Thoughts on Understanding Our Anxiety
Growing up is hard. I recognize that there is necessary perspective in making such a statement. For the purposes of what I am writing here, the growing up I am talking about, specifically, pertains to the evolution of self into mature adulthood. This process is naturally going to be different for all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, etc. Regardless of who you are, however, it is always going to be hard.
It took me 30 years before I realized that growing up was important. Three decades of going through the motions and the defaults of life before finally taking a step back and realizing that, while really, really hard, it would be worth my time and energy to at least try to become a mature adult. Still working on that part.
So what is it that we need to do to become better? How do we look the challenges in the face and grow up in a way that is actually indicative of growth, rather than regression? How do we even know what that looks like or where to start?
Here Is Where I Decided To Start
There are a lot of contributing factors to the maturation (or lack of maturation) process. One of the core factors is that of our ability to deal with our own anxiety. It is important to note, before I proceed, that irony has its functional and biological place in our lives. It is an informant. It is a catalyst. It is a symptom of the system you are in. It is inevitable. Like everything, however, it requires temperance. Therefore the focus of my energy here is in the context where anxiety is out of balance and a better understanding of it is necessary to operate in a healthy way.
Here are some basic examples of common circumstances where the anxiety drives us nuts, noting the prominent themes:
“Holy shit, I have so much to do and so little TIME!”
“Is traveling home for the holidays really the best DECISION during a global pandemic?”
“Do I even want to go home and spend my vacation and ENERGY listening to my mom’s problems?”
“Fuck, its only MONDAY…”
“Will I be a GOOD ENOUGH wife/husband, mother/father, teammate, person [enter other thing you give a shit about being good at here]”
“Am I ever going to LEARN this?”
“Oh man, I really hope I don’t SCREW UP this date and ruin my chances with what could be my soul mate.”
“I feel so much PRESSURE.”
When our anxiety becomes overwhelming, it often consumes a shit ton of our energy at any given point of having to deal or sit with it. Much like any energy consumption, this exchange forces an involuntary lack of energy somewhere else. A part of working on myself in a deliberate way is by taking a deliberate approach to my understanding of how anxiety and the energy it consumes impacts my being.
In my first article about creating space, I discussed the importance of understanding the areas of life where tension exists and deliberately working to understand those areas and seek to create space within them. Given that anxiety is just another form of tension, here is what I have come to understand:
Most of the time, anxiety comes as a result of shit I’ve forced on myself based on some belief I hold or image I am trying to present.
If I’m not careful, my anxiety drives me to do things I may not have thought through fully.
If I’m even more not careful, I can trick myself into thinking that high-functioning, get shit done anxiety is a good thing for me.
Other people will often try to put their anxiety on me and far more often than not, have no clue what is going on.
I often try to soothe my own anxiety by putting it on to other people, namely my partner or coworkers. This is a hidden default that requires on going self awareness to avoid.
I have the ability to soothe my own anxiety and set boundaries with others to make sure I don’t take on theirs. This is part of my growth and also requires ongoing self awareness.
If I am deliberate in understanding it, I can channel my anxiety, as Mark Manson would put it, to where my fucks deserve to be given for a more healthy approach to productivity.
In my learnings, I’ve settled on two primary ways of analyzing, understanding and dealing with my anxiety (at a high level, of course), the internal anxiety and the external anxiety.
Internal Anxiety
My fundamental challenges throughout life have come from my own internal fears and questions of adequacy. I grew up dreading failure. Something new wasn’t exciting as much as it was pressure and not living up to the expectations I set for myself or the expectations others had set for me.
For so long, I needed to impress, needed to climb, needed to succeed. I would lose my shit over girls liking me or bosses approving of my work. The prospect of loneliness led me to putting so much weight on social connections, status, and image. It was all so heavy. All the time.
Another core internal anxiety for me has been trust. Think about this with me for a second. Let’s do that eyes closing thing together for a moment so you can look inward and analyze the way trust manifests in your life. First think about the trust you have in yourself and all of the ways having it and not having it impacts the way you feel. Do you:
Trust yourself to make the right decisions? Big or small?
Trust yourself to say the things that need to be said?
Trust yourself to really listen to someone you care about when they have a problem?
Close your eyes and think.
When you open your eyes, did it dawn on you that these are three pretty important questions but they’re three of thousands upon thousands of questions you could be asking about self-trust?
Also consider that we haven’t even gotten into what trusting others brings up. Have you met some of the people in this world or watched Game of Thrones? The anxiety that comes from deciding whether or not to trust others is as real as it gets.
We could keep going on examples here but this is the deliberate work and self inquiry we need to be doing.
Where does my internal anxiety come from?
What beliefs or habits have I developed that drive me to feel anxious at any given time?
What am I doing to work through it?
External Anxiety
Internal anxieties can come from countless places and have an enormous impact on your energy, emotions, and actions. You know this. You just read the stuff above AND you actually live a life. What’s fucking crazy is that we are all aware of this in some capacity, but still think it’s ok to try to help or take on the anxieties of others. Ooops.
Taking on other people’s shit is the worst. There is no benefit. None. Someone who has anxiety and puts it on you isn’t growing, they aren’t getting better. They’re just being an unconscious, lazy fuck and have no respect for you. Sounds harsh? It’s not. Fuck those people. Trust me, I have lived the majority of my life wandering the miserable desert of soothing the anxieties of others, searching for an oasis of growth.
These external anxieties can come from anywhere, if you let them. Could be irrational places like your favorite sports team or more forgiving places like your spouse or work. The fundamental rule of refusing to accept the anxiety of others is a bit easier when you’re an adult and have a choice. It’s a bit harder, however, for a child who grows up in a family that can’t deal with their own shit. We’re going to hone in there a bit more.
Murray Bowen’s family systems theory is worth a deeper dive for anyone who, like me, has/had a fucked up family dynamic consumed by parental anxiety, that led to fucked up boundaries within an anxiety ridden family system. Dude knew what was up.
What I came to understand is that I have emotionally immature parents who couldn’t handle their own stress and needed to offload their shit onto my siblings and me. Their lack of differentiation, as Bowen would call it, If this doesn’t sound familiar, take a moment to really appreciate the freedom to grow that your parent(s) afforded you.
As the oldest child, I certainly played a role of soother, fixer, and helper because dealing with my parents’ anxiety seemed like a way worse option for us than learning how to proactively mitigate. Fast forward to adulthood where the energy to soothe, fix, and help becomes far less available despite the deeply ingrained patterns that have been created. The anxiety to soothe is now compounded by the anxiety to live my own life, in my own way, free of that role or desire to heal.
Before I go down the therapy rabbit hole further, this is meant to illustrate a very real and very common example of external anxiety that lives with us from childhood, through our development into adulthood. Much like internal anxiety, it is important to take the time to understand the impact of external anxieties and ask the questions that may be a source of insight to them.
Great, I’m an anxious person, thanks. Now what?
I would be lying if I told you that I’ve figured it all out. At 35, I still feel the weight of anxiety, mostly internal but external as well. I still struggle with needing to soothe my anxieties of failure, adequacy, and trust. I still struggle with boundaries and wanting to soothe the anxiety of others, particularly my immediate family members.
In My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem (if you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it), he talks about the importance of deliberately dealing with your own trauma and how us not passing trauma on to others is the first step in healing it for ourselves. This process is no different for anxiety.
Deliberately working through our own shit so as to not pass it on is doubling down on the growth process. You begin to grow yourself by clearing the space to do so in your nervous system. This will then allow the space for the other to grow as well.
Growing up is fucking hard. Working on ourselves, understanding ourselves, yup, you guessed it, fucking hard also. Self inquiry and awareness allows us the space to see anxiety as it exists in our reality. From there, a deliberate approach to understanding ourselves can be the path toward maturity. Through a process of being deliberate about ourselves, we stand a chance at not becoming total immature douche bags, mindlessly operating through life as pseudo-adults. It’s up to us if, when, and how we start this journey.
Get on it.
