Overcoming Anxiety: Defining Your Own Mind

It can be easy for those with anxiety to feel like they are confined, or owned by their anxiety – and I’m not surprised. Anxiety can make us feel shut-in, alone, and misunderstood. But the truth is, our anxiety doesn’t define us – we define it.

Our anxieties most often reflect our own fears and negative thought processes – portraying them in a way that can become overbearing.

I’m sure everyone faces negative thoughts every once in a while – I’m sure to some extent it’s even natural. But for people with an anxiety disorder, those overpowering feelings can take the easily take hold and add another outlet for those negative and consuming thoughts to be heard.

It likely varies from person-to-person, but I know my anxiety is my own personal voice inside my head – the same voice I hear when I read, for example. And that is why it can be hard to differentiate anxious thoughts with rationale ones – when they all sound the same.

For some, you might hear a motherly voice, or there may not even be a voice at all, and your anxieties may present themselves as purely physical. To question which is the better option is impossible to know.

For those without anxiety trying to envisage this, imagine having one awful friend, who tells you all your flaws, dwells on all your mistakes, and talks down to you constantly. That’s how anxiety can manifest itself. But the issue is, that unlike an unwanted friend, we can’t simply just tell our anxiety to go away, or disown it. Instead, we trial and error various techniques to feel a sense of calm, are drugged up and facing all kinds of side effects, and end up feeling worn out from trying to escape our own thoughts.

Having personally found relief in medication, it’s easy to rely on that as a source of ‘treatment’. But we really need to focus on preventing the anxiety itself, rather than just finding a way to cope with it.

Our anxiety manifests itself when we think negatively, or fall into patterns of low moods – so how do we overcome this? We need to target it head on. Yes, we can rely on medications or other remedies to combat our anxious thoughts, but if we never address them for what they really are, we’ll never be able to overcome them. This is where the effectiveness of treatment relies on prevention efforts.

Prevention for anxiety will look different for everyone. Some may find peace in meditation, others journaling, or for some, spending time alone in nature. Which ever approach feels more comfortable for you, you should try and utilise each day. Make it a part of your routine, and learn to rely on these tactics in order to prevent, and overcome those pressing anxious thoughts.

Take it one step at a time, and persist.

If our anxiety can battle us, we can battle it. And we will win.