How Can You Overcome Anxiety?

You cannot avoid anxiety, but here are practical steps to help you lighten its weight.

Do you feel, from time to time, an anxiety whose source you do not know? Or that life is not worth caring about, so that you regret being in it? And that someone else is winning a fame you deserve?

Your answer will most often be yes, and it would be strange indeed to hear a frank answer. In this page you will find a useful optimism, one that pictures for you your own capacity to overcome difficulties.

The first group: you are troubled from time to time, but you do not care at all — then my hand goes out to congratulate you: do not read any further on this page. The followers of this group are happy, but they feel lonely.

The second group: your anxiety disturbs your affairs, and your task depends on the depth of the problem. If the anxiety is a tangled chain, you must turn to outside counsel; but remember that self-help is the first step toward progress, and very often anxieties are surface matters, the result of mishandling certain situations.

How can you sound the depths of these doubts? Awareness and patience are the most effective means of mending any state of mind; if you do not succeed after trying, then the anxieties are deep ones. Here are methods to use in your trial.

1 — Anxieties are not bubbles: do not believe that worry and unrest build character, and do not listen to talk that would persuade you that anxiety is one of the makings of a great personality. You will take pride, even if you do not succeed, in having faced your problem and worked to untie its knots.

2 — Sort out your troubles: worries can keep you company all your life; they are your own, and they hold you back from moving. Such surrender hinders you from facing new problems with steadiness. There is no shame in failing sometimes; the fault lies in not trying. Try setting a plan before you, asking: what are your troubles, where are they, and with what sort of people?

3 — Accustom yourself to boldness: is there something you would like to do that shyness keeps you from? Try mixing in the clubs, and offer your suggestions in conversations that concern your work. There is no need to go adventuring in the wilds of Africa, for attacking your shyness and conquering your timidity is an adventure in itself. To overcome your hesitation, take a long breath, trust yourself, then plunge into the deep — and success will without fail be in your hand.

4 — Open a window to be rid of your worries: we see many women afraid to disclose what wearies them, as if they trusted no one enough to confide in him; and, on the other hand, they are afraid to defend their rights and to bring their opinions out into the field of action, and this suppression leaves them withdrawn and despairing. But let me not be misunderstood here: I do not mean that we should give room to everything that passes through our mind and say it without thinking; rather we need discretion — confiding in a faithful friend who will help us; and what is heartening in this situation is that the friend feels gratified when we place our trust in him.

5 — Do not postpone your problems: nothing magnifies fear like retreat. The wider the gap between you and the important problem, the larger it grows; and the longer you put it off, the more its threat multiplies. What is the matter you would like to face? Storm it with all courage and resolve.

6 — Do not drag your fears behind you: old failure often pursues new ideas and casts a dreadful shadow over them. Strive to leave no opening for the ghost of the past to seep into your present and cloud its serenity; put a stop to despairing over an incident that is gone, and begin anew.

7 — Lay up immunity against worries: truly, no one can teach you how to avoid sorrow, but there are precepts that lift the weight of carrying it from you. Live through the period of fear or sorrow, and accept it as a reality that will not change. There are means that spare you the pain: a sleeping pill; a daydream that pulls you out of reality; plunging into some passing occupation — all this does not remove the troubles but postpones them to the future. Face the anxiety in its own hour, and live it, and it will not come back afterward. When worries weigh down your shoulders, think what you can do toward a solution, and look ahead — to the paths of courage and enterprise!