Have you been able to be open and honest about your anxiety to your friends and family? Or are you in the “putting on a brave face” mode?
There are some very strong motivations for not acknowledging your anxiety to others. Firstly, you are likely deeply ashamed of your condition. you see yourself as weak and incompetent because you can’t simply snap out of it. Secondly I suspect you are highly sensitive to any possible negative judgment from others, and don’t want to feel the pain of that criticism. So you put on a pretense. Yet even a look or a raised eyebrow may be enough to cause a flood of shame.
Another reason you may not be comfortable acknowledging your anxiety to others is that you would feel vulnerable. You avoid admitting what you view as weakness, for fear that others will take advantage of you. Finally, you may unconsciously fear that your kids / partner will lose respect for you. This can lead to extreme doom and gloom thinking that your kids may disown you, or your partner might leave you for someone who appears emotionally stronger.
These are all just elements of the classic thinking caused by the anxiety condition. They are pathetic attempts to keep you anxious and fearful by what I call your Voice of Fear. This is the internal voice in your head that continuously recycles anything that triggers your anxiety, and cause you to add second fear. These thoughts are pure nonsense, but nonetheless very convincing, and they dissuade you from acknowledging your anxiety to others.
So you hide your anxiety behind a mask of feeling fine, being in control, and “having it all together”. You try to look competent and confident at all times. This causes you to suppress and bottle up all the so-called “negative” feelings you have, which then manifest as tension and anxiety. It also takes an enormous amount of energy to keep up this charade, which is why you probably feel exhausted and worn out.
Hiding Your Anxiety Doesn’t Help
I am an engineer and was trained and very good at stoically carrying on in the face of difficulties. I did this with my anxiety for decades. That approach unfortunately didn’t (doesn’t) work with anxiety. I had become an expert in hiding my anxiety to the extent that when I finally opened up about it, some who thought they knew me well were shocked. They had no idea of the extent to which I suffered.
I also had a black belt in beating myself up. That was something else I had to learn to change. I started to treat myself as I would treat someone I really cared about. Learning to open up about how I felt, and be kind and compassionate with myself, was a hugely important part of my recovery.
How Does Being Open about Anxiety Help?
Removing the shame of anxiety is one of the stepping stones to recovery. Opening up about our anxiety to others is a key to lifting this shame. That doesn’t mean we have to go around the town or workplace blurting it out to everyone we meet. We can begin by being open with those close to us, and to certain friends or colleagues when it is appropriate for the situation. Later on we may become able to acknowledge our anxiety to strangers too.
“Opening up about our anxiety dissipates our shame”
I used to try so hard not to show anyone the storm of anxiety going on inside. I realized later that ironically much of its intensity was caused by trying so hard to hide it. Once I was able to say to people something simple like “I suffer from anxiety” or even just “I’m feeling a little anxious” without trying to explain or justify anything, it took a huge amount of pressure off me and began to dissipate my shame.
If our friends and families know or learn that we have anxiety, they probably won’t understand it very well. They may even be impatient with us. When we raise the topic, their reaction may be less than supportive. They might even tell us we are paying too much attention to it, and if we would just ignore it, it will go away. Or they might tell us to “get over it”, as though it is lack of trying on our part that has kept it in place. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Once you understand the truth about anxiety, the ignorance of others holds no power over you.”
Unfortunately recovery from anxiety it isn’t simply a case of ignoring it or pushing it away. It takes practice and time. It’s not something that can be banished by force of will, but something that needs our acceptance and surrender.
Now, fortunately we don’t need their understanding in order to recover. And we need to continue to be open about it, and not retreat into our shell again. We must not take their lack of understanding of anxiety as a personal judgment, even if they try to make it personal. Once you accept that you have anxiety, what anyone else in the world thinks becomes irrelevant and unimportant. Once you understand the truth about anxiety, the ignorance of others holds no power over you.
What to Do?
It is necessary to come to terms with accepting and acknowledging your condition.
The first thing is to work on self-acceptance of your anxiety condition. You can do this by facing and accepting the feelings of shame about being an anxiety sufferer, and notice how you feel a need to hide it. Gradually acknowledge to yourself that you suffer, and that it is not a shameful weakness. Remind yourself it is a very common condition that about 1 in 6 people in the United States experience this every year, with similar numbers around the world.
The next thing is to gradually open up to others, starting perhaps with “safe” people around us, and building confidence that nothing bad will happen. The more we do this, the more we will feel confident to let a wider group of people know. Reassure yourself that it is safe to do this. Eventually you will reach a point where you truly don’t care about admitting it to strangers.
Overcoming Barriers
Talking about your anxiety can have its challenges. Some people won’t want to talk about it or even hear it from you, for a variety of their own insecurities and fears. So, don’t feel you have to force anyone to listen (not even a partner or someone close to you). Just mention it to them in passing a few times when your anxiety is having an impact on you. Once they realize that it has been a big issue for you, and that you are going to be open about it, they will most likely accept it more easily than you expected.
“Mention it, but don’t make a big deal out of it”
When you are not pushing it on them, or making it a big deal (i.e. not playing the victim) people won’t feel the need to push back and tell you to “get over it already”. This casual approach doesn’t threaten them and minimizes conflict. A casual “no strings attached” mention also allows them to ignore it if they prefer, or to respond back to you. They choose. Take your cue from their reaction as to how much more you might say, and how much detail you go into.
The “matter of fact” way of mentioning anxiety means:
- not dwelling on it;
- avoiding long explanations, descriptions, or justifications;
- not looking for sympathy;
- not looking for understanding.
It means just letting the other person know what’s going on with you. Simply make a casual comment, and then go back to the conversation or activity you were doing. It doesn’t need to have more significance than if you were saying: “nice weather we’re having”.
You see, if we don’t make a big deal about it, other people don’t either. And by letting them know how you are feeling inside, and that you are struggling, just makes for an easier, healthier relationship. It also eliminates the secrecy and shame that is so damaging to us. Shame quietly dissolves in the face of openness and honesty.
What about the Risks?
You may fear the consequences of opening up and admitting you suffer from anxiety. This fear is understandable, but trust me when I say it is unfounded. When you do open up, I think you will find that the reaction is rarely one of being judged, laughed at, criticized or rejected. In my experience, most people react with surprise followed by varying degrees of understanding.
The surprise people often show is because you almost certainly hid your anxiety well, or at least hid the extent to which you suffered. And the understanding of others varies greatly depending on the amount of experience they have with anxiety, and the amount of compassion they possess.
“If someone judges us for our anxiety, so what!? That’s their issue, not ours.”
If we open up to someone and they try to put us down for our anxiety, we simply don’t react to it or add second fear. We just shrug and give it no importance. Mentally shrug and think to yourself: “So what? They haven’t experienced what I am going through, and they just don’t understand it like I do”. We shouldn’t use someone else’s ignorance and insensitivity to measure our own worth. Don’t engage with them or try to persuade them to change their views. Just notice what they say, but shrug and give it no importance.
Occasionally someone who lacks compassion or is unsupportive or even vindictive may try to use our acknowledgement of our anxiety condition against us. I suspect if they do, they may be trying to force us back into hiding about it for reasons that have more to do with them than with us. Whatever their motive, it says nothing about us, and everything we need to know about them.
This becomes less and less of a concern over time. As I said earlier, once we are better able to accept our anxiety and hence not view it as a weakness, we realize that whatever anyone else says about it isn’t personal to us. It is just that person’s view of anxiety in general. In fact, chances are they are simply in denial about their own vulnerabilities (we all have them), and find our honesty threatening.
Some Other Things to Know
I found that the key to getting a positive reaction from others depended on the freedom with which I could admit my anxiety. The more I was able to say it with self-acceptance, without shame, with no strings attached, and no worries about how it would be received, the more positively it seemed to be accepted by others. As mentioned, the less it is a big deal to us to open up, the less it is a big deal for them to hear it.
I also found that the more freely you open up about anxiety, the more it dissuades people from thinking they can take advantage of you. I mean, if you are quite open about it, they cannot use it against you. In fact if you speak about it without shame, what gets communicated to others is great personal strength, not weakness.
“Opening up about your anxiety helps you transition from a people pleaser to someone who respects themselves.”
Another key to acknowledging your anxiety to others is doing so casually and at times when it is natural and appropriate. For example if someone asked me to do something that triggers an anxious reaction in me, rather than my usual people-pleasing way of agreeing to do it and then forcing myself to look like I was OK with it, I might still agree to do it, but say: “OK, but the thought of doing that makes me anxious”. If I decided to decline, rather than my previous behavior of saying no and making up some excuse to hide the real issue – my anxiety, I might say instead: “No. I would be too anxious to do that”.
This level of honesty is disarming for the other person, and very freeing for you. It makes it so much easier to say “yes” or “no” to requests or demands, honoring how you really feel without being ashamed for it. Acknowledging your anxiety to others helps you transition from a “people-pleaser” to someone who respects themselves. It also opens the door to really facing and accepting your anxiety in a healthy way, rather than suppressing it.
Unexpected Benefit
Many times when I opened up about my anxiety, the other person’s response was “me too”. This caught me by surprise; especially if they were someone who appeared to be super confident and always upbeat. Ironic isn’t it that so many others around us are suffering silently, and hiding their anxiety too. Our courage to speak up can be a great opening for them to lose their shame of the condition and begin their own healing journey.
The more we raise the curtain on our own anxiety, the more we can heal as a community and society. Let’s do this and help eliminate the stigma around this incredibly common mental health issue.
Right on!
Janet