You felt anxious. Again.
Maybe you snapped at someone you love, bailed on plans you wanted to keep or laid awake at 3 am running through every possible way a situation could go wrong. You’re exhausted and the anxiety is still there, and on top of all of it, you’re beating yourself up.
Why am I like this? What is wrong with me? I thought I was getting better…why did it get bad again? Why can’t I just stop feeling anxious?
Understanding what anxiety actually is might be the most useful thing you can do to stop being so hard on yourself about it.
Anxiety is an emotion, not a character flaw
This is the thing most people don’t fully believe, even when they’ve heard it. Anxiety is not inherently bad. In fact, it’s a normal emotion, just like happiness or sadness.
It has three components. It sensations in your body (the knotted stomach, the tight chest, the racing heart), thoughts running through your head (something is wrong, I can’t handle this, this will never end), and urges — the behavioral pull toward doing something to make it stop.
None of that makes you weak. None of it makes you broken. It makes you human.
Experiencing anxiety is also not a measure of your progress. If you’re really anxious again or still anxious, it may be an opportunity to practice how you respond to it (a skill you can learn!)
Most of us were never taught to think of anxiety this way. We were taught — directly or indirectly — that feeling anxious meant something was wrong with us. That calm people have it together and anxious people don’t. That anxiety is a problem to be solved rather than a feeling to be felt.
That framing is doing a lot of damage.
What anxiety actually is
Your body has an alarm system. Its entire job is to detect threats and keep you safe. When it fires, you get that surge, the sense that something is very wrong and you need to act right now.
The problem isn’t that your alarm fires. After all, in times of actual danger, you want it to! The problem happens when it can’t tell the difference between actual danger and something that’s just uncomfortable. Discomfort is not necessarily dangerous, but your body’s alarm system doesn’t know that.
The good news is that you can help teach your brain the difference.
The problem with being hard on yourself about feeling anxious
When you feel anxious about something that isn’t truly threatening and then add a layer of what is wrong with me for feeling this way, you’re not calming your alarm system down. You’re giving it more to work with. You’re adding fuel to the anxiety fire.
You feel anxious (uncomfortable, but not dangerous), and your brain reads that discomfort as a signal to pay attention. When we add the extra layer of suffering, it’s adding another layer of distress and discomfort, so the brain could be reacting to that. It’s like there are more signals that something is wrong, so the attention stays focused on it.
I see this with clients. I wrote about one of them, I’ll call her Andrea, in my book. She works full-time in a demanding job, has young kids, gets to yoga a couple times a week, and somehow manages to cook dinner most nights. She’s doing an enormous amount. But to her, she’s not doing any of it well enough. Her inner critic was a constant presence, making her profoundly miserable. When anxiety showed up on top of that, she had no grace available for herself at all.
When I suggested ways to quiet the critic, she looked at me like I’d suggested something irresponsible. She thought being easier on herself would mean not caring. That self-criticism was keeping her sharp.
It was actually keeping her stuck.
Instead of beating yourself up,
This isn’t about positive affirmations. What actually helps is simpler and harder at the same time.
When you catch yourself saying I am anxious, try shifting it to I am aware that I’m feeling anxious. This is called cognitive defusion. This small shift creates distance between you and the feeling. You are not your anxiety. You’re a person who is having an anxious feeling right now, and feelings build, peak, and pass.
If you notice the self-criticism starting, notice it without feeding it. You don’t have to agree with your inner critic. You also don’t have to argue with it or talk yourself out of it. Just notice it the same way you’d notice any other thought: there’s that voice again. And keep going.
The goal isn’t to feel less anxious before you take action. The goal is to feel anxious and act anyway, which is what Just Do Nothing™ is about. Doing nothing with the discomfort, not nothing about the situation. This isn’t a new concept nor is it one I made up. The idea of allowing feelings to be there is a core principle of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
Being easier on yourself isn’t giving yourself a pass. It’s actually what makes change possible. When you’re not pouring energy into berating yourself, you have more available for the things that actually matter.
Anxiety is normal. Being hard on yourself doesn’t have to be.
Anxiety shows up for everyone. You can learn to have that feeling without layering judgment on top of it. It takes practice, lots of practice! We’re never looking for perfection. If you want to dig further into the myths people believe about anxiety — including why coping skills aren’t the answer and why avoiding what makes you anxious backfires — those are worth a read.