Dependent relationships are more common than you think. For example, have you ever looked to someone else for reassurance when you felt anxious? Don't worry, you're not alone. Reassurance seeking is a common and often healthy process that everyone does to better understand and accept the decisions we make. However, when we go to someone for help every time we feel anxious, this can create an unhealthy dependence that reduces the quality of the relationship and can exacerbate your anxiety.

How is anxiety like an alarm clock? They're actually very similar, but one is more active than you need.

How can you change anxiety, bit by bit? Would you believe me if I told you that math can provide phenomenal motivation? Hear me out.

There's a relationship between communication and anxiety. If I had to guess, I'd say that more often than not you try to hide your anxiety instead of sharing it. Does that sound right? It can be difficult to communicate anxiety, which is something so challenging and personal, with others, and I think people often default to keeping it as closed off from others as possible. While this is a valuable skill to develop in some cases, it can also be detrimental to hide away your everyday emotional experience. We tend to feel the most secure and happy in our relationships when we share our true selves with others, so the benefits of being open and honest about ourselves are hard to overstate. Additionally, by being honest with others, we often invite honesty in return, which helps cultivate trust and communication to reduce anxiety.

The best way to take on anxiety is to cultivate self-confidence. When you feel capable of handling the things life gives you, vague anxieties are not so much of a problem. But how do we develop the self-confidence to fight anxiety?

This week, I was inspired by the actions and words of Greta Thunberg, a young climate activist from Sweden, to share my mindfulness practice for anxiety. Greta has interacted with numerous world leaders in her pursuit of meaningful climate action and in the process has inspired action by many young people in the United States and beyond.

We don't talk about anxiety and suicide very often. In fact, when we think about suicide, the first association that comes to mind is often depression. The link between suicidality and depression has been documented not only in the research literature but also in much of the media we consume, to the extent that the majority of people are aware of this link. Unfortunately, we are much less aware as a society of the impact that anxiety has on suicide.   (Note: This post contains a trigger warning.)

When you feel anxious, it is natural to look for ways to get rid of it immediately. In general, this is an effective response because it allows us to evade danger and survive. However, for chronic anxiety that isn't tied to immediate threats, it can be harmful to focus on avoiding or eliminating anxiety because this can actually exacerbate it. If I told you not to think about what to eat for breakfast, it's likely that the first thing you'd think of is precisely that, and this is the same trap we fall into with anxiety when we attempt avoidance. Rather than giving us peace of mind, it just brings our anxiety to the forefront of our minds. So, is there a better option? I believe the answer is a resounding yes. 

This week, I was thinking about how you need a plan for anxiety. Anxiety can pop up without rhyme or reason, stay for an indeterminable amount of time, and sometimes can vanish so quickly that we don't realize the change right away. When anxiety arises quickly, it can be difficult to maintain the awareness that we are not anxiety, and this can make it more difficult to cope. Part of this difficulty occurs because anxiety affects more than our emotional state -- it affects our cognitive state. But a plan for anxiety can help with all this.

Take a deep breath for anxiety right now, then ask yourself how many times you took a deep breath today. What about this past week? I've been engaging in self-reflection about my breathing this past week, and I was surprised to find that I had no idea how many deep breaths I'd taken. I enjoy meditating and have found deep breathing helpful for staying calm when I'm handling a lot of stress, but I haven't made a conscious effort to breathe deeply in recent weeks. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that deep breathing is not just a great way to relax, but our breath is how we communicate with our anxiety.