How I Beat Anxiety For Good With One Simple Thought
What do you do when all the usual anxiety tools fail
It was as if fear had reared back and punched me in the gut. My soul felt bruised.
I don’t know any other way to explain it. I stood up, tried to think happy thoughts and ignore the heart-pounding evidence that suggested something in my psyche had broken. (Not “broken” like a dry tree branch or a piece of uncooked pasta kind of broken. More like a broken connection. A short in the wires somewhere.) But I couldn’t.
Something wasn’t quite the same in there anymore.
I could feel it.
It was as simple as knowing I was just… different than how I felt 10 seconds before.
I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been, and I could feel it in the core of my being.
I was IN fear.
Rooted in concerns over my health, I pulled out some familiar tools. Positive thinking, logical reasoning, deep breathing. The stuff you learn to help manage worries the night before reciting your speech in front of middle school or that big job interview.
You use those tools a million times in life from middle school to adulthood. You gird yourself in courage and do scary things, realizing when you are on the other side of it all, you had nothing to worry about.
I was armed and prepared for that battle with my thoughts.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the full-on attack this seemingly small incident was about to unleash upon my body and mind. One, that on many days, saw me spiraling down into a mental and spiritual pit where confusion, doubt, and fear were constant companions.
I was in it — the fight of my life.
THIS is where anxiety and depression started its struggle with me.
It is said you can’t bully fear and anxiety, and I think that is true. But I’d also say you can’t let it bully you, either.
How I Got Here
Let me go back a bit. At that time I was 36, happily married, father of four girls, a significant leader in a church, and part of the management team at a non-profit that I had worked at for years.
I was loving life, even with its challenges.
I had recently started experiencing weird stuff happening with my body. My hair started to fall out (not chunks, just a few more than usual on the sink in the morning) and my gut was bugging me. Badly.
Doctors, naturopaths, diet changes, time… none provided answers.
In the midst of navigating my health, I began traveling out of country once a month for a week, for months on end. Then sprinkle in a bit of crisis within leadership at the church I was President of the Board for.
Oh… and I did mention my four little kids, right? 5, 3, 2 and a 2-month-old. (Yes my wife is my hero!)
Health concerns, typical family challenges, timezone changes and crises at church all took an emotional toll. I guess it was a bit of a toxic cocktail that got me primed for what was to come.
It was on one of my regularly scheduled trips to take in a conference and conduct meetings, where the precursor to my “soul snap” took place.
The Night Before
I had a particularly troubling night in the hotel room with my gut. Awake for hours in crazy pain, I barely got any sleep and rolled into my conference bleary-eyed but determined to not let it slow me down.
At the first break in the schedule, I decided to let Google diagnose my condition (yeah.. I know). I found a symptom list to a condition I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy that coincidentally matched mine to a “T”.
That was it.
SNAP.
In that one moment, riding on the back of that health-issue trojan horse, I felt fear grip me.
An avalanche of fearful thoughts rushed towards my soul threatening to crush the mental framework that undergirded my life up to that point.
It launched me into the fight of my life.
I got through the conference but finished my trip early and went home. The thought of staying another night was as attractive as eating a Vasoline and Kleenex sandwich. I just felt “under it”. Off-kilter. Out of whack. I had to get out of there.
It was weird… I’d been scared before: jump scares at intense movies, near car crashes and even day-to-day bad news about the future. Like all those, I just figured this feeling would pass with some rational thinking and time.
I was a leader, a public speaker, a risk-taker. I knew the importance of positive thinking and practiced it. I even studied cognitive-behavioral therapy in college.
I pulled on all my tried and tested techniques on the plane ride home. I spoke to myself, took deep breaths, prayed… meditated, listened to peace-inducing music and podcasts — all of which had helped in the past.
But not this time.
I felt powerless in my ability to overcome this faceless thief that had gripped my mind. I got back to my family where I was sure that sleeping in my own bed with people I love around me would be the thing I needed to reclaim my balance.
I slept well. The next day I got up, had breakfast and went to work. But then a funny thing happened.
The Aftermath
Around 11:30 am I peered at my watch and noticed the buzz of my morning coffee hadn’t worn off yet. Hmmm…
It lasted all day.
It was like I was revving at 9000 RPM’s and couldn’t get back to a casual idle no matter what I tried.
I was redlining.
For days on end, anxiety racked my body with sleep as my only refuge. Even then, any reprieve I enjoyed in sleep was often interrupted by head-to-toe adrenaline surges waking me up multiple times a night. My body jolted awake from a dead slumber as if a live wire fell on my body.
Peace was nowhere to be found.
Day after day my mind was attacked. I’d close my eyes to find solace only to be bombarded with images flying by at high speed, like a movie on fast forward and I couldn’t push pause.
Blow after blow, it felt like I was fighting some unseen force that was vying for control of my mind and emotions, trying to steal something that lay at the core of life itself.
Who I was.
I know a lot of practical wisdom has been offered about dealing with anxiety (and its close friend, depression, another unwanted guest who came knocking on my door from time to time) and of course, I did lots of it. It all helped.
Practical things like exercising and the importance of sleep, giving up caffeine (actually… I didn’t… perversely it helped to have something physical to blame my redlining body on) and pulling back from extracurricular activities.
I focused on keeping life simple, directing my largely depleted energy stores towards necessary activities with my family and anything that contributed to my personal mental health.
I noticed early on in the battle how much it encouraged me when someone would tell me — “it’s ok.. it won’t last, there is hope”.
But there was one life-line I held on to in my journey through anxiety and depression that turned out to be a HUGE key for how I walked out of fear and back into freedom, ultimately finding victory in this fight.
I’m sharing my story because I want to share a perspective that not only flies under the radar in discussions about mental health but in my opinion, is under assault as the world embraces bringing more visibility and acceptance surrounding these issues.
I saw my battle with anxiety as a battle for my identity.
My Stand
Understanding that, along with my upbringing in a faith environment and numerous books I read on self-improvement and leadership, helped me make a radically important distinction early on in my fight.
I decided (yes… decided…cuz I sure as heck didn’t feel like it) that no matter what was happening to my mind or what I felt in my body, that what I was experiencing was NOT a part of me, but something “outside” of me. A force vying for control of not just what I did, but who I was.
Did it influence me at every turn? Yes.
Did it take advantage of a perfect, toxic recipe of travel, stress and worry to try to wind its way into my life? Yes.
But it was NOT me. I refused to let it define me.
Hear me out. I don’t mean I saw it was a spiritual force or anything like that. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Truth was, I didn’t care to give it a name or a face. It just knew I had to focus on me, not it. I knew I couldn’t give it the inch it wanted.
I couldn’t let it define me.
I refused to “take it”. I caught myself if I ever said anything like — I have anxiety. I would talk about experiencing it. But it wasn’t mine.
It couldn’t have me.
I catered to my health, but not to it.
Semantics? Maybe so, but it was a rock that I anchored myself to when I felt tossed to and fro with waves of anxious thoughts and feelings. No matter what I was experiencing I told myself… this isn’t me.
In our discussions about mental health and what that term means today, I feel we need to be very careful about labels.
I kept going to work. I just went to bed early. I kept getting up and exercising, I just didn’t overdo it. I pulled back from the extra stuff to reclaim time to rest, but I didn’t pull back from things that I felt catered to anxiety-like going on airplanes or public speaking.
I did it scared. But I did it.
I fought to maintain the mindset and belief that my true self was at peace. That my true self was of sound mind. That my true self wasn’t fearful or afraid, even though my current self felt nothing but the opposite.
In the battle for my mental health I took this subtle, but profound position… that anxiety was struggling with me. Not me struggling with it.
That’s it.
It might seem insignificant to you, but to me, it was the warm ray of sun breaking through the clouds. It was the hope I desperately clung to. It was way more than just semantics or spin.
I forced myself to believe I was fighting FROM freedom, not FOR it.
Anxiety and depression were outside of me. Not a part of me. Neither was who I was. That gave me the foundation to quietly but resolutely stand my ground and remind myself in the midst of the storm, that this too shall pass.
It is said you can’t bully fear and anxiety, and I think that is true. But I’d also say you can’t let it bully you, either.
Some days were harder than others. It wasn’t a perfect science. But it gave me solid ground to stand on, to hold on to when my world turned topsy turvy. It gave me a true north to base my decisions and actions on when rational thought seemed next to impossible.
Hope For Those Experiencing Anxiety
I noticed early on in the battle how much it encouraged me when someone would tell me — “it’s ok.. it won’t last, there is hope”.
Why did that message resonate so much? Bring me moments of peace? I desperately wanted reprieve and refuge from the barrage of feelings and torrent of thoughts, but more than that, I ached to know that I… “I” would be ok.
Me. Not just at peace in the moment.
Me.
Yes, there were times that I felt I was losing. In the darkest moments, real doubt and fear gripped me…
“Will I ever be the same again?”
“Will I ever feel normal… feel ANYTHING besides anxiety?”
“Will I be able to function? Father my kids? Love my wife?”
It was a relentless beast at first. It willed me to turn my eyes inward, place myself in its crosshairs and cooperate with it to destroy the last shreds of confidence I had in who I thought I was.
I realized THAT was the battle.
As anxiety and depression assaulted my mind and emotions I knew I had to hang on to the reality that what I was experiencing wasn’t “real”. Just like the boogeyman from our childhoods, it was scary when the darkness seemed to close in on me, but in reality, just a liar running out of breath.
It wasn’t me. It was outside of me. I was ok. Under siege… yes, but not under its power.
I did everything I could to speak that reality. That’s why I would tell people that anxiety was struggling with me, I wasn’t struggling with it. It tipped the scales in my favour, gave me the mental fortitude to keep fighting and most importantly, kept anxiety and depression from becoming “my identity”.
It was my starting point for growing in mental toughness and health.
In three months, it had subsided but was still an unwanted guest. In six, it was less still and I resumed life as I knew it. In nine, I followed through on a commitment I made to run in a Tough Mudder event in Whistler which drummed up every wicked feeling and thought the night before and the morning of the race, tempting me to tap out.
Ravaged by images of high jumps, dark tunnels, underwater obstacles, and icy lake plunges, things that would normally elicit some natural trepidation were amplified to proportions similar to the early days of my battle.
My body told me to quit. My mind told me I’d die.
I did it anyway.
After all… it was just another obstacle to overcome.
In the days that followed, things got back to normal. Was it the mountaintop experience? I don’t know. All I know is I started feeling myself again.
So why do I write this?
First, to bring hope. If you are experiencing anxiety or depression there are answers. There are strategies and this may be a key for you.
But I’m also writing because in our discussions about mental health and what that term means today, I feel we need to be very careful about labels.
Yes, we have to accept that people will experience mental health challenges and compassionate support can only be attained through a better understanding and removal of the stigma.
But if mental health is the end goal, accepting the experience is very different from accepting the condition.
If we are going to truly help people regain their mental health and their lives, we need to be careful not to empower the very stigma we are trying to remove.
Yes, there are medical conditions and disorders that need to be diagnosed. That is a reality for some.
But for many others who find themselves experiencing anxiety, I want to say what you are experiencing IS NOT who you are. In accepting the struggle, don’t accept anxiety or depression as a part of you. It isn’t you. It isn’t your new normal.
You were born to be free. To be you. To feel confident and hopeful. You can and you will again. Don’t make anxiety or depression a part of your identity.
I know what you feel like. Just decide.
Draw your line in the sand and decide that anxiety and depression are struggling with you. That you are battling FROM freedom not FOR it and that it won’t bully you out of the life that you were destined and designed for.
You’ve got an amazing path in front of you, let this just be another obstacle that refines your character and empowers you for the future. When you get through this, you’ll get through anything.
Connect with me and gain more insight into the practical ways I combatted anxiety and overcame it in my life here.
I’d love to hear your comments and reactions. Have you had your own journey with mental health? Do you have any insights on how to grow in mental toughness? Tips? Tricks? It’ll help someone to share, so do that below!
