What It Means to Accept Anxiety

If you have anxiety, you have certainly heard someone say that the only way to get better is to learn how to accept your anxiety. To learn how to be comfortable with it.  

It’s a common talking point, but there’s one problem: when giving this advice, so many fail to explain how to achieve anxiety acceptance. Thus, understandably, so many misinterpret the phrase “accept your anxiety” to mean submitting themselves to a lifetime of anxiety – and being happy about it.

This couldn’t be further from the truth (and seems quite depressing).

So, here is the truth: true anxiety acceptance means acknowledging that anxiety is present in your life, at times more intensely than others, while also acknowledging that nothing in life is permanent. It’s coming to a space of openness, being okay with the ebbs and flows of your emotions and recognizing that all experiences are temporary.

I didn’t start understanding this until after I was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In fact, in the book “Everyday Mindfulness for OCD,” Jon Hershfield and Shala Nicely highlight a crucial point: OCD thrives on your resistance to feeling anxiety. It feeds on your desperate attempts to make it disappear so it can trap you in a vicious cycle of intrusive thoughts, anxiety and compulsions.

But even if you don’t have OCD, consider that your anxiety banks on your resistance to feeling it – the moment you resist it, the stronger it gets. When you worry about if you’ll get anxious in the future, or how long you will feel anxiety, it shows up. It gets worse.

So how can you move toward openness? Here’s what I did.

Accepting anxiety with the "bring on the anxiety" technique

After my OCD diagnosis, I became keenly aware of what my anxiety levels were doing at all times. This tendency to constantly monitor and control my anxiety was my way of trying to gain some control over my OCD and ensure that I was actually getting better (whatever that means).

But the constant checking only led to an increase in anxiety because I was always either worried I was about to get anxious or trying to analyze what I had done wrong in my treatment to make me anxious and how I could get it to go away. 

In short, my efforts at accepting anxiety were unimpactful because I could not let go of my fear of being anxious forever.

One morning, I woke up and started my routine of doing a full-body scan to determine if that day was going to be an “anxious day” or not (hint: every day that I checked was an anxious day). However, instead of going into a thought spiral about anxiety, instead, I thought to myself, “Bring on the anxiety!”

Of course, I didn’t actually believe that at that time, but I started telling myself that every day. “Give me the most intense anxiety you’ve got! I know I’ll be okay either way.”

Here’s the thing: when you fear anxiety, you undermine your own resilience and strength. You forget that you have survived countless panic attacks and anxious days. You don’t acknowledge that you are strong enough to handle whatever life throws at you, that you will figure it out no matter how weak you might feel.

"When you fear anxiety, you undermine your own resilience and strength." - Abbie Tabbilos

That’s why confronting my anxiety in this way led to me realizing that anxiety is simply another emotion, incapable of causing me any actual harm, not an actual threat. And that is a powerful shift in perspective.

Accepting anxiety requires flexibility and openness

The beauty of this approach lies in its potential for transformation. Pretending to embrace anxiety can lead to you actually embracing it in the future. Yes, one day, you won’t fear anxiety. You will be open and flexible and you will have a deeper understanding of your own emotional patterns. That will bring you great peace.

If you take one thing from this blog, remember that resisting anxiety inadvertently perpetuates its hold. I invite you to fake it until you make it. Try it out for size – mindfully adopt the attitude of “bringing on” anxiety and see what happens.

I have a feeling that as you do so, you will be empowered to navigate your emotions with greater awareness and resilience. You will come to believe that anxiety is not weakness and that you are strong enough to handle it.

Note: If you are struggling with severe anxiety, don’t forget to seek professional guidance. A therapist can provide valuable support and help you develop even more personalized coping strategies.