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Fear and anxiety are no-fault first responses to uncertainty.

We try to avoid discomfort, but that leaves us feeling unprepared to navigate the situations in our lives.

Anxiety overestimates the risk and underestimates our ability to cope. We can learn to fact-check our fears.

Long ago, I worked with a youngster dreading a class camping trip. When I asked if she had a plan, she said confidently, “Yes, I do.” Surprised, I asked her to share it. “I hope it rains and the trip is cancelled.”

We might think—Ah, kids! But substitute in our own fears: that meeting you’re nervous about, the question you don’t want your client to ask, the flight you really don’t want to take, the medical procedure you have put off… and put off again—we understand exactly that teen’s game plan. It’s ours too. We are fingers-crossed hoping against hope to be airlifted out of our discomfort. The emotional pin we drop essentially says: “Don’t!” and we think: “I can’t!”

And that “I can’t” describes our relationship with anxiety more broadly: We don’t want to be in one. No, thank you. We wish we could block it or ghost it, but there it is.

Understandably, we don’t want to feel trapped in a discomfort corner. So we become proactive—or pre-emptive—and avoid things where anxiety might happen just in case. Before we know it, we’re living our life based on “just in case” scenario thinking. We lose out on experiences or suffer through them with white knuckles; either way, this avoidance leads to distress.

The “I Can’t” Is Just Our Starting Point

When something new or uncertain or stressful looms, like that teen, we do an about-face and avoid. But there is another way through that “just in case” avoidance walk through life that anxiety pushes us toward.

Instead of seeing anxiety as the ultimate........

© Psychology Today