This Stuff is Hard: Making Peace with Your Anxiety

By Nancy Jane Smith

Do you have a negative voice in the back of your head? Many of us fall prey to the belief that our anxiety helps us improve. On the surface, that critical voice seems to help by pointing out areas where we could be better. In "This Stuff Is Hard: Making Peace With Your Anxiety," Nancy Jane Smith, MSEd, LPC tells us the truth: we're being tricked. Anxiety does not help us. It is completely possible to self-analyze and improve our lives without spinning on endless negativity, without hurting ourselves, and without doubting ourselves. In five distinct chapters, Nancy delves into each aspect of the important process of reframing our critical inner voices. Each chapter deals with building awareness of anxiety, recognizing inner critics, being present with your thoughts, and understanding the patterns that lead to anxiety. Learning to live without that negativity will help you build a foundation for peace and happiness in your life. Perfectionism is an impossible quest, but Living Happier can be done every day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Live Happier Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991250523

Book preview

Chapter One:  It All Starts with Awareness

Before you can make peace with your anxiety, you need to start building awareness of its mechanisms. Anxiety is a pesky little devil, because we believe it serves us well. Anxiety keeps us productive, on top of things, and successful - or, at least, that's what we tell ourselves. What if I told you that you could have all of those things with less anxiety? What if I told you that, in reality, your anxiety isn’t helping you at all? Anxiety is just keeping your brain busy, making your body unhealthy, and leaving you feeling overwhelmed and overworked.

In this chapter, we will explore the main components of anxiety, and the different identities it takes.

The first step in making peace with your anxiety is building awareness of your anxiety triggers and responses:

What are your anxiety triggers?

What causes your anxiety to flare up?

Does feeling unworthy trigger your anxiety?

What about feeling irresponsible?

Or feeling lazy?

What are your responses to anxiety?

Insomnia, physical pain, numbing your emotions with food or alcohol... 

Although many people have anxiety, how it manifests varies wildly. The following essays serve as a way for you to think about your anxiety in a different way, and as a way to help you start identifying your anxiety triggers and responses. As you start to notice how your anxiety manifests, you can start defining anxiety on your own terms, and start building healthier responses to it.

A True Confession: I am not Perpetually Happy

Recently, when I have shared with people that I am struggling, having a bad day, or feeling overwhelmed, I have received the response What? But, you're the Live Happier Girl! I thought you were always happy? I don’t know when or why this happened, but, somewhere along the way, people started believing that because I help people Live Happier, I am always happy.. I want to share how I have personally struggled with this myth and how it has affected my own life.

True confession: I am not always happy. There are days - even weeks - where it feels like everything is going wrong, when my nearest and dearest and I aren’t quite clicking, when I am overcome with grief, when I just want to crawl in bed and stay there, or when my Fear Mongers take over what seems like permanent residence in my head. Living Happier is a concept I've implemented into my life. It's a way of viewing the world from empowerment rather than from the point of view of a victim. It's something I do each and every day. It's something I know works. I see it in my clients, and in myself.

So, I quietly tell my mongers: thanks for the message, but no thanks, and I continue typing. I believe the idea of living in perpetual happiness is a myth, and a discouraging one at that. Living Happier, embracing the messiness of life, and figuring out ways to greet it and yourself with compassion and trust is possible - and will make you happier.

The stories here are to give you tips, tricks, and examples that I have found helpful on my own Live Happier Journey. Each day, I try to Live Happier, and, on those days, when grief and negativity take over, I try to implement all the stuff I talk about here.

I cry. I journal. I practice gratitude. I dance. I talk with close friends. I work out. I pray. I meditate. I give myself lots of compassion and acceptance. I build curiosity and awareness around what is really going on.

That's Living Happier. It doesn’t mean that I am perpetually blissed out. It doesn’t mean I never feel pain, or never struggle with doubts or insecurities. In fact, when I try to constantly be positive, not allow myself the ebbs and flows of life, and tell myself how I should feel, I am Living Miserably (just ask my nearest and dearest!).

Living Happier is a process. It's a fabulous, messy, dynamic process. I am screaming it from the rooftops - Hell yeah, I am the Live Happier Girl, and I am not perpetually happy. I love my messy, rich, full life.

Here’s to Living Happier!

Anxiety is NOT an Emotion

We all say it: I feel so anxious. I am guilty of saying it, too. The term anxiety has become a catch-all for a lot of emotions. Anxiety has become a socially accepted word for stress, worry, anger, and sadness. We can say anxiety and people nod their heads and say Oh, yes, me too, but no one is really dealing with the anxiety.

Anxiety is a state of being. It's a state of frenzy, heart pains, stomach disorders, and panic attacks. At the root of anxiety are feelings; scary, raw, vulnerable feelings that most of us don’t want to (or don’t know how to) feel. We get so caught up in the causes of our anxiety, we lose sight of the feelings under the anxiety. Too often, when we start to get curious about our feelings, we try to figure out why we are feeling a certain way, not what we are feeling.

Here are some common examples:

Sara crawls out of bed and takes a very quick shower before she must face waking three kids, making breakfast, packing lunches, grabbing coats and gloves, and getting out the door.  Finally, she is able to catch her breath as she makes her way to work. She says to herself, Wow, I am really anxious, and her first reaction is: why? So she starts listing off all the reasons she is anxious:

A project deadline at work is looming.

She fought with her husband last night.

She and her daughter aren’t clicking like they used to.

Her Mom is getting older, and she is worried how much longer she can live alone.

Before she knows it, she is feeling more anxious than she was five minutes ago. She says to herself, You have so much going on... you better get to work so you can get it all done!

Then, her anxiety becomes all about getting to work as quickly as possible, screaming at the car in front of her, and racing up the stairs to work.

Or, she tries something different.

Sara crawls out of bed and takes a very quick shower before she must face waking three kids, making breakfast, packing lunches, grabbing coats and gloves, and getting out the door. Finally, she is able to catch her breath as she makes her way to work. She says to herself, Wow, I am really anxious, and she asks herself, Ok, if anxiety is not a feeling, what am I feeling?

Scared that she will miss the deadline and lose her job.

Frustrated that she doesn’t really like this work.

Scared about her marriage.

Vulnerable around her daughter and her spouse.

Sad that her daughter is growing up so fast.

Scared that she might not be able to be the mom of

a teenager, and an aging mother.

Sad about her mom.

Sad about her father who died a year ago.

As she drives, she feels her eyes welling up. She takes a few deep breaths, and she says Wow, you have so much going on! There are a lot of emotions swirling around... no wonder you are anxious. It's ok, you've got this, just breathe.

Does she feel less anxious? Yes.

Does she feel amazing? No.

Does she feel centered, grounded and based in reality? Hopefully.

Because that is what anxiety does: it keeps us in such a frenzied state, we don’t have to deal with what is really going on around us. For those of us with chronic anxiety, it can become a comfort... a protective mechanism against the tough emotions in our lives.

I know that when I am frenzied, panicked, moving from thing to thing, and obsessing about everything, it is time to check in and ask, What is really going on here? What am I really feeling?

Nine times out of ten, it's anger, fear, sadness, or pain of some sort. Only once I know what is going on, come into my body, and breathe, can I really start taking action to reduce the state of my anxiety.

A Spin-Free Day

Spinning. You know the concept: it's when your brain just gets a hold of something, and you can’t let it go. It's curiosity gone amok. As a mentor of mine used to call it (pardon the bluntness) it's mental masturbation. That phrase really says it best, because the concept of spinning, in a way, feels good. It is a mindless activity that allows us to think we are making change, that we are getting to the root of the issue, or making a difference. Really, all we are doing is spinning our wheels, and going round and round on a subject and getting nowhere. Spinning is when you can spend hours - or even all day - on one conversation, one comment, one event, and just beat it to death.

I am an over-analyzer, and spinning is something I engage in when I get overwhelmed and anxious. It's my go-to place when I need to take a break. When my spinning gets out of control and I become aware that I am getting nowhere fast, I declare a spin-free day..  A spin free day is necessary when I catch myself, just spinning, just analyzing and debating, and riding the ferris wheel in my brain. In short, I'm making no progress.

We all do this. Those of us attracted to the self-help industry tend to do it more than your average bear, but everyone engages in some manner of spinning. For those of us who have read a lot of self-help books, we know the beauty of curiosity and awareness. We know that true change comes from awareness and self-questioning... but there is a fine line between self-questioning and