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You Want Me To Focus on Anxiety? Seriously?

It seems unhelpful to focus on anxiety. Yet focusing on anxiety has a place in managing anxiety. Find out when to focus on anxiety. Read this.

To focus on anxiety is not typically people want to do. To focus on anxiety is not typically advised to people who want to overcome anxiety. Of course, to successfully overcome anxiety and find inner peace, it's wise to focus on anything but anxiety. Ignoring anxiety -- paying attention to what anxiety isn't -- is a powerful way to train the brain to think about other things. However, there are times when it's actually helpful to focus on your anxiety; seriously.

Something all types of anxiety disorders have in common is that they scream for attention. Anxiety wants us to pay attention to it and only it, to think about anxious thoughts and feelings, and to behave fearfully. When we pay attention to anxiety's loud shouts, we can't focus on anything else. Anxiety wins the battle.

Mindfulness Helps Take Our Focus Away from Anxiety

Mindfulness can calm anxiety by pulling our attention away from anxious thoughts and feelings and onto our surroundings. Mindfulness meditation can reduce stress and induce calm by helping us focus on anything but anxiety.

Truly, learning to shift our thoughts and feelings away from the anxious ones and to replace them with positive, realistic, constructive ones is one of the most powerful ways to beat anxiety. Anxiety can't win if we're not paying attention to it.

That said, there are times, occasionally, when focusing on our anxiety is exactly what we need to do. It seems illogical, but it isn't.

Our Focus on Anxiety Can Help Us Know What to Do

It seems unhelpful to focus on anxiety. Yet focusing on anxiety has a place in managing anxiety. Find out when to focus on anxiety. Read this.Sometimes mindfulness doesn't calm anxiety. Sometimes, anxiety seems to take over our entire being all at once. Anxious thoughts race. Worry and fear feel all-consuming. Emotions are all over the place. Actions are halted. Physical symptoms are uncomfortable, even painful, from head to toe. This experience can be incredibly overwhelming. In times like this, it's easy to feel so overpowered that you don't know how to begin calming down.

It's during times like these that focusing on anxiety helps. To be sure, our anxiety is the last thing we want to focus on when it's this strong. It's bad enough as it is without paying even more attention to it, right? Yes, and no.

Yes, it's horrible and it's okay to want anxiety to disappear. However, no, it's not possible to successfully practice mindfulness when anxiety is so intense -- unless we're being mindful of, focusing on, anxiety.

Focusing on anxiety when it's raging helps us pinpoint exactly what anxiety is doing to us in the moment. What feels like it needs the most attention? Physical symptoms? Racing thoughts? A sense of fear?

When anxiety screams loudly for our attention and we focus on what it is saying and doing, we can then begin to know how to deal with it. In times like these, focusing on it helps us know how to beat it.

Focus On Anxiety To Make It Disappear

I elaborate on the idea of focusing on anxiety in this video:

Let's connect. I blog here. Find me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. My mental health novels, including one about severe anxiety, are here.

APA Reference
Peterson, T. (2016, April 28). You Want Me To Focus on Anxiety? Seriously?, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2024, March 19 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/anxiety-schmanxiety/2016/04/focus-on-anxiety-seriously



Author: Tanya J. Peterson, MS, NCC, DAIS

Tanya J. Peterson is the author of numerous anxiety self-help books, including The Morning Magic 5-Minute Journal, The Mindful Path Through Anxiety, 101 Ways to Help Stop Anxiety, The 5-Minute Anxiety Relief Journal, The Mindfulness Journal for Anxiety, The Mindfulness Workbook for Anxiety, and Break Free: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 3 steps. She has also written five critically acclaimed, award-winning novels about life with mental health challenges. She delivers workshops for all ages and provides online and in-person mental health education for youth. She has shared information about creating a quality life on podcasts, summits, print and online interviews and articles, and at speaking events. Tanya is a Diplomate of the American Institution of Stress helping to educate others about stress and provide useful tools for handling it well in order to live a healthy and vibrant life. Find her on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

JohnT
April, 28 2016 at 11:14 pm

Sometimes you do have to face the issues that are causing the GAD problems. Anxiety has plagued me too long. I am lucky and I know many, many have life far worse. I have realized that life is short and it is wasting away with all the anxiety, paranoia, depression, and fears. Must face those issues to recover and move ahead. I agree.

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