Anxiety Series (Part 1): Fear of the Unknown

The best way to understand anxiety is to understand it as fear… fear of the unknown. The most common situation that causes fear and anxiety is change. We tend to not handle change very well because there’s so many unknowns. Human beings are built for survival. Our mind and body will do whatever it can to survive. Unknown circumstances threaten our internal survival mechanism. We don’t know what’s up ahead or what to expect so we become fearful on some level. This fear can trigger anxiety.

We often try to control anxiety by overly controlling our environment. It’s an overcompensation. When we feel out of control on the inside we overcompensate by trying to overly control the outside. Even worse, we can convince ourselves that our need to control actually works but this is just a fallacy, a theory or belief we made up in our mind. The reality is, no matter how much we believe we can control our life and anxiety… it doesn’t make it true.

Don't Miss Our Previously Published Article Anxiety is Not our Enemy

Sure, some things may work out the way we planned but how often does life or the Universe have a plan of it’s own? It's like the saying… “ If you want to make Gd laugh, tell him your plans.” But when things don’t work out the way we wanted it to, anxiety can kick into overdrive. Now think about how that manifests itself behaviorally. Our reaction to anxiety often happens in one of two ways. We dig our heels in even more and become even more controlling or we react in the opposite way by shutting down, throwing up our hands and retreating back to our corner. Regardless of which way you react, both ways can cause problems, which occurs mainly in our relationships.

The anxiety can make us seem controlling, dramatic, emotional and sensitive, which can add stress to relationships. We can become difficult to deal with. We can hurt people and end up pushing people away. Our need to control becomes a whole downward spiral. And for what? All because things didn’t work out the way we planned? We have to ask ourselves if our need to control is really worth it. We need to assess whether that need is actually doing what we think it’s doing. Is it bringing order to our life? Is it preventing bad things from happening? Are we getting everything we want? Is it helping us be more successful?

If you answered yes to all of these questions then, by all means, maintain your control because it may be working for you. However, that seems highly unlikely. If it's causing more trouble than it’s worth change it, let it go. Learn to be flexible, surrender. This isn’t easy to accomplish but it’s not impossible and if learning to let go and be more flexible actually helps us be happier and more successful than it’s well worth the effort.

Therapy Homework

Journal Prompts: