Anxiety and weaponised imagination

One way of looking at anxiety is to see it as future-based fear. When you feel anxious you are going out into your future, unconsciously, and having thoughts like “this will be awful”, “I’m going to mess that up”, “I'm going to feel pressured in such and such a situation”. 

What is anxiety and why does it feel so powerful?

Anxiety can be seen as negative future goal setting, and because your imagination is so very powerful, if you do not learn how to control it, it may control you.

Like all generalisations and concepts there will always be exceptions to the rule, but on the whole, the anticipation of what someone is anxious about, is far worse than the experience itself. 

Anxiety has a time stamp on it

Anxiety is a type of fear. It is time stamped, ordinarily, in the future. Your fear response is designed to keep you alive. So that when you feel threatened you are ready for fight, flight, flock or freeze.

Let's pretend it was created 30,000 years ago. That, in evolutionary terms, is the blink of an eye. 30,000 years ago we would have been cave dwelling people, living in small family groups. We might have known what was happening in the next valley but that would have been it (take a look at my forthcoming article on background stressors). And, we were not just predators - we were predated upon ourselves by the likes of mountain lions, wolves etc. 

Your fear response is designed to keep you alive should a mountain lion appear at your cave entrance.

How imagination can 'weaponise' fear into seemingly uncontrollable anxiety

The other thing you possess that is enormously powerful, is your imagination. So whether there is a mountain lion at your cave entrance, or you imagine there is, your response is identical.

But, and here’s the kicker... there is no mountain lion about to rip your head from your shoulders.

How this can show up in day to day life

To demonstrate with a real life example; many years ago a woman in her 30s came to me for coaching. She was the most successful sales person for her business, out of a team of about 25, but she had been having issues in her personal life that had effected her ability to sell, and as such, her numbers were way down. Her boss was particularly un-empathetic and one Tuesday afternoon, about 2pm he walked down to the sales floor and told her, infront of the entire team, words to the effect of “you better make a sale by 5pm or you are fired”.

Did she make a sale? No she did not. Why not? Because in being threatened with being fired, her emotions were significantly heightened. As emotions rise, the ability to rationalise and make decisions plummets, so I would suggest she was never going to be able to make that sale.

In her mind's eye, being fired was the mountain lion at her cave entrance.

Practical ways to rebalance your thinking

So what does all of this mean to you, if you suffer with anxiety?

I do not consider myself an optimist. I consider myself a pragmatist. If you have been “doing” anxiety for years it may be unrealistic to expect you to be able to stop in a week!

But... what would happen if for every anxious thought, you balanced that with a positive thought (which incidentally can be about anything)? Imagine a child’s see-saw, anxious thoughts are at one end, positive thoughts the other, try to keep the see-saw in balance.

On the whole, you get in life the results of three things. 

1. What you focus on.
2. What you expect .
3. And what you believe.

Each and every day train yourself to focus more on what you do have, than what you don't have. More on what you are grateful for, than what upsets you. More on what you see as your daily successes than your failures - and remember…. in your life in general you determine what is a success for you.

Imagine you are back at primary school in front of the 80 metre hurdle race. But, importantly now, you decide what height you set the hurdles at. If success attracts more success, and failure attracts more failure (which seems the case in general terms) set yourself up for success - set the bar low to begin with, so you get some easy wins.

And anxiety does not exist in the here and now, the present. Do things that absorb you, distract you, take your mind away from that which is making you anxious.

How life coaching can support people navigating anxious thinking

Sometimes anxiety has a hold of us so tightly it seems that we cannot rid ourselves of it alone. This could be for many reasons but it in no way means that people experiencing anxiety are weak, ineffective, or 'wimpy'.

I have been coaching, and training coaches, for over 20 years and sometimes I need to talk through things in my personal life, with a professional. Why? I know "all of the stuff", I possess "all of the skills". I can deal with surface level anxiety, annoyance, guilt etc. myself, but anything deeper I need an emotionally unattached person who knows what they are doing to, in effect, call me out "on my stuff" (think emotional baggage), because…

If I'm not aware consciously of what I am doing, thought and behaviour wise, can I choose to do anything about it? No! Because I have no conscious awareness of it.

A good life coach will help you grow your conscious awareness, equip you with tools and techniques, support and encourage you, and gently ensure you are taking responsibility for yourself.

They will call you out, gently and supportively, on any reasons and excuses that are preventing you from moving forward. They can help you identify where you are now, what is your anxiety level, what triggers it (although this is not always necessary), and importantly, where you want to be, and then help you create a road map of how you are going to get there. And then they will support you in getting there.

What could the future hold for you with your anxiety?

Whether your anxiety is mild, moderate or severe, if it's preventing you from doing things you want to do, or being the way you want to be, then its a problem. You may have had anxiety for decades. The good news is it does not need to take decades to learn how to control it, and then how to rid yourself of it. What it does take is a decision that you want to change, and unless it's just surface level anxiety, some help from someone who knows what they are doing, in helping you achieve that.

Imagine if you will, a time in the future, where in the past you would have felt anxious, and now you feel calm, or content, or curious, or excited. With the right support, this is entirely within your reach.

Wishing you a content, and successful, in whatever that means to you, year ahead.