Playing Anxiety at its Own Irrational Game

I have always dreamed of being a Vulcan.

It’s not about the ears but being able to effectively shut down most of my emotions and run my life on logic alone.

Now, I do enjoy positive emotions.

Love, joy, excitement, and passion are great and bring considerable positives to my life.

But at other times, I can be so crippled by anxiety, worry, and depression that a life of cold, hard logic seems hugely appealing.

Part of the problem is that my go-to method of solving problems is always to apply logic and find something that I can do to address the issue.

That all falls down when you are trying to deal with something irrational, as is the case with my anxiety much of the time.

It is like trying to catch water in a sieve.

Logic and facts are the wrong tools for the job.

So, how can we deal better with anxiety?

Applying a logical approach to the situation, I am tempted to say that the best way to fight irrationality is with different irrationality.

It's trying to beat anxiety at its own game.

In practice, this means that while I cannot convince myself that what I am worrying about will not happen or will not be so bad if it does, I can find ways to deal with how the worry makes me feel.

The first thing that I know helps is time.

Now, of course, you cannot rush time.

But waiting and leaving my mind free to think up even worse possible scenarios while I allow time to pass is not the solution either.

This is where the second idea comes in – distraction.

It is not a case of forgetting what I am worried about.

It is finding something else to occupy at least some of my head’s bandwidth.

I know that I will be unable to shut out the worry completely.

But if I can make it share my head with something else for a period, it keeps the anxiety a little under control and allows some time to pass.

The reason that time helps is my final weapon – perspective.

If you hold an apple close to your face, all you can see is that apple.

You can probably detect every mark on its skin, every imperfection, etc.

But just because that is all you can see now, it does not mean that the apple is the only thing in the world.

Often, our worries are right in our faces and so appear enormous.

But that is a false picture.

We must do whatever we can to take a step back and put them in the broader context of our whole lives.

Even something severe looks less significant when you view it in a timeframe of many years of living.

Again, time helps with this regaining of perspective, but we can also force it to a degree by doing things we enjoy to regain balance.

Look back at things you have been highly anxious about and see how serious they look now.

You are still here, still going strong.

The things that worry you now will look like that in the future; you have to keep going and leave them in the rearview mirror.

Finally, the last thing that helps me is to counteract the worries that want to become all-consuming with the counter-worry about wasting precious time.

I always have so much that I want to do, but I do not have enough time to do it.

While it sometimes seems very attractive to spend a whole day doing nothing but worrying, I know that I will regret the time I wasted later.

It is not about always being productive – many of the things I want to do are leisure activities, like reading or gardening.

So often, I have put my life on hold while I wait for something outside my control to resolve itself, then felt terrible for the time and energy I gave it when everything was sorted.

I want to avoid any more of that going forward.

I know it will still happen occasionally, but it needs to be kept to a minimum.

Anxiety can be crippling, and I started writing this article as a way of trying to manage a lousy bout I am dealing with at the moment.

But logic is not the solution.

Fight fire with fire and play anxiety at its own irrational game.

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