one of the most difficult features of
anxiety is that it tends to be
all-consuming
it's squats in the middle of our minds
and refuses to let anything else in or
through though the anxiety causes us
great pain it denies any attempts to be
questioned analyzed probed or
reconfigured we are both terrified and
unable to think beyond our terror our
thoughts become low relentless
repetitive stymied things returning
again and again to the issue of whether
the door is locked the accounts were
signed off or the social media account
is not under attack anxiety dominates
over and excludes any other form of
mental activity all that's in our minds
is terror
but there is one nimble way to try to
outwit anxiety and that is with a
question that recognizes a fundamental
feature of anxiety that it is frequently
a smokescreen for something else
something beyond what we consciously
think is worrying us one of the peculiar
facets of our minds is that we may
choose to feel anxious rather than to
confront things that may yet be more
painful or emotionally awkward in our
lives it can be easier to fret than to
know ourselves properly so for example
we might feel anxious about whether
we're gonna get to the airport on time
as an escape from the greater challenge
of wondering whether this holiday is
even worth it or whether our spouse
still loves us oh we might get intensely
anxious about a financial issue in order
to avoid a yet trickier acknowledgement
of our confusion at the course of our
emotional lives oh we may develop a
sexual anxiety as an alternative to
thinking about our sense of self-worth
and the childhood that destroyed it
panic may be invited to shield us for
more profound sources of self-aware
agony and yet of course we're always
better off getting to the root cause of
our troubles rather than filling our
minds with diversionary panic and in
order to do so we would be wise at
points to ask ourselves a simple but
possibly highly revealing question if
your mind wasn't currently filled with
these particular anxious thoughts what
might you have to think about right now
the question a simple in structure as it
is acute indesign is liable to unlock a
moment of original insight one answer
might go like this I might realize how
sad and lonely I am
I might realize how angry I feel towards
my partner I might realize how abandoned
I feel and that of course is precisely
what we should be doing now filling our
minds with and processing all the stuff
that our anxiety is normally trying to
keep at bay certain anxieties can be
taken at face value for they do clearly
relate to worrying things in the world
but there is another class of anxieties
and a rather large one at that that is
there for no better purpose than to
distract us from understanding important
parts of ourselves if we need to suffer
and often we will the least we can do is
to ensure that we're suffering for the
right reasons at points we should trade
our anxiety in for something far more
important a confrontation with the real
ambivalence and complexity of our lives
and we should do so thanks to a naively
simple question if your mind wasn't
currently filled with these particular
anxious thoughts what might you have to
think about right now
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