Befriending Anxiety

A lot of highly sensitive people and empaths deal with anxiety on a daily basis. Some are even so used to this anxiety that they don’t even notice it anymore. They will joke about their nervous system being absolutely shattered, their heart beating fast, their thoughts going into catastrophy-thinking, planning for the worst, and so forth, while thinking that this is all part of being a human being and is ‘normal’!

Others beat themselves up for feeling this way, being unable to shake it and for feeling ‘abnormal’. Neither attitude or reaction is particularly constructive and actually hinders the ability to understand, heal and move past it.

No matter who you are, anxiety is just not a pleasant experience and it downright overloads the nervous system. However, it does serve a useful purpose, believe it or not, and it is there for a reason!

Often anxiety becomes this disease that highly sensitive people or empaths run around with, something that needs to be cured or fought off. In the process of all this fighting, we wrestle against this anxiety, treat it as an enemy and, thereby, feed it with extra energy, in a manner of speaking. All that this creates is struggle energy and even more self-criticism.

The truth is that you can begin to use anxiety as a measure of how aligned you are to your true self and your needs, right here and now. So, before you react with a fight when you’re stressed, try loving and welcoming your anxiety first, thanking it for being there to show you that something in your life is off-track! When anxiety pops up, know that it is your body’s way of telling you that your needs are not being met in this moment, or that you are not listening to your soul’s true desires, and that something has to change. What that something means is, of course, up to you to decide.

For example, do you feel anxious before going to a large party? Find out how this translates to you and adjust your decisions accordingly. Is it because you are, in fact, completely depleted and need to stay home or is it more a matter of setting up your own transport so you can go home whenever you feel the need to?

Understanding what your anxiety is trying to express to you can be a boon to your overall well-being. Instead of thinking that it’s something to overcome, something to get rid of or cure, a shift of mindset may be all that’s needed to reduce the stressful feelings. Think of anxiety as your own internal radar system, a friend telling you when something is not right.