Stop Struggling with Anxiety & Come Back to Calm

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If you’re feeling anxious, my goal is to help you unwind and let it go. 

But “letting it go” is not so simple because "letting it go" is not about avoiding it, getting rid of it, or pushing it away.

If you’re struggling against the anxiety, if you’re trying to escape the anxiety, then the anxiety is not going anywhere. 

Let’s start by saying that if you’re trying to get rid of anxiety, that’s perfectly natural. 

Anxiety is a feeling, a thought process, and a physiological experience. It can feel so uncomfortable that all you want to do is escape from it. You want it to stop immediately. That’s completely natural. 

But the problem is that struggling against anxiety cannot help you get rid of it. 

I’ll show you why with a little thought experiment. 

Imagine you’re in a game of tug of war. On one side is you. You’re holding onto a rope.

And on the other side of the rope, playing against you is the entire starting lineup of the New England Patriots football team, or pick the team of your choice. 

Imagine 11 giant football players facing off against you. Really imagine this. Feel the rope in your hands. See the football players lined up on the other side, holding onto the same rope that you're holding, and they’re about to pull. 

Who do you think is going to win? 

How will you possibly overcome their combined strength and power? 

This is what it’s like when you struggle against your own emotions when you struggle against yourself. This analogy comes from Michael Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul. 

Now, before you think there’s no hope, there is a solution to this. But you can only reach the solution when you truly understand that there is no possible way you can win. 

It’s not that the emotions are too strong for you. This is a common misunderstanding. It’s that your resistance to the emotions is what gives them their strength. 

The more intensely you resist, close your heart, and suppress your feelings, the bigger the football team on the other side of the rope becomes.

So now you’re getting a hint at what the solution is to this impossible game of tug of war. 

Here’s the solution: You’re standing there holding the rope. The football players are about to pull on that rope. What do you do? You open your hands, and you drop the rope. You let go of the struggle against yourself. 

You’re not giving up. You’re not giving in. You’re not accepting defeat. And it’s not resignation. 

You are making a wise decision to let go of a struggle that cannot be won. 

You’re letting go of the struggle against your own feelings. 

Now for the most important part of this post. Letting go of the struggle doesn’t mean getting rid of the feeling. Letting go of the struggle means being okay with feeling the feeling. 

How can you be okay with feeling the feeling? There are a couple of ways. 

First, you can use affirmations, like the ones we’re about to repeat together. If you can memorize affirmations that remind you of your own power and of the new perspectives that I’ve shared with you, you will be so much more prepared when anxiety pops up. 

Second, you learn that you can handle feeling your feelings through your own experience. You do this by keeping a journal of every time you get anxious because you’ll see that each time you felt anxious, at some point later on, you felt better. You got through it. The more you proof you record that you can handle feeling your feelings, the more confident you will become. 

And when you can finally accept feeling your feelings, and you relax in the face of your feelings, you are taking away their power to upset you. And when they lose their power, which is actually your energy – the energy of your reaction to them, your struggle against them – they wither into dust like leaves in the fall. 

Affirmations

Now, let’s explore some affirmations that will help you in this process. 

Affirmations only help me when they remind me of a truth that I've forgotten or when they change my perspective. Sometimes, they don't help because thoughts are not always the best way to handle anxiety, which is why we do other things, like breathing exercises. But for me, addressing the way I think about things and see them generally helps the most.

Even if you’re not feeling anxious right now, treat this as practice. It’s best to practice the affirmations when you’re calm so that you can use them when you’re not so calm. 

First, let yourself feel the struggle, the desire to push the anxiety away as you take a slow, deep breath in. Slowly release the breath and let go of the need to struggle. Let your neck and shoulders relax. Let your forehead and jaw relax. 

Repeat after me: 

• “I can feel the anxiety and still be okay.” 

• “I can let go of the struggle and relax my body.” 

• “I don’t like this feeling, but I allow it to exist.” 

• “I can let myself breathe and let myself be.” 

• “I can allow all of my feelings to be just as they are.” 

Thank you for reading. 

Be well. 

And take good care.