What Your Anxiety Is Actually Trying to Tell You

https://youtu.be/QJHdFxzHwtw?si=Y39KVAQfouRiPJ1F

You feel anxious, and straight away the questionning begins. What is this trying to tell me? What's wrong? What have I missed?

Here's what I've come to see, after years of this in my own head and with the women I work with. That feeling is telling you something. It's just almost never the thing you think it is.

The assumption that makes it worse

When a difficult feeling arrives, most of us treat it as a report or a prediction. A read-out on how life is going, or on the kind of person we are, or what might happen. The tight chest before a meeting or the dread on a Sunday night. The wave of "I handled that badly" three hours after a conversation ended. And the instant conclusion: if it feels this bad, something must be wrong. And it must be wrong with me.

That assumption is the problem. Because if you believe a horrible feeling is telling you the truth about you, of course you don't want to feel it. Of course you push it down. Who would want to sit with that.

A feeling is a signal. It points two ways. 

So here is a perspective change.

A difficult feeling is a signal. Your system saying, something needs attention here. That part is real. I'm not going to tell you your feelings mean nothing, because you would know that wasn't true.

But the signal points in one of two directions, and learning to tell which is the whole skill.

Sometimes it points at something occuring in your life that does need your attention. A boundary that was crossed, a decision that feels wrong for you or maybe a job you have outgrown. Perhaps grief you haven't enough space to feel. That feeling is information, and the response is to listen, reflect on it and act if that makes sense to you.

A lot of the time, though, it points at something else entirely. Not at your life at all, but at the fact that you have been pulled into a story. A story running in your head, in a voice that sounds like you, about how you are failing, how you are not enough, how this is just who you are.

I call that voice Sue. She represents the inner critical voice, who is overly responsible and just wants to keep you safe. Not happy, safe (her name spells her three main drives Safety, Uncertainty and Exposure). In this case the feeling isn't a verdict on your life. It's a bell going off. A small alarm saying: you're up in your head, believing something Sue made up.

How to tell the two apart

So how do you know which one you have? This is simpler than you would think.

One direction for the signal is about the situation. It points at something you can actually respond to. Your job, a conversation that needs revisting or a boundary.

Sue's story is about you. Your worth, your character. And it is usually sweeping and permanent. "I always get this wrong. I'm a terrible mother. This is just how I am. I'll never change."

So the question to ask when the feeling hits is this. Is this pointing at something I can do something about or that needs my attention? Or is it just Sue, telling me again that I'm the problem?

Situation, or character. That is the fork.

An example

Say you snapped at your child. Up comes the feeling, and in comes the voice. "I'm a terrible mother. I've damaged them. This is who I am, I always do this."

Is that pointing at something you can respond to? Partly, yes. You can go and repair it by saying you are sorry. You can have the small honest conversation. That is the true signal, and it is worth acting on.

But "I'm a terrible mother, this is who I am"? That is not information. That is Sue. And if you believe it is the truth about you, you will spend the evening drowning in it. If you can see it is Sue, you can feel the feeling, do the repair, and let the rest go.

Same feeling. Two completely different directions. The skill is telling them apart.

Why feelings feel so personal

Here's a metaphor, because thought is slippery and this helps it stick.

Imagine standing in a strong wind. It's gusting in your face, messing up your hair, and it is not pleasant. You wouldn't stand there and ask what the wind means about you, or why this keeps happening to you, or what is wrong with you that the wind is blowing. You would know that is a bit mad. It is the weather, an energy moving through. It will pass, and it has nothing to do with who you are.

Your thoughts and feelings are the same. They move through. They gust and they drop. But because they show up in a voice that sounds like you, talking about you, we take them personally. We treat the weather as a verdict.

It isn't. And the wind always drops. It always has. A new thought, a new feeling, comes along behind it.

The one thing to take away

So the next time a hard feeling arrives, you have one question. Is this pointing at something real I can respond to? Or is it Sue, telling me I'm the problem again?

You don't have to try to make the feeling go away. You don't have to fix yourself. You just have to notice which way it is pointing.

Understanding ends what effort never could.

If you want to get to know that voice, the one I call Sue, I've made a free two-minute quiz that shows you how yours operates. It shows which of her three drives speaks loudest in you: Safety, Uncertainty, or Exposure. It's the fastest way to start telling the difference between what's true and what's just the story.

Take the quiz:  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/JfxG3sz