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There are thousands of books, millions of articles, and several podcasts about how to get rid of anxiety. To level-set expectations, I need to let you know that I can’t tell you how to get rid of your anxiety. I still have anxiety and I know that I will have to manage some level of it for the rest of my life. However, my anxiety doesn’t hold me back anymore because I’ve learned how to conquer it.
In this post, I’m going to teach you how to use acceptance and commitment therapy with brute force so that you can conquer your anxiety too.
Additionally, if you’re looking for a comprehensive overview of anxiety from the different types to various treatment options and other considerations, check out —The Ultimate Guide to Anxiety: A Deep Dive from Someone Who’s Been There.
What it Feels Like to Be Anxious
If you’ve found this article then you probably already know what it feels like to be anxious, but I’m going to go over it anyway to remind you of the challenges you’re about to overcome.
When you have anxiety, you have constant or even obsessive worry. It can overtake your thoughts making it hard to focus on anything else. Because of this, it can also be difficult to sleep.
For some people, anxiety can be so bad that it causes panic attacks. In my experience, I equate this to looking over a ledge or being high up on a ladder and feeling like you’re about to fall to your death. Your heart beats really fast, and you feel intense panic.
Not only can anxiety stop you from achieving your goals and living your best life, but for many people, it can stop them from doing everyday tasks. For example, it can be hard to go anywhere if you have social anxiety. Simply going to the store to get some milk could be a monumental task for some people.
My Personal Experience Dealing With Anxiety
I can remember worrying ever since I was in middle school. I was always worried that I was going to grow up and be a failure, that I would be unsuccessful and become homeless living on the street. Eventually, I discovered that a lot of this was due to abandonment issues I felt as a child. I also worried about my grades even though I was a poor student because I couldn’t concentrate on my homework (hello undiagnosed ADHD).
One of the biggest components of my anxiety was that I was always angry and irritable as a teenager. I even got the nickname “Angry Tony” from my friends because of it. It was true, I was angry all of the time. My anxiety also led to severe depression, so much so that I often felt suicidal.
As I became an adult, I was always terrified that I would be laid off or fired. Even if there were no signals that was going to happen. This affected my performance and my confidence. It made me super sensitive to any meeting requests that my bosses ever sent to me or instant messages asking to talk. I thought I would be fired, and I would never be able to find a job again. I constantly worried that I wouldn’t be able to support my family.
All these extreme thoughts of worst-case scenarios were fueled by my anxiety. Even though the worst-case rarely happens. But in my mind, that threat was real, and it was the most crushing source of my anxiety.
I also had, and still have, anxiety about clutter and tasks around the house. It used to really be terrible for me. This is not a good problem to have when you have three children who are mess tornados.
My anxiety also manifested in being too scared to put myself out there. I wanted to start a blog and podcast for years, but I had no confidence. I was too worried about what mean things people might say. I was too scared to try anything new because of my anxiety.
If you want to know more about my mental health journey, read my post “Does Therapy Really Work?”
So, with all those issues, you may be wondering how I conquered my anxiety. Well, the answer is persistence and the right therapy.
Treating Anxiety With CBT
When most people start therapy, they go to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Or in my case, go to therapy, stop going, go back, stop again, and go back. Persistence is key, I went for years off and on before it stuck.
Therapy helped me in some ways, but the anxiety wouldn’t go away. CBT tries to teach you to change the way that you think. If you can change the way you think, you can change your anxious thoughts and behavior. An example of this technique is trying to put a stop sign up in your mind when you’re having an anxious thought. Then, change that thought.
Many people have had success with CBT. If you’re curious to learn more about it, then I highly recommend the book “Anxious Man: Notes on a Life Lived Nervously” by Josh Roberts.
It’s told with wit and humor, and Roberts talks about how his mind collapsed with anxiety, and how CBT helped him get better.
For me, CBT just really didn’t work. I couldn’t change my anxious thoughts. Eventually, my CBT therapist recommended Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and It changed my life. However, I do want to say an important component to that was the fact that I was ready to make a change. I was fed up with the way things had been, so I went into ACT therapy with an open mind. I was going to do everything I could to make it work. It is important to mention this because if you’re not ready to do the work, then you’re probably not going to have success. This is true whether you’re doing CBT or ACT. To learn more read my post “What Therapy is Best for Anxiety? CBT vs ACT.”
Overcome Anxiety With ACT Therapy
With ACT, the keys to success are in the name, “acceptance and commitment.”
Acceptance
With acceptance, the focus is not on changing negative or anxious thoughts. It’s about being mindful and curious about them. You learn how to distance yourself from thoughts so that you can unhook from them. ACT can help you realize that thoughts are not facts and that they don’t always require action.
Acceptance can also mean simply acknowledging that you’re experiencing anxious thoughts and deciding that you’re going to move forward anyway. Or maybe not. It’s up to you what you want to do with your anxiety once you analyze and accept it. To learn more about how to unhook from anxious thoughts, read my post “How to Interrupt Negative Thought Patterns.”
Commitment
The second component of ACT is commitment. Commitment can be physical, or psychological. So physical might be doing something like actively taking some sort of action. For example, if you have social anxiety, it’s deciding that you’re going to go out despite your anxiety.
Psychological commitment would be doing mental health work like practicing mindfulness or exploring difficult thoughts that you’ve been avoiding.
However, it’s not enough to just commit, that’s a recipe for failure. To be successful your commitment must be guided by your core values. In my post “How do Values Affect Behavior? Learn to Live a Meaningful Life,” I discuss how important values are and what you can do to identify your own. I even created an interactive tool that makes it easy for you to discover your values.
If you don’t have your core values identified, then you’re not going to be able to take committed action. Well, you could try but you’re probably not going to be successful. You must connect your action to something that’s truly important and meaningful if you want to reach your goals.
Another important thing to note when it comes to commitment is that for every situation you have choices:
- Leave — Sometimes you can remove yourself from a situation that’s giving you anxiety.
- Stay — You can confront the situation head-on with committed action connected to your values.
- Do nothing — you can accept the situation for what it is, knowing that it may not change if you don’t take any action.
How to Conquer Your Anxiety With ACT Therapy and Brute Force
Now that you understand the general idea of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I’m going to tell you what I did to conquer anxiety.
Not too long after I started ACT therapy, I signed my son up for soccer. The soccer league needed coaches for my son’s age group. I thought about doing it because I played soccer as a kid and had some knowledge about the sport. More importantly, I wanted to make sure that my son was able to play. One of my most important core values is to be a good father, so the connection to that action was strong.
However, I had a lot of anxiety about the idea of coaching. After thinking it over, I decided it was better to put myself in an uncomfortable situation than risk my kid not being able to play. So, I signed up to coach his team. I put myself in that uncomfortable position. This type of action is what I call brute-forcing your anxiety.
Brute force is actually a cybersecurity term. It involves a hacking method that uses trial and error to crack passwords. When it comes to anxiety, it’s the idea that “I know this is going to be challenging, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
For me, it was even better that I put myself in a position where I had no option to fail. Other kids and their parents were counting on me to coach the team. However, this action was very challenging mentally. At first, I felt panic, especially right before my first practice. I had that feeling like I was about to fall off a building. I was so panicked that my wife questioned why I was torturing myself. I told her it was because I had to. I wanted to make progress so badly, and mostly I wanted to be a good dad. I wanted to be there for my son. I knew that the outcome would be worth the challenge.
Eventually, we had our first practice, and I got through it. Then we had more practice, and we had games. Slowly and surely, I started to find my footing. In fact, we were winning, and I was having fun. We ended up having a great season. I ended up being a good coach.
Now it’s a fulfilling part of my life. I’m able to give back to my community and be there for my son. It worked because it’s connected to my deepest core value.
One of the most surprising things about going through that experience was the benefits I got beyond being a good dad. Getting over that chunk of anxiety, gave me confidence. Overall, my anxiety is very manageable because I know if there’s something that bothers me enough, I can do something about it.
How to Conquer Your Anxiety by Setting Goals
So, how can you do this too? One of the first things that you can do is try to set some goals. Before you do, you need to determine if they are practical, realistic, and connected to values.
Practical Goals
For example, let’s say you have the value of living an active life. One of your first goals in pursuit of this value may be eating healthy for a week. The first thing you want to do is ask yourself, is this goal practical? To figure out the answer you need to ask yourself additional questions like:
- How are you going to handle a craving?
- What are you going to do If you don’t succeed?
With the example of a craving, you might acknowledge it and make room for it mentally. Be curious about it. Why are you having the craving? Are you actually hungry, or are you just bored? If you’re worried about failing, you can plan to have compassion for yourself. Every day is a new day, just hit reset. Don’t beat yourself up. If you fall short, that’s human.
Maybe eating healthy all week isn’t practical, and you need to adjust.
Realistic Goals
The second thing you need to do with goal setting is to ask yourself whether it is realistic? Dr. Russ Harris, a world thought leader in ACT therapy offers a simple way to determine this. Ask yourself on a scale of one to 10, how achievable is your goal? If the answer is less than seven, then you need to modify it to make it simpler.
Values-Based Goals
The third thing you want to do is ask yourself, how are your goals connected to your values? Values are different than goals. Ultimately, a goal should help you better live up to your values, not replace them. If you think about goals and values as if they were part of a road trip, a goal is a waypoint, and a value is your final destination.
Commit to Conquer Your Anxiety and Make Progress in Life
Once you have your goals set, then the only thing left to do is put yourself in an uncomfortable position that’s tied to strong values for a desired life.
I don’t know about you, but no book, blog post, or podcast has ever helped me get rid of anxiety. The only way I was able to make progress was by pushing through it with committed action tied to my values, or as I like to call it brute-forcing your anxiety.
I’ll be honest, this is an uncomfortable process. It can take some time before it becomes more comfortable as it did with my soccer coaching example.
So, what are you going to do? Remember, you always have a choice. But are you not sick of your anxiety? Is it holding you back? Conquer it like I did and find committed action connected to strong values so that you can overcome it. Even if you only make a little bit of progress, the effect is compounding. When you build upon it, you will be amazed at how far you can go and the new goals you can reach.
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