Anxiety Is Lying To You

I’m going to let you in on a little secret… Anxiety lies to us!

Think about it. What happens when you’re anxious?

Don’t worry… I’ll wait while you think…

And why do we do this? Because anxiety lies to us! It tells us these avoidance behaviors will alleviate our anxiety and “fix” the problems. It tells us that this is our only option, that we are powerless to do anything else, and most untrue… that we are alone.

It may look different from person to person. But what every person has in common is that: you’re not alone. We’ve all felt anxious and we’ve all got our ways of meeting that anxiety. But if we can step back for just a moment, as we eat that last candy bar, we may be able to recognize how powerful we really are.

Don’t believe the lies anxiety tells you.

Now, I’m going to assume that even if you’re able to anticipate a rise in anxiety, and meet it in a healthy way most of the time, sometimes you might feel overwhelmed and out of control. I call this, “being in the tornado.”

For me, being in the tornado means I mostly cope by over eating sweets, checking out emotionally, and feeling exhausted no matter how much sleep I get. I distract myself and live in any time but the present. And when I’m completely out of touch and feeling powerless, it can feel like this is my new “normal,” and that I’ll always be in that state of crisis.

This is where stress really begins to pull out the lies. Anxiety will tell us that it is acting on our behalf in a “life threatening” situation (though if you are in a life threatening situation stress can be super helpful). But so often, it’s not a life threatening situation we stress over. So often, we can do things amid the tornado to alleviate the negative feelings in a real and immediate way.

And so, next time you find yourself in a tornado of anxiety, be still for a moment and assess the damage. In that stillness, kindly and gently unravel the events and the big emotions and find the value that was ushered in on those wings of chaos.

Yes. Value.

Let me explain… When I was a little girl, I was taught to find the lesson in every situation. My parents assured me that there was always a silver lining, and that stress had a habit of lying to me about how horrible life was and how horrible I was. They helped me build a habit of stepping back to seek the good from any situation.

And more often than not, when the dust has settled and the Twix bars are gone, I can. And do you know what I usually hear?

Let go of wanting things to be different then you are. Let go of feeling a need to do it all by yourself.

Anxiety lies to us in these two ways. It tells us that what we have isn’t enough, and that we are alone.

But I believe that these are the biggest lies we’ve chosen to believe. We may be out of practice as “seekers of goodness.” Or we may have forgotten how to connect when we are feeling vulnerable. But we are all given the tools we need to reach beyond the lies stress tells us, and make our lives as we see fit. And nobody else can determine what a “good life,” or a “bad life,” is for anyone else.