When I begin working with someone who is experiencing anxiety, the first question I like to ask is, “How long has this been going on for?” It’s pretty common for people to reach out for help when they’ve already been struggling with their anxiety for years, or even decades. They might have tried many different ways to manage or eliminate their anxiety during this time, and still continue to find their worries and fear dominating their life.

Anxiety is a tricky emotion to work with. You might feel as though your anxiety is holding you back, keeping you from fully experiencing life and stopping you from doing things that you really want to do. At the same time though, it can feel scary to move past anxiety. It’s normal to have a little (or a lot!) of resistance to working through your anxiety and learning to manage it. Sometimes, the thing that gets in the way of moving past chronic anxiety is your relationship with this emotion. Let’s explore some of the reasons why it can be so hard to let go of your anxiety, even if it’s causing you distress

Your anxiety feels “safe”

If you’ve experienced anxiety for a significant period of time, it’s probably become quite familiar to you. Even if it feels uncomfortable or painful to be anxious all the time, in a strange way it also feels predictable and “normal”. It can be really challenging to let go of old ways of doing things, even if they’re causing you pain. It can feel much easier to remain with the familiar than moving out of your comfort zone.

You might also feel as though your anxiety is protecting you. You might feel frightened that if you don’t let your anxiety dictate your choices, then something terrible might happen. It can be really hard to imagine making decisions that don’t center your anxiety when that’s kept you safe (albeit miserable) so far.

You’re trying to eliminate anxiety rather than managing it

It’s very common for clients to tell me “I’ve tried everything I can think of to get rid of my anxiety, and nothing has worked!” There’s an idea that when you’ve learned to manage your anxiety, that you’ll never feel worried or afraid again.

Anxiety is a normal human emotion. You can’t get rid of it any more than you can get rid of happiness or anger or hunger. It’s a part of us and it serves an important function. Anxiety’s job is to protect us from harm by making us aware of potential threats and helping us to evaluate them. Sometimes, it does it’s job a little too well and ends up making us fearful and wary of things that aren’t actually dangerous. Removing anxiety from our emotional repertoire wouldn’t be a good thing, and it’s not actually possible. So it makes sense that if you’ve tried to get rid of anxiety, you feel discouraged when your efforts haven’t worked. Instead of removing anxiety altogether, I focus on helping you to understand your anxiety and work with it in a way that’s compassionate and empowering.

Your anxiety has become part of your identity

If anxiety has been a part of your life for a long time, you might consider it to be a part of yourself. Maybe you’ve told people “I’m a really anxious person” or you consider yourself to be “a worry-wart”. It can be really hard to change your mind about who you are, so if you feel as though you’re a fundamentally anxious person, it can be tricky to let go of that.

It’s also possible that anxiety has become a convenient excuse for you to get out of trying new things or making changes in your life. If you’ve adopted the label of “an anxious person” then you might find yourself using your anxiety as a crutch. You might avoid challenging it or learning to manage it because you know that if you get it under control, you might actually have to do some of those scary things that you worry about (even if, deep down, you know that they’d make your life better).

This isn’t to say that you’re doing this on purpose, or that your anxiety isn’t real and challenging. But it can be a real eye-opener to consider how identifying with your anxiety might be holding you back from making positive changes and moving past it.

Managing anxiety is challenging

It is easier to stay the same than it is to change. Even if you aren’t happy in the space you’re in, it takes less energy to remain there than to try to move forward. Learning to manage your anxiety, putting new skills into place and maintaining that practice is effortful. It can be really challenging and it takes time. You need patience, determination and commitment to create a sustainable anxiety management plan. It can be difficult to make that commitment, to weather the relapses and to recognise that managing anxiety is an ongoing process.

As hard as it is to let go of your anxiety, it is possible. Together, we can explore the reasons that you might be holding onto anxiety and the barriers to learning to manage it. If you’d like support to understand and manage your anxiety, I can help you with that. Please feel encouraged to contact me to book an appointment.