I’ll never forget the moment I figured out that I was addicted to my anxiety. I was doing a cannabis journey, and took myself to a yoga class. It never rains in Colorado but it was raining this night and I was admiring the nostalgia of the streetlights reflecting off the street.
My life was in a great place and I wasn’t sure how to feel because of it. I started to feel this ache for the nostalgic melancholy that I associated with the rain. I laid on my mat, ready to get started, and tears uncontrollably streamed down my face the entire 60-minute candlelit yoga class. I was missing the sadness that I once called home and I couldn’t explain why.
You can imagine how insane this thought felt to me that was staring me directly in the face. I was missing sadness while my life was good. Isn’t it usually the other way around? What was it about the sadness I missed and the anxiety that I had cursed for so long?
This led me down the path to understanding what this means for me, surely there had to be some reason I lived this way. Here’s what I discovered.
What It Meant To Be “Addicted to My Anxiety”
My sister sent me something about this exact concept once. In an Instagram DM I read all about how actually missing your depression and anxiety is more normal than you’d think.
For me, these sad and overwhelming feelings were my armor. They were predictable and they kept me safe from having to experience life more fully.
Anxiety was a good excuse: I could hold myself to lower standards because I was anxious, I didn’t have to hold myself responsible because I was “in a bad place.”
Sadness was a way of life, and in my anxiety and depression journey, it was something I was so used to I could live there for long stretches of time, feeling numb to the world and all that was happening around me. The numbness felt easier than overloading my senses with the unpredictability of the good feelings.
The Power of the Subconscious
At age 16 I started to see how this was an attention-giver for me. The more anxious I was, the more attention I could receive from those around me. I liked that people worried about me. I wanted to know that I had them when things weren’t going well. I wanted to feel supported. Additionally, being in my joy meant that I was a target, at least, that’s how my brain saw it.
I could remember specific moments that I felt happy and alive and someone out of nowhere was waiting on the sidelines ready to take my legs out from under me. This happened enough times in my early adult years that it felt like the truth that guided my life. I wasn’t willing to open myself up to that pain. My anxiety again felt like armor, no one would target me if I was already in a rough place. Logically, it made so much sense.
Playing the victim became a game that I got so good at playing and I didn’t even realize I was playing it. That’s the thing about the subconscious mind, it runs on autopilot, creating your reality without your conscious awareness.
The moments my life was good, when I was on the other side of the wave, it seemed like I went unnoticed. People reached out far less and on top of that, I had big expectations of myself that I felt I had to meet. More than anything, I no longer could hide behind this shield of my anxiety and sadness. I was being forced to face the big emotions that I was convinced would kill me all by myself. I wasn’t used to being in that place of ‘okayness,’ it felt so vulnerable to be in joy, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So rather than wait for the shoe to drop, I would throw it on the ground and head back into my old patterns of being anxious and depressed.
This cycle became the life I was living and I had no idea. And I certainly wasn’t willing to hear it.
If you would have told me that I was addicted to my anxiety I would have fought and said, “Do you think I really want to live like this?”
Why You May Feel So Afraid of Joy
I bet if you’ve come this far, you relate to this notion of being addicted to your anxiety and depression. If that’s you, I deeply honor you, being on this journey is not an easy one to overcome, but even just being here shows that you’re willing to face your own shadow and shine the light on it.
Perhaps you too feel like your anxiety and depression are your armor, allowing you to go through life with less expectation and responsibility and less of a chance of feeling more hurt when it crumbles. And perhaps that armor also keeps you at your own baseline for what you’re comfortable to feel.
I didn’t realize it right away, but a big reason that this felt more comfortable was that joy felt so vulnerable. This meant that there was a drop awaiting. This meant that I was a target for others to tear me down. I wasn’t willing to open myself up to that kind of pain.
It turns out, it’s really common for people to forebode joy in their lives because they’re afraid of what that could mean. It’s not that you’re someone who never experiences joy, rather, you have limits, controlled by you. It’s part of this numbing effect that anxiety and depression can bring about. Feeling numb feels safer than being open to the possibilities of all the emotions.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of joy, it was rather that I was afraid of the pain that came on the other side of joy. The stronger and more intense the joy, the deeper and more painful the pain. I was terrified to open myself up to that, so I leaned into the anxiety and sadness that felt in my control, and I remained there as long as I could.
There were other things that made me fear joy as well that placed far too much emphasis on me.
Unrealistic Expectations of Joy
Having to maintain the image that I perceived as joy felt unrealistic. It felt black and white, like I could only be one or the other, so choosing the one that had higher standards felt like a challenge I was not willing to face. I was assuming that joy meant I had to also be perfect and I struggled with that enough already, that I’d rather not add another place I had to do this to my list.
Empathic Guilt
That idea of ‘feeling bad’ for someone else as an empath felt like a badge of honor that I wore proudly. I could easily consume other people’s pain as my pain, which I felt made me relatable but actually turns out was more selfish than anything. It’s not about me, and I’m not responsible for fixing anyone and seeing myself as the responsible person was placing far too much pressure on my own experience as a human.
Feeling Bad for Feeling Good
On the top of ‘feeling bad,’ I also felt bad when I felt good. Like there had to be a reason or something that contributed to my happiness that I would need to defend so others around me could feel better about themselves. This was directly driven my own scarcity mindset around happiness and joy, as if I was taking it all up and no one else would be able to access it because of me.
How I’m Continuing to Overcome My Addiction to My Anxiety
It’s safe to say that it wasn’t just one moment in my life that led me to the point of genuinely feeling safer when I was anxious and thus addicted to the anxiety. Years upon years compounded (with interest) to get me to the crossroads I was standing at after the yoga class that revealed this breadcrumb to me.
I knew that because my subconscious mind was so conditioned to feeling like anxiety was a safe armor that simply becoming aware wasn’t going to be enough to change the way I perceived this aspect of myself. Neither was repeating positive affirmations that wouldn’t work to myself that I was allowed to be in joy.
Whenever I become aware of a pattern of mine that I no longer wish to nurture, it takes time for me to go into these parts of self and understand what they need, why they’re hurting, and to relieve them of their suffering. After all, it does me no good to try and erase this as part of my existence when it was something that shaped me into the person I am today.
Here are some of the practices I’ve leaned into to help me integrate this discovery of my addiction to anxiety as to not stay stuck in it.
Showing My Anxiety Gratitude
When this first became part of my awareness, I showed this anxious part of me the utmost gratitude, starting with writing a list that this part of me made possible.
For example, my empathy for others was really strengthened. My ability to sit in the darkness was impressive, surely I could open myself up to other large emotions knowing that this was such a skill of mine.
I was grateful this part went to such extreme lengths to protect me and do what she thought was best. She didn’t know any better and I honor her for her strength. I also felt so grateful that I had widened my lens for suffering, this entire experience led me to my career and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
I’ve learned throughout this process that anxiety is a great teacher, and simply thanking it was step one.
Allowing Both Anxiety and Joy to Exist At the Same Time
Something that has been really helpful in the quest to resolve my addiction with anxiety is not expecting it to just ‘go away,’ and also not allowing that notion to keep me from feeling joy. Rather, allowing both to exist simultaneously or even consecutively has been a great place for me to land that feels more sustainable. It allows me to ease into the joy without feeling overwhelmed by it. It’s a long-term focused approach rather than a complete shock to my system.
By allowing it to be a ‘both, and’ situation, I’m teaching myself more about how to be in joy realistically, reminding myself that tapping into this emotion means I’m opening up to all the emotions, even the ones I don’t want to feel. That’s part of the retraining process for my subconscious to feel comfortable instead of running straight to what it knows, anxiety.
Celebrating the Moments of Joy
It’s been helpful to actually celebrate joy when I’m in it. When we celebrate, our brains secrete chemicals like dopamine that make us feel extra good. It’s a built in reward system I’m using to trigger my brain to think, “this is good, we like this feeling.”
I’m also naming the joy as it’s happening. I’m giving myself the present awareness to be in my joy, acknowledge how I feel both emotionally and physically, bringing total awareness to the feeling rather than letting it pass me by.
Even the small joyful wins feel worthy of celebrating. If you’re looking for celebration ideas for joy, check out my article on Why You’re having a Hard Time Being in Joy.
Creating An Archetype of My Joyful Self
I’m not a very visual person, but this is a visualization technique of making my joyful self an archetype has made it easier to connect with myself in this state.
Similar to showing your anxiety gratitude as mentioned in the first practice, this is also a parts work exercise. The idea of parts work is to identify and and resolve conflicts between different parts of self as a way to get to know, integrate, and accept all parts of you.
Creating relationships with your parts can help you absolve them of their fears and give them new jobs or ideas, or in some cases, extract their wisdom and power like you’ll do in this exercise.
How to connect with your joyful part of self:
- Imagine yourself in your peak joy, this is done best in some type of meditative or reflective process like journaling
- Describe what you’re wearing, what your appearance looks like in as much detail as possible
- Picture where you are and your surroundings. Engage all 5 senses and describe in great detail for yourself what this place looks, feels, tastes, smells, and sounds like.
- Tap into this archetype of self whenever you’re feeling afraid of feeling joy, or even curious about what joy can teach you.
- Allow this archetype of you to share with you any knowledge or reminders so that you need to move past the fear and experience this emotional expression.
Practice Patience and Presence in Your Transformational Journey
In my journey to understand why I was living my life this way, I went through a period of feeling totally isolated. Admitting that this was true for me brought about so much shame. Even proclaiming that I was addicted to anxiety and it was what I used to get attention made me want to crawl out of my skin.
I could have let this moment completely derail me, falling back to my old ways that felt much safer than the new route I was choosing to take, and instead I practiced patience.
It does me no good to become aware of something I want to change and then expect myself to step right into that change without any resistance. I’ve found that so much of my own transformational work, and the work I do with others requires the utmost patience and presence. Not acknowledging the fear or getting frustrated that you’re not further along is communicating to yourself that you’re not worthy of the thing you desire if you can’t have it right now.
By practicing patience and presence with yourself, you’re giving yourself more space to breathe and allowing your nervous system to regulate without the thing it’s pulling for. There’s a difference between calming your nervous system down by defaulting to your old patterns and taking a moment with the dysregulation and the fear that’s arising and saying it’s welcome here.
Imagine this part of you is a little kid, you wouldn’t yank that kid by the hand in their most fearful hour. You’d sit with them, comfort them, and give them space to feel what they’re feeling. This is the same concept I want you to apply on your transformational journey.
Whether you’re also struggling with an addiction to your anxiety or sadness, or you’re on a different path, give yourself space and don’t expect immediate results. As cliche as it is to say “growth is not linear” it’s a great reminder. Don’t expect perfection and give yourself grace as you ascend higher in your self-actualization journey.
If you feel called to explore your emotions deeper with more direction, book a free 60-minute virtual session with me to help you come up with an action plan for your emotional path to freedom.
