Anxiety can make people feel inferior and erode self-confidence. The harsh, self-critical, judgmental voice of anxiety can also distort the way we see ourselves, causing us to ignore our positive qualities and exaggerate our very human flaws and foibles. If anxiety ever makes you hard on yourself, keep reading. You don't have to take anxiety's word at face value.

Yesterday, I woke up in the middle of the night with bad dreams. The dreams were such that I was unable to fall asleep for the rest of the night (it was 4:00 A.M. when I initially woke up) and spent much of the rest of the day in a negative state of mind. Because this tends to happen frequently, I want to take the time to discuss it in a bit more detail.

Anxiety is absolutely exhausting. The many negative effects of anxiety plus the nature of anxiety itself (the worries, the fears, the what-ifs, the worst-case scenarios, and the heightened stress) take a toll on us mentally and physically. It depletes the body and overfills the mind with clutter. As a result, it makes sense to feel drained and exhausted. Fatigue is a common effect of anxiety, and for a good reason. Here's the thing, though. You don't have to remain at the mercy of anxiety. Here's one incredibly simple tip to regain your energy and even reduce your anxiety in the process.

Anxiety can severely limit lives, so much so that it can be difficult to leave the house to go to work (or anywhere else, for that matter). Anxiety symptoms can be crushing and exhausting, and anxiety attacks or panic attacks can leave you overwhelmed, drained, physically ill, and haunted by strong, negative thoughts and emotions. This makes daily functioning, including going to work, incredibly difficult. While it's not necessarily a quick and easy process, you can break free from the shackles of anxiety, anxiety attacks, or panic attacks and not only get to work but feel steady and actually enjoy life again.

Anxiety often causes impatience. It's a unique type of impatience, though--not that feeling of annoyance that comes from being mildly inconvenienced, but a deeper sense of immediacy or urgency that makes us believe that we have to act on a sudden thought or emotion now because it is our only chance and disasters might happen if we don't take action immediately. It's also different than the impulsivity that makes people do things without thinking them through. The impulse to act driven by anxiety happens because of too much thinking. It's possible to resist the urge to act and operate from a sense of peace rather than anxiety.

One of the most damaging misconceptions about mental illness, anxiety included, is that it’s somehow necessary to produce something creative. This could not be further from the truth – the reality is often the exact opposite. Anxiety can often be crippling to creativity, for reasons that are, when they are given even just a little thought, more than obvious.

Anxiety affects us deeply and in many ways, including taking over our thoughts. Anxious thoughts can be loud, obnoxious, repetitive, and bothersome. They seem real and accurate. We think something; therefore, it must be true. In reality, however, our thoughts--especially anxious thoughts--aren't reliable. There are many different types of anxious thoughts that become repetitive patterns, and because they repeat in our heads, they feel very real. We come to believe them, and this affects our actions and overall happiness. Here's a look at one particularly bothersome anxious thinking pattern, all-or-nothing thinking, and an exercise to change these anxious thoughts.

Do you play tug-of-war with your anxious thoughts? I often find myself playing this exhausting, time-consuming game, and it can be frustrating. If you find yourself trying to let go of anxious thoughts, but they keep returning, you could be playing mental tug-of-war with anxiety. It's something that happens automatically and repeatedly, but you don't have to play. If you tend to overthink, playing tug-of-war too often, and would rather do something else, read on for insights into this annoying mental game and ways to put down the rope.

Those who read this blog may remember that it was a little over a year ago that I lost my apartment, almost all my possessions, and nearly my life in a massive fire. In the year since the fire, I have tried my best to return my life to some degree of normalcy. This has proved to be much more difficult than I could have imagined. Having never had to come to terms with a traumatic experience such as this, I’ve learned that the aftereffects of such traumas can be surprisingly unexpected.

I’m far from the first person to discuss the above topic. However, I feel it is important to continually raise awareness of the social causes of anxiety until those causes are recognized more broadly.