Anxiety

What anxiety is

Anxiety starts when your mind decides something unknown is dangerous. Your nervous system responds as if the threat is real. Your heart races. Your breath gets shallow. Your mind looks for evidence to confirm what’s wrong. It’s like your mind has dumped garbage on your front steps and now you’re trying to push through it to get on with your life.

The physical symptoms feel like proof that something actually is wrong, so the cycle gets validated.

How people usually deal with anxiety

You’ve probably been told that your anxiety isn’t rational, that you should challenge the thoughts or accept them. The problem is deeper than what you’re thinking. On average, we experience around 50,000 thoughts every single day. An anxious person, however, may experience well over 70,000 thoughts racing through their consciousness.

If you’ve been told to write down your thoughts, analyze them, or argue with them, you’d have no time for anything else. That’s not a solution.

The strategic therapy approach doesn’t ask you to push through harder or organize the garbage. We stop your mind from dumping it on your front steps in the first place.

What kind of anxiety do you experience?

This questionnaire will help clarify what you’re experiencing.

• My mind won’t stop replaying conversations and imagining worst-case scenarios. I worry about everything: my health, my relationships, my job, things I said years ago. The worry never stops, even when I know it’s irrational. → Generalized Anxiety

• My heart races and I can’t breathe when I’m around other people. I worry they’re judging me. I rehearse what I’ll say. I leave early. The anxiety is so bad that I avoid social situations altogether. → Social Anxiety

• I get sudden panic attacks where I think I’m dying. My chest tightens, I can’t catch my breath, I feel dizzy. The fear is so intense that I avoid places where I might have another attack. → Panic Disorder

• I’m convinced I have a serious illness even though doctors say I’m fine. I check my body constantly for signs of disease. I research symptoms obsessively. I keep getting medical tests hoping one will finally confirm what I know is wrong. → Health Anxiety

• I get anxious before any kind of performance or evaluation. When I have to speak, present, test, or be watched, my hands shake and my mind goes blank. I doubt myself before I even start. → Performance Anxiety

• I feel anxious when I’m away from the people I care about. I worry that something bad will happen to them. I don’t want to be alone or leave home. The fear of separation is constant. → Separation Anxiety

Why nothing you’ve tried has worked

You’ve tried to control it. You maybe have even analyzed the worry to prove it didn’t make sense. You learned a few breathing exercises. You meditated. You avoid the triggers that you could identify. You even tried to exercise more to induce a happier mind.

The reason you weren’t successful is that all of this treats anxiety as something to tolerate or think your way out of.

But when you try to manage the anxiety, you’re confirming that something is worth managing. When you avoid the trigger, you’re confirming the threat is real and should be avoided.

The fact of the matter is: You can’t manage your way out of a pattern that your mind is running automatically.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy looks for the weakest seam in the pattern your anxiety runs on, and works there. The work isn’t about teaching you to think differently about your thoughts. It’s about changing how the pattern runs in the first place, so the thoughts have nothing to feed on.

Once the structure that activates your anxiety has been dismantled, the anxiety stops. You aren’t asked to manage it. It’s gone.