Anxiety Is Not A Problem ‒ Here's Why
Written by: Sam Kukathas, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Anxiety is not a problem. Being anxious is not a problem. Having anxious thoughts is not a problem. What's the problem? Creating it as if it's a problem.
You see, when you don't allow an emotion to be you effectively tell the emotion I'm not going to recognize you. What does the emotion do? The emotion stays, because the emotion actually wants to be acknowledged. Anxiety is a state of being and it's also an emotion. It's a feeling. 'I feel anxious' is the language we speak from. When we feel anxious for a consistent enough amount of time, and we hear the word anxious, we start to then move into the new reality, called 'I have anxiety'. What does that mean? Well, what it looks like generally is you have a sense that even if you don't experience anxiety in every moment of the day – I hope that's not the case for anyone reading this – just around the corner is going to be another incident where you get to experience that anxiety. You know that a panic attack is around the corner, and you have that impending doom about the possibility. Inside of thinking about the possibility of a panic attack, you may have a panic attack.
And then if you are actually in a panic attack, you are thinking about, 'Oh God, how am I going to survive the panic attack?' 'How am I going to deal with this attack?’ There is the heightened breath. You try and take a deep breath and you're struggling to do so. Your throat is seizing up.
It is not a comfortable experience and it becomes even more uncomfortable the more we avoid the experience.
What if it was about experiencing the experience? What if bringing curiosity to your experience of a panic attack was actually what was going to make the biggest impact in dealing with panic attacks. What if just letting go of the idea that there was something wrong with experiencing anxious thoughts, was actually part of the release from being anxious? From being anxious as an identity.
You see, just like it’s unlikely you’ll never not experience fear in some moments. You're also never likely to not experience some anxiousness in moments in life.
At times we create anxiety as a problem. At times anxiety is something we actually kind of want. When you're a football fan and you're at the edge of your seat watching a game. Any moment there could be a goal. Or your team may come back from the edge of defeat or your team may lose. I'm guessing the likely feeling you're feeling is anxiousness. For me, that's a welcome feeling. Because it's exciting as well. You see the reason excitement, and anxiousness come to come to mind and why we welcome it is because it's the same neurochemical. This means we can't often separate, what is anxiety and what is excitement. But the more curiosity you bring to the experience – if you feel like the anxiety should not be there – the more likely you'll be able to bring that excitement into life.
By turn, if you seek to avoid it, you're more likely to feel more of the sort of stuff you don't want to feel. So, if you want to experience more curiosity, more excitement, and as a consequence, peace of mind, joy, ease and fulfillment then I invite you to reach out to me at thephilosophicalcoach.com
Sam Kukathas, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Imagine that we could shift the agreement in the world around mental health so it were no longer a disempowering context from which people lived. Imagine we could create a new future in politics not given by the past.This is what I am committed to creating.
I've had the honour of working with the leaders who have shaped what is possible for humanity. That has expanded my vision of what is possible. Before I discovered transformative leadership, I wrote about the nuances of being human as a philosopher. Now those two worlds have collided.
The Philosophical Coach stems from 13 years researching the human condition, 5 years in transformative leadership. I challenge my clients around who they are really so we can create a new future they love.
That is the context for now, but it tells you nothing about why I care about creating these global shifts.
Why mental health?
For 28 years I lived from 'I have anxiety'. It looked like life was working but inside me my head was a vortex of thoughts and I lived in my head.
They were me, and it led to me not getting the PhD at Oxford in 2017. Everything I thought I knew and valued came crashing down.
This was the greatest gift I have been given.
I reverse engineered anxiety without focusing on it. I overcame years of being depressed. I healed my relationships where love was missing. I overcame years of trauma and I started experiencing joy in the so-called ordinary moments of life. I came out as bisexual. I went from my life being narrow & about me to living from who can I make a difference to today.
I kept confronting everything I saw and discovered that I am not my thoughts, feelings, mental states, even the physical sensations I experience. I leaned into taking responsibility for my life anywhere that I was not. I continue to live from this practice.
My commitment is that people discover creating a joyful life, rather than live from a disempowering context around mental health.
Why Politics?
There has been a shift in what leadership looks like, yet the future of politics is predictable. Law & politics continue to be about being in the guise of the interests of society, but fail to fulfil these really. So I wrote a new PhD inspired by what I discovered through coaching. A vision of law and politics being in the interests of society.
Creating opportunities for leaders to discover who they can be in life when they wipe the slate clean from preconceived ideas is what I do. It is from this place I am also committed to creating extraordinary politicians.
