Mapping Out Anxiety - Finding Courage

This post is a continuation from last week’s. As such, I will be calling back to it in this post. While recommended, reading it before reading this is not strictly required. Together they can be used to navigate a wide spread of negative emotions.

Anxiety comes from one of two places. Either from a loss that’s pressed into our boundary or from being low on confidence. The sense of loss can be real, threatened, or imaginary. Losing your wallet can make you anxious. The resulting anticipated misery of dealing with the DMV can be felt as a loss of future time. We can feel anxious about deciding what awesome party to go to when going to one means missing the other. FOMO is a full of perceived loss. Meanwhile, not being full of confidence can make us anxious. Fearing a coming exam or job interview comes from being low on confidence in that area.

When we are passive with our anxiety and do nothing with it we become impulsive. The desire to release our anxious tension wins and we act without thinking in a way that is inherently avoidant. A common way for me to do this with things at work is to check my phone, refresh YouTube or go find something to eat. Outside of work this usually takes the form of being busy for the sake of being busy. Passive anxiety is an opposite to passive anger in that sadness/depression drives us to further passivity while impulsiveness drives us to act. The issue is that the actions coming from impulsiveness further the avoidance and are fundamentally a fight or flight (or freeze, I know) response.

Being active with our anxiety means thinking before acting. We can do this either constructively or destructively.

When we are destructive with our anxiety we are masochistic. We beat ourselves up by playing the victim. This is the voice that says things are hopeless, that we are helpless, that this is just how things are for me. Masochism takes the form of worry when we try to control the uncontrollable in the future. Straining over a possible outcome without doing something proactive about it. Masochism turns to regret when we relive a loss in the past and plot out how it “should” have gone differently. Masochism perpetuates itself because destruction often creates more loss which can create more masochism.

Like aggression, the destructive branch of anger, this path is win/lose. That might seem strange, and there are benefits to being a victim. You win by believing things aren’t your fault or responsibility. You can absolve yourself of responsibility for action or agency. However, doing this often results in a loss by pushing people away which perpetuates the cycle of masochism.

When we are constructive with our anxiety we are courageous. Every time we choose courage we are rewarded with confidence which is the cure for anxiety. In Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In this space we must choose to act courageously to lessen and overcome our anxiety. We do not masochistically wallow under the circumstances nor do we skip the choice by acting impulsively. We act knowing that no one can do courage for us. We must enact courage ourselves.

Disclaimer here that there is a difference between doing courage and being foolhardy. Taking your first swimming class as an adult who is afraid of water in courageous. Slapping on skis and hopping on a black diamond with no ski instruction is foolhardy.

Most of my life I’ve “avoided” anxiety, which really was just me passively avoiding taking decisive action. This would usually lead to something brewing over the long run which would force my hand and make me do courage. The situation would have to be bad enough to force me to finally do something.

A past relationship slowly corroded me. The longer it went on the smaller I felt I became. We moved in together too fast. As a result I became stressed and less creative. Meanwhile my masochism led me to building a fortress of resentment for my partner while she built one for me. We impulsively dodged the strain we were under with sex and dancing. One day I was co-working with a good friend of mine. During a break I was griping about the relationship and, in doing so, realized how awful I had been feeling from day to day. It hit me, as if for the first time, and I broke up with her within the hour. The realization that I was living far outside of my vision for myself made doing courage easy. Until this point my anxiety in the relationship remained passive, impulsive. I was captivated by just getting by and having things be good enough. The conversation with my friend made enough space for me to realize that I could choose to be in this relationship or not.

The best sessions that Emily and I have in therapy are the ones that involve the greatest amount of courage; here one of us opens up more and reveals more of ourselves to the other. This usually takes the shape of one of us working something out with Greg, our therapist, who listens, guides, and reframes. Once we have something that feels especially true and relevant we turn to our partner and tell them what’s going on and how it impacts us. Greg could say it for us, but instead he sets the container and lets us tell each other in our own words. That act is the center point of our courage in therapy. Nakedly sharing what’s true, what our narratives are, what our experience is. It’s also the greatest point of healing because after we share our vulnerabilities we see the other is still with us and still loving us.

Lately we’ve been exploring the varieties of masochism we both exhibit. For instance, I run in circles with narratives that people can’t handle me or my emotions. I wrestle with the belief that if I dare share my emotions in even 25% of their intensity that I’ll likely scare off the person I’m reaching for help with and be left alone.

I believe that one of the most important ingredients in choosing courage is humility. No necessary task is beneath me. No piece required in getting me to a better place is without its merits. If there’s something I’ve set my attention on, I line up a goal. If I haven’t moved on it in a week then I reevaluate the goal. It’s too big. The anxiety I face is defeating my will.

This blog is a fine example of that. I’ve thought about doing something like this for about 18 months. My expectations for myself were too high. I have a series of posts I want to make about friendship and every time that I try to write them I get tied in knots. The obvious solution, in hindsight, is to write about anything else. I’ll get to friendship someday and, right now, I’m willing to accept that it has bested me. Writing the perfect article about friendship that I’ve been dreaming about for years is too much? That’s fine man, write about journaling instead; just do something.

The most important thing I’ve learned from these mappings of anger and anxiety is that anger and anxiety are valuable. They both say, “I need to act.” Whatever it was that busted in my boundary and left me feeling anger or anxious, there’s something I must do in response. While it can be (really) difficult, when I pause, I can at least look for the constructive route out.