thought it would help if he were more aware of the “have to.”
He came back the next week in a vastly different mood. He said that he had a chance to practice my suggestion later in the day of his last appointment. He went home and said to his wife, “I’ll be right back. I have to go pick up Tommy (his son) from baseball practice.” He stopped and whispered to himself, “No, I get to go pick up Tommy.” He reported how different this simple task became. Usually, Tommy jumps in the car and they drive home in silence. But this time, he asked his son about practice and what he was learning. He shared with his son a story about his love for baseball growing up. It was a completely different, and deeply meaningful, five-minute exchange. All because he chose the perspective of “get to.”
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