For a long time I did not truly think I had anxiety. There can be a stereotype around the way anxiety shows up for people and since I did not portray those exact symptoms, I felt that what I was feeling must be “normal.’“

Actually, anxiety has many forms and can (does) show up differently for everyone. Sometimes my anxiety shows up in a way that leaves me feeling paralysed, as if I can’t move. Other times my anxiety shows up as the inability to stop moving, constantly doing and distracting. Sometimes it shows up as feeling numb, disconnected, or it can be obsessive thoughts…

Turning to our safety mechanisms of numbing, distracting or avoiding can have a time and place in the healing process. However, giving into any of these urges fully, consistently, only exacerbates the anxiety in the end. It may lessen anxiety short term, but long term it prevents us from addressing the real problem, ultimately leading to the continuation of patterns.

Anxiety can convince us that it knows best, that in order to stay safe or calm we need to listen to what it is saying. It is important to begin to recognise when our actions are led by anxiety, what our anxiety is telling us, and why it is there.

In order to do this, I discovered it is helpful for me to view my anxiety as something separate from myself. My anxiety’s voice can often be the loudest voice in my head and therefore it is easy for it to take control and for me to believe everything it says as fact. However, when I am able to recognise it, separate from it and push it to the side for a moment, I can begin to hear the quieter voices guiding me. These are the kinder voices, the voices telling me that I can do things differently, that I am safe. Voices such as my intuition and inner guidance.

Working through my own anxiety can sometimes look like me saying out loud or writing down what that anxiety is telling me. For example – my anxiety is telling me ____. And then getting curious about this. What am I feeling anxious about? Where is this voice coming from? When I listen to my intuition, what is it telling me? How can I support myself through the discomfort of doing something differently?

This last question is important because going against our anxiety can be really scary and can also be disruptive to our nervous systems; anxiety has evolved as a mechanism to inform our body we are unsafe or that something is wrong. Our anxiety and the coping mechanisms it drives us toward were created, and have been sustained, for a reason. In many instances these patterns have been our main way of coping for a long time. It can be helpful to validate yourself and your anxiety – it was only trying to support you in the best way it knew how. As we grow through the process of learning about our anxiety, we can learn how to better support ourselves; our anxiety can be an important tool in learning more about ourselves and our needs. We then must remind ourselves that we do not have to listen to our anxieties, we are safe and have the tools to do things differently now.

If you’re looking for a place to begin, you can try journaling with this format:

My anxiety is telling me ____. It is saying this because ____. Another way I can meet my needs is ____. Another voice is telling me ____.

Approaching my anxiety in this way has allowed me to lessen its power. It has shown me that what my anxiety tells me is NOT always true – thoughts are not facts. Separating from my anxiety has allowed me to understand myself, my mind and my needs better. It has given me the opportunity to rewire thoughts, create new patterns and live life aligned with my intuition, not my anxieties.