Call Anxiety's Bluff

Anxiety is a natural response to stress that we all experience. The physiological changes that occur are meant to help us to fight, flee, or freeze in situations identified as dangerous. It can even motivate us to work harder, tend to our social relationships more carefully, learn from our mistakes, and keep ourselves safe.

Sometimes anxiety can escalate to an anxiety disorder, where our anxiety begins to arise at inappropriate times, interfere with our daily functioning, and motivate us to avoid or escape situations others would deem as perfectly safe. When this happens, our bodies are continuing to deem certain situations as a threat, even if our rational mind knows it likely isn't. Every time we listen to anxiety's messages and avoid or escape these situations, anxiety recognizes that you successfully survived and thus is encouraged to send it's message even louder the next time you're in a similar situation. Sometimes we can even begin to fear our unpleasant anxiety symptoms more than the situation itself! This can become a trap, as the cycle of anxiety leads to your world getting smaller and smaller as you attempt to avoid anxiety.

Whenever I am with a client who is experiencing an anxiety disorder, a core concept we discuss is the approach of calling anxiety's bluff. This concept is advocated for in Barry McConagh's book DARE and the concept is also encapsulated in exposure-based treatments within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

In brief, calling anxiety's bluff entails a few key steps. First and foremost is recognizing when an anxious response is due to an anxiety disorder and is not an actual threat. The second step entails ignoring anxiety's signals and engaging in the anxiety-inducing situation anyways. This might mean going to certain feared locations, doing certain activities, or anything that would trigger an anxious response. Third, recognize if your anxiety decreased over the course of the experience (it usually does the more often you do this), and notice any disparities between what anxiety threatened would happen and what actually did happen. Fourth, give yourself a large pat on the back for being brave and facing your fear. Regardless how big or how little the threat objectively is, your body felt it was threatened and to experience those sensations, emotions and thoughts without running from the situation is courageous - so give yourself the credit! 

Be aware that as you do these steps, you'll likely experience unpleasant anxious symptoms as you call anxiety's bluff, but stick it out for a designated time frame or until the situation natually concludes. If you leave because of your anxious discomfort, you'll only be rewarding the anxiety's efforts and strengthen the anxious symptoms next time you're in the situation.

If your anxiety is interfering with your daily life or you are experiencing anxious symptoms that feel overwhelming, I would strongly encourage you to call anxiety's bluff only in collaboration with a therapist. With your therapist's support, you can learn how to cope with anxious symptoms more effectively, care for yourself in ways that can help reduce anxiety, and effectively structure your strategy for calling anxiety's bluff so this process is more attainable and manageable (by using an anxiety hierarchy). 

Calling anxiety's bluff requires bravery, but every time you prove it wrong you weaken anxiety's false danger message. Over time, your brain will learn that the non-threatening situation it feared is actually non-threatening, and the anxiety alarm bells will finally stop going off.