Shifting Your Perspective on Anxiety
What if the way you’re looking at anxiety is the main reason you feel so helpless when you experience it? Where did you learn that anxiety was the enemy? For many of us, the immediate response to its signals—the chest pain, obsessive thoughts, sweaty palms, headaches, restlessness, or difficulty concentrating—is to fight them, suppress them, or wish them away. But what if that very battle is what’s keeping you stuck?
What if we explored a simple but powerful idea: that by reframing our view of anxiety with curiosity and compassion, we can fundamentally change how we cope with it. Instead of an adversary to be defeated, we can see anxiety as an alarm signal—a messenger trying to protect us. This article will explore four surprising truths that will help you make this crucial shift, moving from a state of fear to one of understanding.
Anxiety Isn’t the Core Emotion—It’s a Shield
Anxiety is what psychologists call an “inhibitory emotion.” This counter-intuitive concept means that anxiety often shows up not as the main problem, but as a shield. Its primary job is to protect you by blocking other, more overwhelming core emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. It’s your system’s emergency brake, trying to prevent you from being completely flooded by what it perceives as a dangerous feeling.
But these core emotions aren’t just “negative”—they are vital signals about our lives.
- Sadness means that you’ve lost something, signaling that it’s time to grieve and process that loss.
- Anger means that someone has crossed your boundary, signaling that it’s time to be assertive and protect yourself.
- Fear emerges when there is uncertainty and the potential for imminent danger, signaling a need for safety and caution.
When anxiety constantly shields you from these important messengers, a critical consequence follows. When you consistently try to suppress these core emotions, you inadvertently numb yourself to the positive ones as well. You cannot selectively dull your feelings.
If you try to stuff one down they all get impacted.
This insight changes everything. The goal is no longer to eliminate anxiety at all costs. Instead, it becomes about getting curious and asking, “What core emotion might this anxiety be protecting me from right now?”
You Must Befriend Your Body to Understand Your Mind
You cannot manage what you don’t have a relationship with. This is especially true for anxiety, which manifests so powerfully in the body. If your only interaction with your body’s signals is one of frustration and resistance, you’ll never learn to understand its language. The key is to build a mind-body connection through gentle curiosity, not force.
A simple yet profound practice for this is a “Body Scan Meditation.” It involves spending just 5-10 minutes sitting quietly and observing the physical sensations throughout your body with compassionate curiosity. You might notice tingling, a surge of warmth, or a cooling feeling. The goal isn’t to change or “fix” anything you find. It’s simply to get acquainted with your body’s signals and states of being.
You can’t control or tame what you don’t understand or have a relationship with.
By consistently practicing this, you are doing more than just relaxing. You are strengthening your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for emotional regulation—and training your consciousness to connect with your body.
The Way You Talk to Yourself Matters—Literally
Your body is always listening to your internal and external monologue. If your relationship with your anxious body is one of “disgusting annoyance,” it will never feel safe enough to self-regulate. A system that feels attacked from within cannot find the balance it needs to restore calm.
A helpful way to reframe this is to treat your anxiety like a “toddler that throws a tantrum when it doesn’t feel like it is getting attention.” This inner toddler isn’t throwing a tantrum for no reason. It’s often overwhelmed because it’s trying to manage a core emotion—like the anger from a crossed boundary or the sadness from a loss—that it was taught to suppress. This analogy shifts the experience from a personal failing to a signal that needs compassionate attention. Your anxiety isn’t misbehaving; it’s communicating.
Ask yourself these powerful questions:
- The way you talk to your body, would you talk to a toddler that way?
- The way you talk to yourself when you’re anxious, would you talk to your friend that way?
If the answer is no, it’s time to reconsider your approach and adopt a more nurturing, curious, and supportive tone.
Some “Classic” Calming Techniques Can Backfire
It may be surprising to learn that for some people, deep breathing can actually trigger anxiety even more. This doesn’t mean the technique is flawed, but it powerfully illustrates that self-regulation is deeply personal. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and finding what works for you requires experimentation.
If deep breathing doesn’t feel right for you, there are many other practical, body-based techniques you can try to calm your nervous system.
- Holding ice cubes in your palms to create a physiological diversion that calms the nervous system.
- Placing your right hand over your heart and talking directly and compassionately to the anxiety.
- Using calming scents like lavender essential oil or drinking chamomile tea.
- Using a weighted blanket to provide grounding, comforting pressure.
The key insight is this: the trick is to practice these techniques outside of distressing moments. By building a relationship with these tools when you are calm, you teach your body that they are signals for safety. This makes them far more effective when you actually need them.
Your New Approach—Curiosity and Compassion
The most effective way to manage anxiety is to stop fighting it and start getting curious about it. By understanding it as a protective shield, connecting with your body’s signals, speaking to yourself with kindness, and finding the unique calming tools that work for you, you transform your relationship with this fundamental human experience.
Anxiety is a normal part of life. It is a signal, not an enemy. It is a messenger, not a monster. By shifting your perspective, you can learn to work with it instead of against it.
As you move forward, consider this: If you started treating your anxiety with curiosity instead of fear, what part of your life could you reclaim?
