How Anxiety Feels and What Doesn’t Work

This post is about how anxiety feels for some people, four strategies that don’t work to relieve anxiety (DIY strategies, talking with family and friends, taking medication, and talk therapy), and what people can do to get the help they need. First, let’s talk about how anxiety often feels.

How Anxiety Often Feels

People with anxiety often feel—

• Stressed, tired, lethargic
• Nervous, restless, overactive
• Worried, sometimes about a lot of different things
• Thin skinned, more easily annoyed, irritable
• Fearful due to uncertainty about the future
• Sleep deprived, having trouble going to sleep and/or staying asleep
• Suddenly panicked at times for no apparent reason
• Fearful, overwhelmed in social settings
• Thinking others are thinking negative things about them

Feeling the things listed above often makes it difficult for people to take care of their homes, do their work, and get along with others. Unfortunately, many people do things to relieve their anxiety that don’t work. Let’s talk about some common things people do that don’t relieve anxiety. 

Strategies That Don’t Relieve Anxiety

Four common strategies that don’t relieve anxiety are DIY strategies, talking with family or friends, taking medication, and doing talk therapy. Let’s take a closer look at these common strategies.

DIY Strategies

• Equating their anxiety with who they are: “This is just who I am —I’m a worrier—always have been, always will be.”
• White knuckle approach: trying to will their anxiety away. “I just need to let it go and get over it.” 
• Attempting to control their anxiety by controlling what others say and do. 
• Dismissing or trivializing how they feel: “It could be worse. Many are worse off than me.” 
• Doing their own research online, but not practicing what they learn
• Getting tips on social media—few of which address the real causes of anxiety
• Self-medicating by overeating (especially carbs, sweets), binge watching TV, scrolling on social media, reading fiction, alcohol, CBD, Delta-9, marijuana, psychedelics, sex, and other activities

All of the above DIY strategies not only fail to relieve anxiety, they actually feed anxiety and keep it going.

Talking with Family and Friends 

Sometimes talking with family and friends helps relieve anxiety for a little while. Sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on how empathetic a person’s family members and friends are. Generally, family and friends aren’t able to help in ways that actually resolve anxiety.

Far too often what happens with seeking help from family and friends is the “Yeah, but…” game. In the “Yeah, but…” game, a family member or friend gives advice about what to do. The advice isn’t helpful, and the person with anxiety says, “Yeah, but that won’t work because….” Then another piece of advice is offered that doesn’t work. The person says again, “Yeah, but that won’t work because….” The “Yeah, but…” game can go on awhile and become frustrating for both parties. 

Taking Medication

Often medication helps reduce anxiety, but not always. It usually takes a month to know if it helps or not. Sometimes before the month is up, people feel worse and stop taking the medication.

When the first medication didn’t work, some people try a different medication. It takes another month to know if it helps or not. If it doesn’t, they might try a third medication or simply give up. When medication does help, it merely reduces the symptoms of anxiety. It also often has undesirable side effects.

More importantly, medication doesn’t address the underlying causes of anxiety. Since it doesn’t address the underlying causes, the medication often enables people to keep doing what feeds their anxiety. Since they aren’t addressing the underlying causes of anxiety, they must keep taking the medication.

Talk Therapy

Talk therapy helps some people and doesn’t help others. However, some people with anxiety don’t have insurance and can’t afford talk therapy. Some who can afford talk therapy, find talk therapy helpful, but their insurance provider limits the number of appointments they pay for. Still others who can afford talk therapy don’t find it helpful and stop going.

Some people find the combo of medication and talk therapy helpful, others don’t. However, there are over 400 different methods of talk therapy. It can be challenging to find the method that works. Besides that, some providers are young, inexperienced, and not very helpful. Even experienced providers can be unhelpful.

Furthermore, many providers work for a mental health clinic that requires them to limit their time with clients to 50 or 45 minutes or less per client. They have to watch their clocks and see as many clients a day as possible.

What Happens When Those with Anxiety Don’t Get the Help They Need

All too often, when people don’t get the help they need, they breakdown, are admitted to the hospital, receive treatment for their symptoms, and are discharged. They might or might not stay on their meds and do talk therapy. It depends on what they decide to do.

How I Can Help

With 40+ years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of clients reduce or completely resolve their anxiety. I welcome clients who have tried what doesn’t work and still struggle with anxiety.

In my holistic view, anxiety isn’t a mental illness or disorder. It’s an ordered normal, natural, healthy response to what you’ve experienced. Given what has happened, it’s normal to feel anxious.

Anxiety is not the problem. Anxiety is a friend. It’s an alarm alerting us that something life-denying has happen and needs to be attended to so it can resolve. Often underneath anxiety there’s a history of distressing, life-denying experiences that have occurred over a span of many years. Often the life-denying experiences were traumatizing.

I’m here to help my clients understand the source of their anxiety and learn how to feel better, so they can live healthier, happier lives and realize their dreams and joy.

Learn more about me at https://markwneville.com. I’m looking forward to meeting you soon!