In Chapter 11 of The Stories We Tell Ourselves, I wrote, “Anxiety is a refusal to accept life the way that it is rather than the way we want it to be.”
Do you agree with that statement?
Think of a recent event where your anxiety noticeably increased.
Maybe your boss has scheduled an unexpected meeting with you for next week.
Maybe your child got injured.
Maybe you had an argument with your spouse.
These are all situations where it’s normal for anxiety to rise, but you don’t have to allow that anxiety to keep increasing by refusing to deal with reality.
More often than any of us would care to admit, we allow our minds to run away with reality. We make up stories to fit how we want situations or relationships to work out in our favor. But when reality clashes with our fantasies, anxiety rises. Frustration mounts. The need to control others increases (because we want them to do what we thought they should do).
But all of this is mental posturing to comfort ourselves before, during, or after a difficult circumstance. We want to make sense of the world and make ourselves feel better about it at the same time, so we concoct stories that are often quite incongruent with the truth—stories that place ourselves in the best possible light with the best possible outcome … for ourselves.
When those stories don’t become our reality, anxiety increases.
So, the simple answer to decreasing your anxiety is to stop telling yourself such stories and face reality.
But we’re all such incredible storytellers that it’s never that easy.
In fact, it takes daily practice to learn how to accept life the way that it is, which I’ll discuss in next week’s posts.
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