Overcoming the Fear of Being Anxious

At the root of this fear is the often unknown belief that being or getting anxious is unacceptable. This often unconscious belief instructs your body to trigger anxiety whenever you think you may get anxious in the future¹. There may have been some point in your life when you decided that being publicly anxious is dangerous or not ideal for you in some way. You may have done this as a way to let yourself know you dislike and want to avoid being anxious in the future. 

The key to overcoming this fear is to realize that, yes, you probably dislike being or getting anxious (you might even hate it with every fiber of your body), but you don’t have to view being anxious as unacceptable.

This point of view is critical because we can easily think that things we intensely hate or dislike are things we should be or get anxious about. We take the level of hate almost as a rationale or justification that the anxiety is called for and should exist.

If you’re finding it difficult to accept that to overcome or get rid of this fear you have to acknowledge that despite disliking it and not wanting it to happen, it’s ok if it does happen, then you probably have 1 or more reasons (likely unconscious and unique to you) why you think being anxious is unacceptable. To address this, you will have to uncover these reasons so they are out in plain sight. Uncovering these reasons alone may dissolve the fear. In other cases, uncovering these reasons will reveal what happened to you (likely in the past) that led to you labeling the phenomenon of you being anxious as something unacceptable.

You may, for example, find that viewing the potential of being anxious as unacceptable is a reminder that you dislike it. Because of this, you will have to create a new strategy or response to the thought/idea of you getting or being anxious that doesn’t require you viewing it as unacceptable. Rather than view being anxious as unacceptable, you can rest knowing you dislike it and then focus your efforts on uncovering the root cause of your anxiety whenever you get triggered. We have solutions in the recommended reads section to help you with that.

Some reasons why you might have a fear of being anxious

1. Other people may call you something you don’t want to be called or labeled as (ex: weak, insecure, etc)
2. You may think that you aren’t allowed to ever be anxious to be the type of person you want to be or achieve certain goals.
3. You may think it means something about you (you’re flawed, defective, broken, etc).

Recommended reads for overcoming social anxiety (link)

Looking for more?

If you’d like to dig deeper or want 1on1 help let us know. Otherwise, we suggest leaving a comment so our experts or someone in the community can help you.

Have something to add?

If you have insights to share or add that you think can help someone we’d love to hear it. Contribute

1. Why thinking something is unacceptable triggers anxiety ↩︎