How to Deal With Anxiety: Why Trying to Eliminate It Can Make It Worse

Anxiety is uncomfortable. For some people, it can feel like impending doom. Naturally, when we experience anxiety, we want it to go away. We want to feel safe again.

However, our attempts to eliminate anxiety can sometimes have the opposite effect. Instead of resolving the anxiety, we can unintentionally reinforce it. Understanding how to deal with anxiety begins with understanding why we want to eliminate anxiety in the first place.

Why Do People Want to Eliminate Anxiety?

Trying to eliminate anxiety can provide immediate relief and a feeling of security because, technically, we are moving away from whatever we perceive as threatening. We are designed to survive and to live with as little physical and emotional suffering as possible. Much of our society is designed with this same purpose in mind. Even our biological mechanisms, such as our immune system and our skin, function to preserve life and reduce pain. The mind works in a similar way.

Anxiety often operates as a psychological alarm system. When we feel anxious, our nervous system can put us into a state of fight or flight. Because we are anxious, we instinctively think there is danger and experience overwhelming discomfort. Naturally, we want to reduce or eliminate that discomfort. For many people, anxiety can feel like impending doom. Simply put, people want to feel safe. The existence of anxiety can create the feeling that we need to do something right now. It tells us something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Fundamentally, the thought becomes: “If I get rid of the anxiety, I'll feel better and I'll be safe.” As a result, anxiety itself becomes perceived as the issue. Anxiety becomes the danger, and the goal becomes getting rid of it.

Why Can Eliminating Anxiety Make It Worse?

Imagine punching a hole in your wall and then covering the hole with a beautiful painting. The painting beautifies the room, but you didn't actually address the hole. Trying to eliminate anxiety can work similarly. You may successfully reduce the feeling temporarily without addressing what is triggering the anxiety. Trying to eliminate anxiety can also pathologize both the feeling and what is triggering it. Essentially, a person sees something as a threat and then reinforces that perception by behaving in a way that legitimizes it as a threat. When something makes us anxious—including anxiety itself—trying to eliminate it can make us more preoccupied with it and cognitively fused with it. The more you treat something as a threat, the more it becomes a threat.

The act of avoiding something teaches us that it is threatening. Threats are not things we believe should be tolerated. By definition, threats disrupt our quality of life and our sense of security. Over time, a person can begin learning that anything that makes them uncomfortable is something that needs to be avoided or eliminated. When this happens, they do not develop resilience. This process can appear in many different behaviors.

Using Substances to Avoid Anxiety

Someone may use substances because they provide immediate relief from anxiety.

In that moment, the substance accomplishes the person's intended purpose: the anxiety decreases and the person experiences relief. However, using a substance does not necessarily address what is triggering the anxiety. Because the underlying issue has not been addressed, the anxiety remains. The person can then return to the substance the next time they experience anxiety. This reinforces the behavior and can eventually lead to substance dependence.

The strategy provides relief, but the hole in the wall remains.

People Pleasing to Avoid Anxiety

People pleasing can also function as an attempt to eliminate anxiety. For someone who becomes anxious when other people are upset with them, people pleasing can help them avoid that discomfort. By doing what another person wants, they may prevent that person from becoming upset and reduce their own anxiety.

Again, the behavior accomplishes its immediate purpose.

However, consistently practicing this behavior can legitimize the perception that it is bad for other people to be upset with you—that their displeasure is not okay or allowed.

The behavior is then reinforced. Over time, the person may consistently mold themselves into what other people desire rather than what they themselves desire. Essentially, they begin treating their own values as inconsequential.

Perfectionism to Avoid Anxiety

Perfectionism can serve a similar function. For some people, failure becomes a global evaluation of who they are. Because of what failure means to them, even the possibility of failing can create anxiety. Perfectionism then becomes a mechanism for preventing that possibility from becoming reality. If everything must be perfect, perhaps failure can be avoided. However, practicing perfectionistic behavior also reinforces the idea that failing is bad and should not be allowed. Because the person does not allow themselves to fail, they do not learn to differentiate failing at something from who they are or what they are worth.

As a result, the anxiety surrounding failure continues.

How to Deal With Anxiety

Listen to It

Instead of immediately trying to eliminate anxiety, listen to it. Most, if not all, emotions are directly connected to a need or value. Trying to eliminate the emotion does not help us identify or address that need or value. One way I help clients do this is by teaching them to personify their anxiety by giving it a voice. What would the anxiety say if it could speak?

If that does not work, we can focus on the critical part of the anxiety—the thing that makes the person feel the most anxious. From there, we can identify what that critical part means to them. Why is this particular outcome worth avoiding or eliminating? Why does it matter?

We can then clarify the value connected to the anxiety and use that value as a guide for determining appropriate and healthy behavior.

When people begin behaving according to the underlying value rather than allowing anxiety to determine their behavior, the anxiety may reduce or completely subside.

However, listening to anxiety does not mean automatically believing everything anxiety tells us. If anxiety is based on a distortion, then we challenge the distortion. We do not judge it. Instead, we examine whether it stands up to scrutiny. Anxiety can be challenged through Socratic questioning. The goal of Socratic questioning is to reinforce processing thoughts and emotions using flexible, evidence-based thinking instead of reinforcing distorted thinking.

Emotional Regulation

There are also times when anxiety becomes too overwhelming. When this happens, it can be healthy to change the environment or self-soothe. Changing the environment might mean relocating, doing a different activity, or taking space from a person who is triggering the anxiety. It is difficult to function in a healthy manner when anxiety becomes intense. In these moments, we may struggle to think clearly. Anxiety can take over and begin guiding our perceptions and behavior, typically moving us away from our values and needs.

Additional emotional regulation and self-soothing techniques include:

• Progressive muscle relaxation: Tense and slowly release different muscle groups throughout the body to reduce physical tension.

• 5-4-3-2-1 method: Identify five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste to help ground yourself in the present moment.

• Diaphragmatic breathing: Take slow, controlled breaths using the diaphragm to help reduce physiological arousal.

• Visualization: Imagine a calming environment, memory, or experience and focus on its sensory details.

• Normalize the anxiety: Remind yourself that anxiety is a normal human emotion. Feeling anxious does not necessarily mean that something is wrong or that you are in danger.

Final Thoughts

Problems can arise when we try to protect ourselves from something that is unavoidable, such as experiencing anxiety itself or encountering something that is simply a natural part of life. The very act of allowing anxiety to determine our behavior not only reinforces the behavior but also reinforces the cognitive processes associated with that behavior.

In other words, we form a habit. Avoidance can teach us that something is threatening and that threats should not be tolerated. Over time, we can begin treating anything that makes us uncomfortable as something that needs to be avoided or eliminated. When we continually respond this way, we do not develop resilience.

The reality is that living a meaningful and fulfilling life requires us to take some risks. If our behavior is primarily organized around avoiding anxiety, the immediate relief may come at the cost of moving further away from what we actually value. Anxiety is not something to avoid. Anxiety is a tool to assist you in getting what you need and value.