The Thing.
I feel it coming. I can sense the approaching presence descend on me like clods of damp earth pressing onto my chest.
I struggle to breathe. I struggle to cry for help. I am suffocating in my own body.
Anxiety is a dreadful affliction. I have always described it as feeling like I am drowning in my own body.
Extreme anxiety can come from a plethora of triggers and events, some big black swan moments that we have no hope of predicting, to the simplest, tiny grain of uncertainty that becomes magnified in our minds, to a world ending catastrophe.
So much of my low level anxiety has come from ‘The Thing’.
The thing that is looming on my horizon. The thing that I need to do, but either don’t want to do, or don’t know how to do it.
My previous strategy of dealing with The Thing was to hide from it, to run away and try my hardest to ignore it.
The results were exactly as you would expect. What starts off as a relatively minor issue in my life suddenly transforms into a behemoth of trouble and strife, becoming 100 times more difficult to slay.
From years of repeating this self defeating process (and in all honesty, I still struggle with this), I came up with the concept of the Anxiety Shark.
This is a simple representation of how our anxiety is directly related to the time it takes to do The Thing.
The longer we take to do the thing that is causing us the anxiety, the higher the level of anxiety we experience. This anxiety increases until it reaches critical mass, usually by us hitting the deadline for said ‘thing’.
But, and here is the crucial part, the moment we do The Thing, or even start doing the thing, our anxiety drops away immediately. The curve of the graph of our anxiety over time is shaped like a shark’s fin, hence The Anxiety Shark.
The realisation that my anxiety dropped off the second I took action toward the anxiety inducing thing may seem obvious to you. But to those of us that suffer with extreme anxiety at times, it really is a eureka moment.
Anxiety is a very inward focused response. We become blinded to what is right in front of us, often to the confusion and, occasionally, the frustration of onlookers.
The thing becomes magnified, overwhelming, unconquerable. The uncertainty of the situation feeds back into the ever spiralling sense of panic.
But the antidote is right there, just where it has always been. Taking the first step.
It’s like when Sarah finally remembers the line of the poem and defeats the Goblin King, in the movie Labyrinth.
The second we take action, the moment we decide take control, we take back the power. The Thing no longer has power over us.
Action is the antidote to anxiety
Now, I would be lying if I led you to believe that this simple epiphany was the end to my battle with anxiety. It was not.
We humans are a forgetful bunch.
But, like anything else, this is a muscle we can train. Understanding the Anxiety Shark helps me to recognise the emotions rising in me. The more I use the concept, the quicker I notice the emotions, and the quicker I can launch into action.
It’s like getting an upgrade in a video game, and the more I use this upgrade, the more powerful it becomes.
Much of what we do at Wild Life falls under the label of Ancestral Health, so it got me thinking more about anxiety.
Nature doesn’t make mistakes. Any so-called errors typically only last a single generation. But anxiety seems to be here to stay.
So maybe demonising anxiety as a bad thing is a little hasty.
Let’s look at the facts.
The more important the thing, the greater the anxiety I typically feel.
The more I procrastinate, the greater the anxiety about the thing I’m not doing.
When we do the thing, the anxiety evaporates.
And this happens every single time.
Anxiety is not a bug, it’s a feature.
It’s a piece of extremely clever code, that comes as a factory setting in our minds.
I am not broken, I just forgot the meaning of this feature.
Without doubt, anxiety is an awful sensation, as I alluded to in my description at the top of the page. But it needs to be awful.
We, as a species have a very definite negativity bias. Although this may have become maladaptive in the modern age when combined with things like social media, negativity bias has kept us alive for millennia.
If, when walking thought the forest, we see what looks like a stick on the ground in front of us, we have two possible assumptions.
- It’s almost definitely a stick, so I’ll step on it.
- It might be a deadly snake, so I’ll avoid it.
If option 1 is incorrect, we die. If option 2 is either correct or incorrect we live. Therefore, option 2 is a safer bet every time.
That’s why anxiety feels so horrid, because it forces us to take note.
Not only does anxiety make us take note but it also tells us which direction we should go in for us to grow.
That direction, more often than not involves discomfort, so needs every flashing neon sign to encourage us down that path. Anxiety is this sign.
We rarely grow by staying small and playing safe. Leaving our comfort zone feels, well…uncomfortable.
Discomfort and uncertainty are accompanied by anxiety. It’s the signal that we are approaching our former limits, and about to break into new territory.
It’s the Dark Compass that we can rely on again and again, to point us in the direction of growth.
It the holy pointer of prioritisation. Not sure what to tackle first? Ask your anxiety.
There is a quote by Alex Hormozi that really hits me hard:
What would you do if your weren’t afraid?
When we frame it like this we can see that the fear and anxiety aren’t working against us, but merely showing us the work that needs to be done.
When I think about what I am most afraid of in a new situation, I know that this is what I need to lean into most.
It’s not easy, or pleasant, but to date, it’s never as bad as I imagine. And the pain of pushing forward is acute but short lived. The pain of staying the same is chronic and unending.
This is why the Wild Life motto is:
Per spinas, ad astra
Through thorns, to the stars
And the more we open ourselves to discomfort, the easier it is to manage. The more time we spend pushing at the boundaries of our comfort, the easier it is to change the mindset surrounding this discomfort.
The physiological effects of fear look almost identical to excitement. Increased heart rate, dilated pupils, faster breath rate, increased adrenaline, fluttery digestive system.
The real difference is in the mindset.
Take the emotion out of it and we can see that the body is just readying us for what is about to happen. That’s it.
Anxiety is not the enemy, it’s just the early warning system making us sit up and take notice, and getting us ready to tackle the thing that’s coming up.
This knowledge has truly helped me to grow and reduce the effects of anxiety, which for me has been really crippling.
The fear of anxiety creating more anxiety. It was a never ending negative loop.
Now when I experience it, I feel it early on in my body, before it gets a death grip on my mind.
It alerts me to the fact that not all is smooth flowing in Glennville. I can then pause and investigate what it is that I need to pay attention too.
And when I give it the correct attention, the anxiety goes. It’s like magic.
It’s time to consult your Dark Compass, step up and battle The Thing, and turn your Anxiety Sharks into minnows.
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