How to make anxiety your superpower

If anxiety, stress or worry is preventing you from living a confident, fulfilled life, you’re most definitely not alone. Clinical psychologist and founder of The Anxiety Clinic Dr Jodie Lowinger shares her toolkit on leveraging our most human emotion.

Anxiety itself is very much a part of our common human experience. It’s the result of living in this uncertain, everchanging world – a result of being human! Our brains are hard-wired to experience anxiety. It is an inherent, self-protective mechanism. If we perceive something to be dangerous or threatening, our brain triggers a stress reaction called the fight or flight response – a neurochemical process that prepares our body to run or stay and fight to protect yourself against the perceived threat. This is what we experience as anxiety. And

I can say firsthand anxiety isn’t a flaw or a weakness (which is why I avoid words such as ‘disorder’ or ‘illness’). We need to let go of ideas about anxiety meaning you are ‘not good enough’, which typically lead to feelings of shame. In fact, anxiety can be a superpower. This is because the majority of people who struggle with anxiety have a beautiful depth of thinking and a rare depth of feeling – a strong, analytical mind combined with an empathic heart. As I like to say, ‘You care because you care’.

Get to know worry thoughts

In primitive times, when life was simple and things in our surroundings were either friend or foe, we needed anxiety. If humans encountered danger, such as a predator in our midst, the stress reaction was triggered and we were primed to run away, to hide, or to fight to protect ourselves against the life-threatening situation. This protective mechanism is still hard-wired in us and we are equipped with finely-tuned mechanisms to anticipate imminent danger. The problem is that the fight or flight reaction is also triggered by a perceived threat – a worry thought. Worry triggers a surge of adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream.

You may breathe more quickly, your heart may pound or you may feel sick

or lightheaded. You might get ‘butterflies’ in your stomach as the blood rushes out of your stomach towards your arms and legs. But rather than fighting a real threat, you are fighting against the bully in your mind that alerts you to all the bad things that might happen in the future.

Make anxiety your mate

Anxiety can be a critically important friend in times of need. You don’t want to hate anxiety. You want to understand it, respect it, and leverage it at times when it keeps you fired up, alert and responding effectively. Ultimately, the purpose of anxiety is to help you to pay attention and to provide the energy to act. So recognise that anxiety is a double-edged sword. Anxiety might feel uncomfortable, which is exactly the purpose it is serving – it is there to motivate you towards action in order to remove the unpleasant feeling. For example, you might feel anxious when you are finalising a work project, and once the task is completed the anxiety disappears. Anxiety in and of itself is, therefore, a critically important thing – a physiological reaction to help you get things done.

Pivot from threat to action

Oftentimes, what tips anxiety into overdrive is your mindset – whether you focus on your perceived threats or goals in any given moment. For example, let’s consider someone with anxiety about their health.

This would mean pivoting away from worry about the possibility of something bad happening (leading to negativity bias, over-checking and hypervigilance to the threat) towards problem-solving and goaldriven actions for maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle.

In a business setting, this might be helping individuals to shift from worrying about the possible things that might go wrong in the future towards identifying the business’s strategic direction and implementing team alignment on organisational values and goals.

Consider the snowball

Worry is antsy: it will scream and shout in order to catch your attention. Worry also has a phenomenal imagination. It will conjure up images and scripts about all the possible things that might go wrong. However, worry and rumination are illusions of control and protection – they just get you focused on the negatives. So think of them like a snowball rolling down a mountain gathering more snow ... it just gets bigger and bigger! So worry just ends up leading to … that’s right … more worry. The benefit of this conceptualisation is that you can begin to recognise both worry and rumination as futile mental processes. It is not so much about getting caught up in the content of the thoughts, but rather starting to notice what kind of thought it is and considering whether it is helpful or unhelpful. This way, you start to loosen your belief that worry and rumination help you. It is a large step on the path to not letting them have the same power over you as they had before.

Name your worry story

Have a think about the last time worry was bossing you around. What story was it telling you? If that story was a book, what title would you give it? For example: Was it the ‘I’m Not Good Enough’ story, the ‘I’m an Imposter’ one or maybe the ‘Something Bad

Will Happen’ tale? It is not about challenging the story or arguing with the content. Remember that if you try to do that, you’ll typically find any attempts to hook in to the content of the worry thoughts just dig you deeper into your worries – often at 2am when all you want to do is sleep. As you know, arguing with the content of the worry thoughts is one of the tricks that worry uses to draw you in and make worry even more powerful. All you want to do is notice worry as the bully it is and not give it the attention it’s demanding from you. Gently close the book, take a deep breath and get on with your day. Turn your attention back towards the things that you want to do and not the things worry is telling you to do.

Hit the snooze button

Once you know what worry looks and sounds like, note down the worry thoughts as they arise in a journal or the notes app on your phone – what is worry telling you? As you know, the more attention you give it the larger it gets! By noting down the worry thoughts as they arise you can get a bit of distance from the content of the thoughts and stop them from spiralling out of control. Then at a specific time each day, spend 15–20 minutes attending to your list and remove items that are no longer relevant. For example, you might have been worrying about a disagreement you had with a work colleague and later that day the two of you ended up going out for lunch together and made up. No need to dwell on something that’s resolved – delete!

“The purpose of anxiety is to help you pay attention and provide the energy to act.”

Get it out of your head

Practise mindfulness strategies to let go of the items that are out of your control. For these thoughts, it is helpful to engage in strategies that assist in letting go of the worry.

This one works well: visualise a leaf floating down a beautiful stream. Wrap up that worry thought in a bundle, place it on the leaf and let it float away – it can even go all the way down a waterfall if you choose. AWW

This is an edited extract from The Mind Strength Method by Dr Jodie Lowinger (Murdoch Books Australia).