5 Powerful Rules for Anxiety about Anxiety

Anxiety about anxiety is a never-ending loop that can leave you feeling hopeless and in fear of the most basic daily living tasks. Fortunately, there are things you can do to start recovering!

As a mental health therapist, and a former anxious person, I know how it feels to live in fear of your own body, not knowing when anxiety could hit. This post is ALL ABOUT powerful rules for anxiety about anxiety.

What Makes Anxiety about Anxiety Different?

Typically, when people have anxiety, there is a precursor or trigger that activates the sequence. For example, someone has anxiety about driving, and as soon as they begin imagining themselves driving their brain sends alarm signals to the body, causing the body to react accordingly. This can also be true of certain thoughts or external stimuli that tell the brain to sound the alarms.

For this, anxiety treatment is simple. You first need to discover the trigger, then “defang” whatever the fear is. You would do this by using coping strategies to calm the body while engaging in the thing you are afraid of. For our example of driving, you would use breathing techniques, distraction techniques, or self-talk while driving. (Click here to see CBT Techniques for Anxiety). With enough corrective experiences, your brain eventually learns to stop sending the alarm signals for this specific trigger.

However, when your anxiety is centered around anxiety itself, it becomes more complicated. Using coping skills to stop the anxiety when it starts never really allows you to “defang” the sensations of anxiety, therein causing the never-ending loop.

Rule 1: See Anxiety with Gratitude

The first step to overcoming your anxiety about anxiety is to begin looking at anxiety in a different way. Oftentimes, people see anxiety as a sickness. They see it as having a broken brain that needs to be fixed. Realistically, everyone has (or should have) anxiety to some degree.

Anxiety is a natural response in the body to keep you safe from harm. When working well, it prompts you to take action in the face of danger, and it gives you the energy to follow through.

Imagine not having anxiety at all. If you are in a forest, and see a bear, you would have nothing telling your body to react quickly and run, and your brain wouldn’t send you the much-needed adrenaline.

In fact, according to Dr. Amen in his book You, Happier, people with a “Don’t Worry” attitude tend to die faster, because they lack the survival response.

So, when having an anxiety response, try to acknowledge that not only is this biological response trying to help, it is also necessary for survival.

Rule 2: Normalize Physical Sensations

A large part of being anxious about anxiety is dreading the physical symptoms. Being able to recognize the symptoms as a temporary discomfort is a big part of making anxiety less scary.

It’s important to recognize that the things that your body is doing MAKES SENSE if you were in a life-or-death situation. Your heart is racing, and your breathing is short in order to pump your blood, nutrients, and energy through your system faster. Your digestion is impacted because your body is trying to use up energy that you’ve already digested, as well as slow down parts of the digestive system that aren’t necessary in the moment (to save energy for the important things). Your blood may be redirected to the central part of your body, as it’s more necessary for survival, causing your legs and arms to feel tingly. Your frontal lobe (conscious decision-making) gets turned off so that your body is able to act from the more instinctual parts of the brain.

That is A LOT to be aware of. If you were actually running away from a bear, then you wouldn’t really notice all of this happening, because you would be using up the energy appropriately. When you aren’t in actual danger, this surge of energy feels really uncomfortable, and may make you want to either curl up or move around.

So, when these sensations are happening, remind yourself that it’s just the anxiety giving you extra energy, and though it’s uncomfortable, you aren’t in real danger.

Rule 3: Sit with Discomfort

This is the step that confuses people when it comes to recovering from anxiety about anxiety. Most people ask me, “but aren’t you SUPPOSED to use your coping skills?” Yes and no. If the goal is to make the sensations stop as quickly as possible, then coping skills might help. But if the goal is to break the bigger pattern, then you’ll need to learn how to feel comfortable with anxiety, at least for a little bit.

Remember, everyone SHOULD feel SOME anxiety throughout their day. If you are at a grocery store and someone starts getting heated with the cashier in front of you, it is normal for your body to start to activate, until it realizes there is not threat, at which point it will naturally calm back down. Same thing if you are in a room that starts to get overcrowded, your body may activate to allow you to scan for exits and create a safety plan, and then start to naturally calm back down once it feels more secure.

However, if you become anxious about these normal anxiety sensations and experiences, it will cause the anxiety to start looping, instead of responding normally and calming down naturally.

To start, practice by sitting with the sensations for 30 seconds before using a coping skill. Once that feels better, level up to a minute, then two. Keep going until the anxious sensations begin to subside on their own.

Rule 4: Talk to Yourself

Self-talk is a tried-and-true method for helping with anxiety, and it’s important to create statements that are specific to what you are trying to achieve.

To make anxiety go away faster, you will typically say statements like, “I am safe,” or “this will pass.” For recovering from fear of anxiety, you might want to also try things like, “my body is reacting to a trigger,” and “these sensations are normal.”

Ultimately, you’ll want the conversation to be two-sided, meaning ask your brain what it is scared of. This may seem silly, but oftentimes if you are sitting with the discomfort and trying to explore, your brain will give you answers.

Maybe there is a real threat, like you feel a friend distancing themselves or someone is crossing a boundary. At this point, you don’t want to dismiss what your body is trying to tell you. If there is a real threat and you tell yourself, “It’s okay,” it’s kind of like gaslighting yourself. Instead, recognize the threat and make an action plan to create safety (i.e. talking to the friend or speaking up for yourself).

Rule 5: Know your Limits

Challenging anxiety is hard work. Being anxious already takes up a lot of your energy, causing inflammation and fatigue. Challenging the anxiety takes even more energy. It’s important to acknowledge that you may not always have energy to challenge yourself, and that’s okay. You can always take a break, use coping skills or distraction techniques, or any of the other things that you use to manage anxiety.

Be kind to yourself through the process. Recovery isn’t linear. With enough corrective experiences, you will eventually be able to embrace normal anxiety throughout the day and stop the endless loop.

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These are the 5 rules to recovering from anxiety about anxiety. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below!