CHAPTER 3

Anxiety: your biggest teacher

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

OPRAH WINFREY

I know the idea of there being anything positive about anxiety is highly counter-intuitive, but stay with me. Because here’s the truth: anxiety is a messenger and it’s calling out for you to pay attention. It wants you to learn something, change something, understand something or heal something. If you dig below the surface of your anxious symptoms, there’s often a belief or experience at their root, or a need that’s not being met. When you stop being afraid of your anxiety and turn the fear into curiosity, you can recognize what it’s trying to teach you. That way, you can shift it for good and often deal with the deeper unresolved issue in the process.

The problem is that, mostly (and kind of understandably), we just want our anxiety to go away as quickly and painlessly as possible. We ignore it. We try to keep going, hoping it will resolve itself. Or we tell ourselves that, if we stay busy enough, we won’t have to feel it. We paper over it with medication, work, sex, alcohol or the thrill of another achievement, but the anxiety keeps resurfacing until we eventually learn to meet our needs.

There is a shortcut. If we welcome anxiety and treat it as a friend or a teacher, it can help us to learn something about ourselves. Paradoxically, embracing our anxiety can be the quickest way to live a less anxious life.

My anxiety was trying to teach me a number of things. Firstly, and perhaps most fundamentally, to be more open and accepting of myself; to love myself and know that I was worthy of love. Until a few years ago I felt I had to hide the real me since no one could possibly like me if they knew what I was really like. At school I always felt like an outsider. My parents were from the south of England but had moved to the north when I was little. We were tall, skinny vegetarians living in a northern town famous for its love of meat pies. I was one of the tallest people in my year, ate ‘weird’ food and spoke with a funny accent. I desperately needed to fit in so I would save all my pocket money to buy the latest tracksuit jackets, trying to look like everyone else, but they never seemed to fit my abnormally long arms. I would turn bright red when my English teacher put me on the spot to answer a question. I felt wrong, as if I didn’t fit. I was different, and terrified of being seen for who I was.

I started dating and chose men who were either emotionally unavailable or mirrored back to me the same lack of respect I had for myself. When I met my current boyfriend, when I was twenty-three, the relationship was initially filled with anxiety. I was a bottomless pit of neediness, super insecure and desperate for love and reassurance. I would often get sick with jealousy. All my thoughts and feelings expressed my need for love but I wanted it all from another person – from him. So when my boyfriend pointed out that perhaps if I loved myself a bit more I wouldn’t be so anxious and unstable, it was a revelation – I’d never considered doing that! Surely loving yourself was arrogant and self-centred?

In fact, it was exactly what I needed to do. I hadn’t realized that having a healthy level of self-respect was an essential component of a calm and happy life.

From that moment I slowly began to learn, day by day, that I would continue to feel insecure for as long as I sought security outside of myself, because external things – and that includes other people – are, essentially, outside of our control. But when love, acceptance and security come from within us, we always have enough. Only I could meet my own need for love, and the same goes for you. We all have within us a limitless supply of love. My anxiety was pointing me towards learning to be that source of love for myself and to learn that I am OK, regardless of what other people think of me.

Another thing I’ve learnt from befriending my anxiety is to allow myself to try things and be bad at them. Previously, I would only ever do things I knew I could do well, which kept me stuck in a comfort zone. Anxiety stopped me growing for fear of making a fool of myself. But I’ve learnt that I don’t need to be perfect at everything and that experiencing discomfort doesn’t mean I can’t still move forward and do what I set out to do. I needn’t let feeling scared hold me back.

A major lesson I’ve learnt from anxiety, one that I continue to work on, is to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and take care of myself. Walking, eating, working, whatever – I always wanted to do it all fast! Many of us have a tendency to want to rush, to overwork, over-push, over-pressurize and over-caffeinate to keep going. Our bodies, brains and nervous systems aren’t designed for this kind of pressure over the long term, so eventually they push back. Tense shoulders, a racing heart, a dodgy tummy and panic attacks can all stem from trying to do too much. All these symptoms were alarm bells telling me I needed to change my lifestyle, urgently.

So I made time for the important stuff: meditation, exercise and chatting on the phone to people I loved. Nowadays, if I find myself trying to push too hard, my body always lets me know. The difference is that, now, I listen. Yours will shout louder and louder until you listen, too. What’s it saying right now? Maybe it’s trying to tell you that life isn’t a race and you’re not trying to get anywhere; in fact, you’re already where you need to be.

My client Annabel, thirty-nine, works in the City. For years she was a workaholic, always rushing from place to place, never giving herself a chance to rest and process things. There was always something to worry about, from forgetting to turn off the hob before she left for work to big stuff, such as the health of her family. She was tired but wired. Her adrenaline levels were consistently high and she would get to the end of the day feeling exhausted and overwhelmed but unable to sleep.

A big part of our work together was focused on figuring out what Annabel’s anxiety was trying to communicate to her. She realized that her need for balance was not being met and that she had to work on her lifestyle. Issues around low self-worth were pushing her to overwork and over-achieve in order to feel worthwhile. She needed to build more rest into her day and start setting boundaries with people. Slowing down helped her to feel less overwhelmed so that she could finally trust herself to handle things.

Exercise: learning from anxiety

Sit down, take some deep breaths and close your eyes. With every out breath, feel yourself relaxing deeper into your chair. When you’re relaxed, ask yourself, ‘What is this anxiety trying to teach me? What does it want me to learn, change or do?’ Some examples might be: to love yourself more, to slow down, to take care of yourself, to stand up for yourself, to set boundaries, to step up and do the things you’re scared to do, to take life less seriously, to trust yourself, to let go, to take action, or to walk away from a situation. Listen closely for what things come to mind for you and write them down in a notebook.

Changing the broken record

Anxiety is sometimes the result of replaying unresolved emotional pain from the past, like a record that’s stuck on repeat. Almost all of us (scrap that, all of us!) have an issue that could do with being resolved. None of us comes out of childhood unscathed. When we’re young we’re like sponges, absorbing experiences, things we’re told and things that we see other people doing. But when we’re too young to fully understand the situations and behaviours we’re witnessing, we often give them incorrect meanings. We end up arriving at the wrong conclusions.

I had a client, Claire, twenty-two, whose dad had had an affair and left the family when she was eight years old. Much of her anxiety centred on the fear that she was unlovable and would always be abandoned. She had misinterpreted her dad leaving as being her fault. She would worry constantly when she was in a relationship, feeling insecure, tense and terrified. The anxiety was a symptom of something deeper, a signpost pointing towards pain from the past that needed to be healed.

I asked Claire to visualize her eight-year-old self and to stand alongside her. Claire told her younger self that Dad leaving was not her fault, that he really did love her but was acting the way he did because of his own issues and his own pain. She gave her younger self a big hug and reassured her that things would be OK. This is a powerful exercise for resolving pain in the past and changing negative self-beliefs.

 Exercise: helping ‘little you’

Imagine you’re standing alongside your younger self at a time when you really needed some love and support. Explain to her the things she doesn’t understand at this point in her life. Is there anything she needs to know? What does she need to learn? What words of encouragement, love and support can you give her? If you want to, you can imagine someone else there to help you – a wise soul offering advice. What would they say about this situation? Now imagine giving your younger self a big hug and telling her that everything is going to be all right. Make some notes about the things you said and re-read them often.

You won’t be anxious for ever

When you befriend your anxiety and accept that it has valuable lessons to teach you, you take the fundamental first step to an anxiety-free life. The next thing to take on board is that change is possible. You are not an intrinsically anxious person. You can totally do this!

For a start, anxiety is not solely genetic. Genetic factors can cause a predisposition for anxiety but it’s your experiences and lifestyle that have the biggest impact on whether or not you suffer from it. Traumatic or stressful events, having anxious parents or not taking proper care of yourself can all cause you to feel anxious. The good news is that most of the reasons you’re anxious are learnt, which means you can unlearn them.

Even deeply distressing experiences don’t have to stay with you for ever. An interesting study done on rats discovered that rodents deprived of maternal love and attention became more anxious as adults. But this anxiety was reversible.1 Your genetic predisposition or early childhood experiences can be overcome.

So your anxiety is not a hard-wired part of who you are. In fact, you have a huge amount of power to change your brain’s wiring for the better. Up until recently, it was thought that the brain’s structure was fixed, but scientists now agree that our experiences in life reorganize our neural pathways. For example, London taxi drivers have to memorize the names of every street in the city. This leads to an enlargement of the hippocampus, the area in the brain responsible for visual-spatial memory. People who regularly meditate change the structure of their brain in positive ways, too. If we choose carefully what we think, say and do on a regular basis, we can actually forge new mental pathways to favour more optimistic, uplifted and positive thoughts.²

But you needn’t become a cabbie or a Buddhist nun to change your brain for the better. Exercise and socializing are two simple activities that have been found to change the way your brain handles stress because, when you’re in interesting and stimulating environments, your brain creates new pathways and becomes more resilient as a result.

Change your mindset with meditation

One of the easiest ways to begin to change your neural pathways for the better and to calm an anxious mind is with meditation. It’s been around for centuries and for good reason – it works! If you’re not already a seasoned meditator, you might think of it as ‘airy fairy, New Age, ain’t-nobody-got-time-for-that’ type stuff. As one of my clients recently said, ‘One step too hippy for me.’ Or maybe it’s something you wish you could do, if only you could sit cross-legged long enough and shut out all your thoughts. I can relate. I used to think exactly the same way.

In the seventies Mum and Dad were caught up in the hippy movement. The day they met, Dad had shoulder-length hair and was wearing bright red flared corduroy trousers. Straight away my mum knew he was The One. They were juicing before juicing was en vogue and meditation for them was a daily practice. Fast-forward a few years to me as an anxious teenager … and I really could have benefited from doing the meditation Mum suggested I do. The only problem was I’d already found my inner peace. And it lived at the bottom of a blue alcopop bottle.

Whenever I tried to meditate I got frustrated by the torrent of thoughts that kept coming in, and having to sit in silence only made me even more aware of the anxious tightness in my chest or the pounding of my heart. I would, however, get glimpses of the power of meditation when I suddenly felt myself drifting into a deeper part of myself where things felt quieter and calmer. The problem was that I was using meditation as an occasional tool to try to calm extreme nerves or panic. And as anyone who’s ever tried to sit still and calm the mind when they’re panicking will know, this just doesn’t work. I just knew meditation wasn’t for me.

What I later learnt is that meditation is far more than a relaxation tool. Yes, it’s a great way to calm yourself and relax, which is essential when you’re anxious. But it’s also a tool for changing the structure and function of your brain, to make you more positive and happy. It’s something that needs to be done regularly to reap the benefits, rather than every so often.

In about 2010 I began to dabble again in meditation. I would do it regularly for a few weeks and, lo and behold, I would feel better. But then – as so many of us do with new habits – I got cocky, thinking I no longer needed it. I gave it up. A few weeks later I had slipped back into feeling stressed out and worried again. This cycle continued for months.

When I finally started meditating regularly, in 2013, it was nothing short of game-changing. Up until that point I used to tell myself things like, ‘Who’s got time to meditate?! I’ve got shit to do!’ I was convinced I didn’t even have time for a lunch break, let alone to meditate. It seemed like a luxury. A waste of time that I just couldn’t justify.

But by then I had realized that there’s no point in being productive or even ‘successful’ if you’re miserable and anxious. There’s also no point in being busy if the work you produce is below par because you’re so frazzled and tense that your best stuff doesn’t get a chance to shine through. I really wanted to help other people to become less anxious, and it finally dawned on me that the best thing I could do to help others was to help myself first. These days I think of meditation as being as essential as showering – like a daily cleansing for the nervous system! It’s literally that high up on my list of priorities.

I had feared that meditating would take away time from my work and my social life. Part of me worried that I would fall behind and nothing would ever get done. Actually, I found that the opposite was true. I was able to work with calm focus, meaning I got more done with less stress. Creativity just seemed to flow more easily and, because I was more at peace with myself, my connection with friends and my boyfriend seemed to get better. For me, meditation is the antidote to the ills of modern life.

I’m not the only one. Meditation has helped dozens of my clients prove to themselves that they have the power to literally rewire their own brains to make them a happier place to be. My client Nadia, twenty-six, who works in sales, uses meditation to calm herself and has found it totally life-changing. ‘I’m just sorry I didn’t try it earlier because, now, I’m a total convert. It has changed my mindset completely. If I stop doing it for more than a few days my mood unravels and anxieties creep back in. But as long as I do ten minutes every day, I know I can stay calm.’

You’ll find out more about meditation, how it can help and how to do it in the Anxiety Solution Toolkit in Chapter nine. But for now, if you’re telling yourself, ‘I don’t have time to meditate,’ instead, ask yourself, ‘Do I have time to feel anxious and unhappy?’

Summary

★ You have the power to make anxiety a totally manageable part of your life.

★ Many of the reasons for anxiety are learnt, and you can unlearn them, even if genetic factors or traumatic or stressful events have affected you.

★ Meditation is one of the single most powerful tools you have to rewire your brain to make it less prone to anxiety.

★ With as little as ten minutes focused practice a day you can be well on your way to bringing your anxiety under control.