COME ON, ANXIETY!
Anxiety’s slogan is just one thing: you can’t handle it.
And when you mix this sentence with your magical ability to use your imagination, you can create an absolute crisis in your body.
Because when your brain looks around and there is uncertainty in your life, or something you can’t really control the outcome of, it will very likely start asking the most dramatic WHAT IF questions from you…
WHAT IF… (WORST CASE SCENARIO)?
And whether it’s related to the pandemic or your future, your brain at first will try and answer it, or minimize it, or explain why most likely this won’t actually happen…
But trying to debate against your brain can take so much effort that at some point you might just run out of steam and collapse into…
I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Immediately then flooding your body with stress hormones such as cortisol, making you feel anxious.
Worried.
And maybe even freaked out.
Because once it hits on a topic close to your heart, these anxious sentences in your brain can grab on and make it very hard to let go.
And that’s because it’s your AMYGDALA in your primitive part of your brain that is responsible for this, which can't tell the difference between fake news and reality, or 0.01% chance vs. 100%.
So it can make you feel just as anxious – be it about the Loch Ness monster or an actual tornado heading your way.
Your brain is designed to want to feel 2 things at all times:
CERTAINTY + COMFORT.
To know exactly what will happen and be comfortable during the entire time.
And when at least one of these two things are missing, our anxious brain will urge us to scroll, read, over-think, eat, quit, change…
all in order to take some kind of action to reach its goal:
to find a way to finally FEEL BETTER.
But we all live on a planet where things are always a bit unpredictable. Which makes these anxious stories in all of our lives pretty much a given.
So our job is not to help our daughters eliminate them.
Because so often fighting or resisting them is exactly what escalates these stories into a full-blown PANIC ATTACK.
Instead, we need to teach our daughters to carve out perhaps a different kind of a relationship with these sentences…
And say hello to them.
To her fear.
To her worry.
To being scared.
To the anxious stories in her brain…
And not make them a problem.
As humans, we were given a gift that no other animal possesses:
We can notice our own brain, our own thoughts, and we have the power to make decisions OVER them.
Instead of just REACTING FROM them.
And she can do it in a way that she can let all the scary thoughts be there…
observing them, seeing them, understanding them…
but without solving for them, fighting or researching them.
Anxiety has a hidden gift for all of us.
It has energy behind it. And lots of it.
Anxiety is always urging us to research, scroll, change… in order to feel better.
Your daughter needs to understand her own brain.
Because once she understands the contents in there and why those stories are showing up… she then has options.
So many of us may have grown up feeling judgmental about our negative emotions, or entitled to feel good at all times.
Which then often translates into wanting to fix or escape these often unwanted emotions.
But what if we just removed the layer of judgment from our anxious thoughts?!
Because if your daughter would like to lead a big, bold, adventurous life, she needs to learn how to step in to her fear and anxiety, and respond differently than her brain would like.
Whether your daughter has a medically diagnosed anxiety disorder or just anxious thoughts, the relationship she has with this feeling of anxiety is always an opportunity for growth.
Yeah, I can feel anxiety. I can feel lots of emotions.
Bring your anxiety to dance class.
On the airplane.
To your presentation.
Come on, anxiety, we have some work to do.
