Article by Dr. Ng Wai Sheng
Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

“Something in you dies when you bear the unbearable. And it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves.” – Ram Dass

No one likes feeling anxious. Yet, anxiety is a great teacher, if we allow it to be. Here are 3 lessons I’m learning from my own anxiety: how to own it, use it and transform it.  

1. How to own it
Anxiety feels like a personal weakness. So, more often than not, most of us would try to pretend to look “just fine”, or distract our mind endlessly with one or some of the following:

• work (at least that makes us feel busy and important!)
• doing house chores (our home looks sparkling clean!)
• chatting with friends (at least we look like friendly people!)
• hoarding (yay, we got lots of stuff!)
• gaming and other forms of entertainment (c’mon, what’s wrong with having some fun, right?)

Here’s the thing: Anxiety is a NORMAL emotion. And just like joy, sadness and anger, emotions are present to tell us something about ourselves. If I deny or try to conceal it, I will probably delay the process of getting to know myself.

Like painting, you’ve just got to paint what it is for you, here and now. Even if you have to paint the same thing again and again, the compulsion itself is part of the process of getting in touch with the anxiety that NEEDS to manifest itself. The faster we pay attention to our anxieties, the sooner we get to connect with the desires in our heart. As Jesus said to his disciples, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12: 34). 

Our heart’s desire is simply what it is. We don’t need to bash up ourselves for what’s emerging within our heart. We can pretend they are not there, but dishonesty to ourselves usually do more harm in the long run to our physical, emotional and spiritual health. Learn to own your heart’s desire, so that you can truly take responsibility for what your heart is showing you in regards to:

• your relationship with your God
• your relationship with the people in your life
• your relationship with places and things
• and ultimately, your relationship with yourself.

We CANNOT change what we do not own and accept. In other words, only when you can start owning your anxiety, and learn to accept what it’s trying to tell you, then maybe you have a chance to stop feeling anxious and do something different about it.  

2. How to use it
I get creative blocks when I am overridden with anxieties. That’s when anxiety becomes downright useless and paralyzing to me. Hence, I learn that if I truly want to make good use of my anxiety to help myself, I have to know what anxiety is about and believe in its power to help me.

Anxiety is, put simply, the emotional intelligence to self-protect from actual and potential risk of harm. Anxiety serves to place the self in a humble vulnerable state, in which we recognize that we do not and cannot control the outcome, and we can expose ourselves to injury, failure, ridicule and rejection.

How does that make anxiety useful or even powerful then?

Anxiety is useful and powerful because it makes us come back to our HUMANITY. Anxiety makes us fall on our knees and realize that we are dependent on the Source who gave us life, and we are interdependent with the community and the universe that we live in! 

Often, we cannot use anxiety because we get distracted by its noisy appearance. But if we listen more carefully, underneath the noises of anxiety is a person who cares deeply about someone or something. And if you truly examine the weight of care within one’s anxiety (say from raising a strong-willed child, to raising the standards in their work system, to keeping their marriage alive, to fighting for their freedom or independence etc.), hopefully we start to have a little more respect, a little more compassion for the anxious persons.  

If we focus on the person’s anxiety, we are either forcing them to hide themselves even more out of shame, or enabling them to remain helpless and dependent by externalizing their problems. On the other hand, if we can affirm the PERSON behind the anxiety who cares deeply, we are drawing out inner gems and treasures that the person might have overlooked or distrusted. 

There is no need to kill off your anxiety, because it testifies the depth of your care! More importantly, your anxiety is merely pointing you towards your true passion, where your true power is hidden also!

3. How to transform it
When we feel anxious, we feel anxious. No amount of external reassurance or lecturing or counsel can make anxiety go away. The worst we could tell someone is don’t think about it, don’t feel, as though pretending anxiety is not there will make it disappear. Like a ball that you push hard downward, anxiety tends to bounce back up in double or triple the force. That’s when some of us end up getting a diagnosis like an “anxiety disorder”. What you do not deal with now will come back and haunt you at a later time.

In contrast, what psychotherapy offers people is a safe space to think about their anxiety and to allow people to feel their anxiety, until the point they can begin to think and feel something different emerge within themselves. Sometimes it’s sadness… Sometimes it’s anger… Often there are unresolved grief experiences from the past that we would rather forget. In other words, our anxiety is always helping us to find a deeper healing and growth from within. Hence, if we truly want a different response than anxiety, we must prepare to do the inner work.

Much of what trigger anxiety lies in the interpersonal process between people, and within a complex system consisting of multiple people who are sharing different degrees of anxiety. Hence, to transform anxiety, you need to think three levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal and system.

When you accept your own anxiety as a good messenger or helpful friend, you are dealing with it on the first level.

When you pay attention to how you are being affected by the different personalities and energies around you, you can then make better choices as to who you want to let in your life, and what kind of boundaries you want to set with different people, so you can still remain free and true to yourself. That’s the second level. 

Finally, when you are fully alive to your own needs and the kind of relationship that gives you more health and safety (to be you), then you are probably more ready to discern and identify how you have inevitably BECOME part of a larger system that is anxious and stressed out.

You can choose to be in the system, yet not of the system. Simply put, if you know who you are, you don’t have to follow what everyone else does. The goal is not to be different than everybody else. The goal is to show more compassion for yourself (for you can’t change yourself for others), and more compassion for others (for they can’t change themselves for you either).

Anxiety is transformed where there is unconditional acceptance of yourself and of others. As the Apostle John says, perfect love cast out fears (1 John 4:18).

Here’s a clip from Disney’s animation “Frozen”. Watch Elsa, who spent her whole life fearing and worrying about her secret — a power within herself. And when the secret was exposed, she flees her kingdom Arendelle and unleashes her magic… May you also discover the power within your fears and anxieties!