If we are not careful, we can anticipate our anxiety into existence.

It is so uncomfortable to have a fear or a worry that you’re going to go into anxiety. So what can we do about it before it even hits us?

There is something called anticipatory anxiety and what that means is the worry, the fear, and the overwhelm of getting anxiety makes it worse and can put you back into anxiety.

When it comes to anxiety, it keeps us locked in a cycle because it is so uncomfortable and because it is so threatening to our sense of safety and security.

We start to worry about it happening again, and it is almost as if we are putting ourselves back in that cycle with all the worrying we are doing.

We have the ability to drop ourselves back into it because anxiety is based on a chemical loop that are dumped out into your system to protect you and to give you this anxiety to protect you.

Again. It’s a safety mechanism.

So when we have this anticipatory anxiety, we can often loop ourselves over and over in this anxiety keeping it around, making it worse actually.

Three ways to stop Anticipatory Anxiety

So what are some things you can do to kick yourself out of this worrying concern and fear of dropping back into anxiety?

1. Use Relaxation Techniques

Deep relaxation, such as deep meditation or deep mindfulness practice, is anything that pulls you into your body, relaxes you, and down-regulates your nervous system.

So again, this is your deep meditation, your progressive muscle relaxation, even a meditative walk.

Sart to build up these relaxation techniques because your body is already in a heightened sense of awareness.

I suggest the best time to work on relaxation techniques is when you’re not anxious or worked up when you’re already relaxed because your body is not fighting it.

Now you can go even deeper. And then, when you are uncomfortable and you are stressed and you go to use that relaxation technique, you’ve already basically primed it and your body has already been used to it and it will recognize it and it can shift into that relaxation faster and easier for you.

2. Distract yourself

Do something to distract away from that overactive thinking.

Whether you need to go for a walk, go do some kind of a hobby, anything that you can do to distract yourself right away. If you have to do something completely silly, get up, dance, move, sing I’m a little teapot.

Use a technique to distract yourself away from the thoughts that keep coming in your head telling you the anxiety is coming back.

This is good for when we need to shift perspective.

3. Ask this one question

Ask yourself and permit yourself to be okay with knowing that what is in your brain that you’re worried about right now is not reality.

The future is not here. It does not exist.

We haven’t created it yet and we can take all of our worries, our thoughts, our concerns, and everything we have, and we can paste them into a future event, but that future event is not here.

And the more we paste negative shit into our future, the more we’re going to get negative shit in our future. So whenever you start to feel as though you’re getting worried, you’re getting fearful, your anxiety is going to come back.

Stop and ask yourself “Is this really true?”

Most of what we worry about is a thought in our head, it’s a concept, it’s an illusion. So take a little bit of time and just settle yourself for a moment and ask yourself is this really true?

Once you can start to slow your mind out a little bit and push yourself into the present moment, give yourself a way to distract yourself, learn some relaxation techniques, and bring yourself back to the here and now, you’ll have a lot less anticipatory anxiety.

Remember, when you are waiting on something, you’re not in the present moment, you’re ruminating about something that may, might, or could happen, but it may not.