Conquering Anxiety: Cycle of Anxiety
Hi everyone, I hope you are doing well. Last week we talked about what anxiety is and how it can impact one’s life. You can participate in the first post here. This week we will dive into the cycle of Anxiety! We often talk about anxiety but I have not seen the cycle being talked about that often it is an important pattern to understand to improve your anxiety.
Here is the anxiety cycle visualized
The cycle of anxiety, as illustrated in the graphic from The OCD & Anxiety Center
Here is how it looks in action:
- Public speaking: The speaker fears judgment, avoids presentation (temporary relief), but misses the chance to gain experience and the anxiety persists. The next time the same opportunity is presented, the fear is stronger.
- Driving: A person fears driving in busy places and avoids them initially but over time the idea of driving on busy roads feels completely unacceptable. What started as hesitance, becomes a deep-rooted fear.
Please take two minutes to watch this video on the anxiety cycle
📺Click Here to Watch the Video
So are we doomed then?
No, the interesting thing about the anxiety cycle is, that just as you can feed and strengthen your anxiety, you can also do the opposite.
Let's look at the already given above examples where we learned that if we avoid something we are scared of, we strengthen the feelings of anxiety associated with it. So if we wish to weaken the intensity of these feelings, we have to do the opposite! We have to face what we fear (this will be covered more thoroughly in the coming posts, we are just dipping our toes in the idea of facing our fears at the start of the series)
So what do we do when we are faced with anxiety?
You do the thing you are scared of. I know it is easier said than done but this is an effective method.
For example, if you are a new driver who is scared to park in busy areas, you do exactly that! But we don’t go into these situations without our handy grounding tools to help us get through it! These will be covered in the posts to come.
For this post, we are simply learning about the cycle of anxiety and reflecting on how we have strengthened and weakened it in our lives.
Questions for reflection
It is preferred that you complete the series on a member account but to accommodate anyone who wishes to use a listener account, I have divided the questions into Member and Listener categories.
(Members Only) Please do not answer these on a listener account
- Reflect on an area of life where you have struggled with anxiety think about the cycle of anxiety that has existed surrounding that topic and share with us what that cycle looked like for you.
- Think of something you were once anxious about doing but now you either feel reduced anxiety surrounding it or do not feel anxious at all. Do you think you knowingly or unnowlingly broke the cycle?
(Listeners Only)
- Think of something that can be generally anxiety-provoking and give us two examples, where one path leads to more anxiety and another weakens the cycle.
Further Reading
This post is part of the Conquering Anxiety series, you can find all posts of the series here.
@Hope
Reflect on an area of life where you have struggled with anxiety.
An area of life I've struggled with is self sabotage. Even though I'm motivated and want to do something, the negative thoughts will win.
Think about the cycle of anxiety that has existed surrounding that topic and share with us what that cycle looked like for you.
This hyper independence creates isolation which increases issues, which then further increases the isolation and issues, etc..
