A Better Way to Deal with Anxiety

Counterintuitively, it’s not “dealing with it” at all.

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

Here you are, answering the “knock, knock, knock” of an article title promising some helpful advice. You’ve just tapped open the door of your phone or computer and here I am, like a missionary on your virtual porch, asking you: “have you heard about the saving power of acceptance?”

Acceptance is our superpower for dealing with uncomfortable emotions. Or, more accurately, not dealing with them. After all, we’ve been exhausting ourselves trying to “deal with them” for most of our adult lives. Worry, rumination, problem solving, avoidance, distractions — all ways that we’ve been desperately trying to “deal with” our emotions so we don’t have to accept them. And you know why? Because we’re terrified of them.

But there is a different way. A radically simple and radically different way.

Start by slowing down

We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
– W.H. Auden, “The Age of Anxiety”

I’m writing this as an approach to anxiety, but truth be told: replace…