Anxiety can make you fear the worst, but don’t let it ruin your life

Has anyone ever told you to “stop worrying” or that “it will all work out in the end”? It doesn’t really help, does it? After more than 10 years of working with clients as a psychotherapist, I am so aware of the headspace that worry and anxiety consumes. I know how uncertainty can taint otherwise wonderful experiences, catch us restless in the dark while those around us sleep, and find us living much of life from a braced position.

As a child, I was full of worry, having lived through one of my own worst-case scenarios: losing a sibling. No matter how many times someone told me not to worry, it never silenced the thoughts and fears in my mind. How can someone reassure me that the worst probably won’t happen when, in one way, it already has? We reassure each other that “it’s fine, nobody is judging you”, or “I’m sure that medical test will come back clear”, yet these well-meaning words don’t tend to offer much of the reassurance we crave, because we know full well that bad things do happen, we do get judged by others and there’s always a chance the test will come back positive.

Failing at something doesn’t mean you are a failure

Ploughing endless energy into trying to control the uncontrollable is keeping us all tired and troubled. The fact is that ignoring fears doesn’t make them less true, it makes them more powerful. After years of struggling with my own anxiety, I decided to try a different tack – and it changed my world.

Instead of doing everything I could to ease and avoid life’s uncomfortable truths, I sought a deeper acceptance of them. Through using this approach, I discovered that anxiety finally began to loosen its grip. In researching my book I discovered 10 uncomfortable realities that many of us are afraid to face – ways you can thrive amid these uncertainties and embrace more of life’s joy, despite full awareness of what’s at stake.

1. Some people don’t like me. Ask yourself this. If planning a holiday, would you trust an opinion given by someone who had never set foot in the country? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d seek advice from someone who had visited, stayed in a great location, eaten around the town. Remember this next time you find yourself ruminating over someone’s judgment of you. If they don’t truly know you, does their assessment deserve to take up so much bandwidth in your mind?

2. I am going to fail. If you are someone who fears failing at things, or you find your inner critic goes haywire when something didn’t go as you’d hoped, ask yourself whether your expectations were realistic. Remember, failing at something doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means that something didn’t work out as you’d hoped, either because your expectations were sky-high, something happened outside your control, or because you’re a human who makes mistakes sometimes.

3. Life isn’t fair. We can expend so much energy shaking our fist at life’s curveballs and feeling the injustice of situations we see happening to or around us. It’s important to seek fairness despite the fact that life isn’t inherently fair. Bad things happen to good people, people hurt one another. But feeling like a victim of life’s unfairness can keep us stuck and unmotivated. As we accept that life isn’t fair, and stop shaking our fists, we free up energy to take a small (or large) step in doing something about it.

4. I will hurt people I love. Oh, the things we’ve swallowed down and the truths we haven’t told out of fear of hurting people. The thing is that, in avoiding honest (albeit sometimes difficult) conversations, we aren’t protecting our treasured relationships as much as we like to think – we’re welcoming an elephant into the room. It is your responsibility to be authentic and to do it as kindly as you can, but you cannot control how someone chooses to respond to that honesty. A good relationship can withstand healthy boundaries and tricky conversations.

5. I can’t always be fully present. We are encouraged to be more mindful in our daily lives, but this can add pressure. Our minds are created to hop between awareness of the past, present and future. Instead of feeling guilty for not being “present enough”, here’s a piece of advice. Every now and again, pause, look around and let your eyes rest on something beautiful, intriguing or interesting. Inhale and acknowledge what is going on in and around you. Now, as you reflect on your day, which may have passed in a busy blur, these are the moments that stay with you.

6. People misunderstand me. It can feel painful when, despite trying to articulate yourself, someone doesn’t “get you”. You can feel isolated and self-questioning when you don’t have two or three people in your life who truly understand where you’re coming from. Consider who those two or three people might be and invest in those relationships, taking steps to be open and honest with those you feel safe with and cared for by. Nurturing these relationships mean that it takes the pressure off and disempowers the importance of others “getting” you.

7. I am not good enough. If you experience a feeling of “not being good enough”, it may well be because you’re not. Ask whether you don’t feel good enough because the bar of expectation you’ve set, or has been set for you, is simply too high to reach for alone. Sometimes when we question whether we’re good enough, it’s important to recognise that we may be asking ourselves “am I perfect enough?”. Amending the bar of expectation to reflect your humanly limited resources means you’ll find you’re more often than not “good enough” to reach it.

8. Bad things will happen. Anxiety can make life feel as if you’re in a waiting room for bad things to happen, meaning you miss out on the joy, adventure and rest that is there for the taking. Next time you feel a wave of anxiety roll over you, or you catch yourself ruminating over the worst-case scenarios, repeat the mantra, “I will cross that bridge if I get to it.” This doubles as a reminder that you have crossed many bridges of challenge thus far, and survived. The “if” reminds you that many of the things you fear don’t come to fruition. It invites you to draw your attention to what is happening rather than what may happen.

9. I will lose people I love. This is a big one, isn’t it? The instigator of nightmares and the theme of our worst-case scenarios. Grief and loss are the flipsides of the richness that love brings to our lives. If your fear of loss is creating a shadow over your enjoyment of the relationships that you have, seek out stories of those who have journeyed through healthy grief and found ways to build their life. Speak to friends who’ve lost loved ones and are still living and thriving. When I fear that I couldn’t withstand the heartbreak of losing one of my kids, I consider my mother who lives a full and happy life despite the unending awareness of who is missing.

10. I am going to die. In my book, I speak about a friend who told me she often feels aware that she’s standing in one massive queue to her death, and has no idea of the position in the queue, nor can she change it. At first, I found this quite horrifying but, in time, I found it rather liberating. When you hold a gentle awareness of life’s limitations in mind, it can prompt you to live more fully and in line with your values. When I come to the end of my life, I want to be glad I prioritised my relationships and didn’t sweat the small stuff, so it prompts me to live in line with that value now. What about you?

It can be confronting to see these truths in black and white. But we know, deep down, that these are truths that none of us can escape, and the less mental space the fear consumes, the more space you’ll create for joy and authenticity.

There is an African proverb that captures my motivation behind seeking more acceptance of these truths. It goes: “When death finds you, may it find you alive.” I don’t want to wait until a curveball trauma forces me to be grateful for the joys in my life and the limited opportunity I have to embrace them, nor do I want to wait until I’m older and (more) grey to care less what others think. I don’t want to live a half-life blighted by fear of failure or bad things happening, and I don’t want you to have that either.

The Uncomfortable Truth by Anna Mathur is published by Penguin Life at £16.99. Buy a copy for £15.29 from guardianbookshop.com