90-Second Chemical Reaction
If you had told me this about five years ago, I’d have vehemently disagreed.
“But I’m anxious all the time. How is that possible?”
Anxiety was THE emotion I experienced the most during my BigLaw career - especially as an associate.
I thought it was just the way I was. That I was an anxious person. In a job that was not meant or an anxious person. And I judged the shirt out of myself for being so anxious.
I didn’t realize how much I was contributing to that anxiety until I found coaching.
How often I was effectively choosing (albeit unintentionally) to stay in that anxiety.
To prolong it.
Make it stronger.
I did this by (1) not actually letting myself just feel anxious, (2) by judging myself for being anxious and for how often I was anxious, (3) believing the thoughts that made me anxious without questioning them and telling myself I was just “an anxious person,” and (4) blaming external things (like my job) for making me anxious.
Surprise, surprise… none of that helped.
And I have zero judgment of myself for that now. Every human adds to their own suffering. Every human chooses to stay in emotional loops all the time. Even though that choice is usually unintentional.
It’s just part of being human. It’s part of having a human brain that offers you thousands of thoughts a day with a negativity bias. It’s part of having a human brain that learns thought patterns, and when left to its own devices, repeats them over and over again even if they aren’t useful. It’s part of having a human brain with confirmation bias that is on the lookout for proof that your negative thoughts are true.
Here’s what’s changed for me:
▫️I’ve accepted that anxiety will always be present in my life and that it doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong. My brain has gotten good at manufacturing it. It’s easy.
▫️I’ve learned to actually feel my anxiety instead of resisting it, avoiding it, or reacting to it.
▫️I’ve learned to implement helpful somatic tools.
▫️I’ve gotten good at challenging the thoughts that make me anxious and shifting them to different thoughts.
▫️I’ve made changes to my lifestyle that make my anxiety easier to manage.
▫️And I was and am always willing to get outside help when I need it.
None of this has made anxiety go away completely for me. I expect nothing ever will.
There are still days where it just hums in the background at a low level. Like the feeling you get when you think you’ve forgotten something but you can’t remember what it is. Or when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But it doesn’t impact how I show up anymore.
You will never get rid of all of your negative emotions.
But I promise there’s a different way to experience them. There’s a way to experience less of the ones you hate.
What’s your go-to negative emotion? What would life be like if you felt less of it? If it didn’t control the way you showed up in the world?
A love note to you: The change I saw in my anxiety because of coaching is a big part of the reason I became a coach myself. Now I help other people completely change the way they emotionally experience the world, for the better. Think about the negative emotion you experience the most often. If you could experience just 10% less of it a day, how would that impact you? What about 25%? 50%? I can help you learn tools to do just that. Send me an email or sign up for a free consult at jenndealcoaching.as.me/consult.
