Dealing with anxiety can feel like you have lost total control of everything, including your own body’s response to anxiety.

Anxiety is physically uncomfortable.

Think about it, anxiety is your fight or flight response being activated to a real or perceived danger (more on that in a minute). You suddenly find that you need to go to the bathroom more often, your breathing becomes shallow, you may feel nauseated, dizzy, or faint. On top of that, your heart is racing and many people report feeling like they are experiencing a heart attack or have fears they are in the process of dying.

The miserable feeling of anxiety reinforces the anxiety because it is so uncomfortable that people will go great lengths to avoid this feeling.

Experience anxiety a time or two and one can understand why people will try avoidance and control to try and prevent anxiety from ever happening again.

People can go to great lengths to try and prevent anxiety to include social isolation, over thinking, over planning, having to have an exit strategy, and taking efforts to control conversations and experiences.

The problem is, most of the time the things you are trying to control are the very things outside your control, which can actually contribute to the cycle of anxiety.

Remember when I said anxiety is the fight or flight response to real or perceived anxiety?

Perceived anxiety is when our racing minds start to make up stories and scenarios that set off the alarm bells in our brain. Our brains are fabulous and wonderful, but have some limitations. One of those limitations is that our brain is terrible at identifying real emergencies and crisis, such as being chased by a bear, and our own anxious thoughts, such as if I go to that event, I may have anxiety and anxiety is miserable.

When you suffer with anxiety on a regular basis, your fight or flight system becomes over activated and you can have a more difficult time being able to relax, even when you are not anxious. When your fight or flight system is over activated and over sensitive it takes less to “set your anxiety off”.

Are you seeing the cycle/pattern?

Fear of anxiety creates anxiety. Control is an attempt to control anxiety. Both of these things actually cause more anxiety. The more out of control you feel, the more you will attempt to control in an effort to control, manage, or cope with anxiety.

If you have been told by others that you are controlling, or if you find yourself constantly making an effort to control your environment out of fear, you may have an anxiety disorder. Some things you can do that HELP anxiety is to identify what you are really afraid of and are trying to control in a situation as a result of that fear. Ask yourself what would happen if you let go and stopped trying to control everything. Is it as bad as you fear?

Talk with someone about your anxiety. You might not be able to control every little thing, but you have more control over yourself and your response to stressors than you think. Focus on what IS within your control. You are not powerless. Powerless is the lie that anxiety tells us that only serves to keep anxiety alive.

Learn more About Me and the Services I offer.

Tonya Molnar, PhD, LMHC, MHP specializes in insomnia and sleep health, trauma, and chronic pain and illness therapy with additional training in CBT-i for insomnia and CBT for chronic pain and illness management. As she completes her PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision, it is her honor to serve clients in Washington State using a telemental health approach at this time.