Sit with the anxiety, they say...

[LunarEcho24]

I can appreciate the idea of learning to tolerate some anxiety, as a certain amount of it is an inevitable part of life. A certain amount of desensitization makes sense, if you have certain types of anxiety that involve worry, resistance to feeling and dealing with discomfort, and phobias.

But, if you have pervasive and persistent anxiety, are you just supposed to sit around all day with anxiety?

Has anyone else tried this "sit with the anxiety" thing? Did it help?

What else do you do to try to deal with anxiety?

One topic I'm working on with my therapist is "safety behaviors", which are things you do to seek safety to avoid distressing thoughts or feelings of anxiety. The idea is to stop seeking safety and "sit with the anxiety." Maybe there is something to this idea, as a means of desensitizing a bit, but I've done a lot of "sitting" and a lot of "anxiety", and it's not getting me anywhere. In some cases you need to take action. In some cases perhaps your fears and anxieties are overblown. Sometimes the anxiety might be appropriate to the situation, but you don't know how to deal with it.

Anxiety sucks. Sure, some anxiety is a part of life. But, when you have "generalized anxiety" and "social anxiety", or any of the other pathological conditions, it robs you of life. I'm preaching to the choir, I know.

[LifeIsThePitts]

All I can say is in my experience of 50 yrs battling depression and anxiety cycles is that Acceptance of Reality as It Is and not what we WANT it to be, focusing on being in the present moment, read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and deep Deep DEEP introspection on the roots of my own dark side, or shadow work as Carl Jung would call it, with immersion therapy, sitting in the fire, leaning into it... whatever terminology works for your mind to stop the avoidance tactics that have you running in circles, unable to escape the trap of anxiety and depression repeating over and over.

This is where the cycle is broken. Stop fighting. Start opening to the experiences you've been avoiding. Embrace the discomfort and slowly anxiety will release the seemingly ironclad hold it has on you.

It won't be overnight. It will take effort. Mountains of it sometimes and a feathers whisper at others as the concept starts taking hold.

You didn't develop crippling anxiety overnight. But you can start chipping away at the crusty layers one by one....

[Starrlight in reply to LifeIsThePitts]

This is helpful to me. It’s the hope that in being uncomfortable it’s actually paying off as I write.

[optimismrus in reply to LifeIsThePitts]

I like your post. I agree with so many of your points. And you're right, in order to grow we have to stop fighting. As long as we hold on to the pain, the anger, the betrayal: we suffer and stay stuck. 😍