I wrote a post about embracing anxiety relatively recently, and I wanted to continue the topic after giving it some more thought.
In my previous post, I wrote
“Part of the process of working to control anxiety is eliminating it as a whole. We are prescribed medications, given therapy techniques, and are encouraged to quash any anxious thoughts as soon as they arise to prevent them from worsening over time. But thinking about anxiety the other day, I asked myself, ‘what if instead of pushing anxiety away, we embrace it?'”
I wanted to revisit this topic because of a recent anxiety flare-up I experienced. In recognizing, or embracing my anxious thoughts in this particular instance, I was able to identify what exactly it was that I was feeling anxious about, which, to me, helps in better understanding just how anxiety functions.
However, after allowing myself to acknowledge the anxious thoughts, I had a hard time getting them out of my head.
Hence why I wanted to come back to this topic. I think it is important to identify that while consciously embracing anxiety can be positive for some, it may be a trigger or further worsen a situation for others. No two people have the same mind, anxious thoughts or not, and for some, allowing anxious thoughts to enter the conscience may end up doing more harm than good.
That being said, I think a valuable tool someone with anxiety can possess is having the ability to embrace anxious thoughts, but refusing to allow them to consume you. In a perfect world, I would welcome anxious thoughts, assess them, then magically erase them from my memory and pretend they never existed. But, since this likely isn’t in the cards for me, I will continue to work to recognize my anxieties, but control them at the same time.
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