02/12/2025
Anxiety is not something you try to "get rid of" like a virus or parasite. It's something you regulate. There's a difference.
I’ve experienced anxiety to the point where getting up in the morning felt like an obligation, eating felt like a challenge, and breathing didn’t feel second nature. So I used to look for ways to “fight it,” “stop it,” or “get rid of it,” not realizing that anxiety can be a normal part of the full range of human emotion.
And yes, anxiety can become clinical when it’s persistent and starts impairing your daily functioning. But “feeling anxiety” on its own doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, and it doesn’t always need a diagnosis.
Negative emotions get demonized repeatedly, not because negative emotions are bad intrinsically, but because society was never trained to appreciate uncomfortable emotions. Everybody wants “good vibes” so badly that they start rejecting reality. They can’t wrap their head around how complex human beings can be.
So society interprets things at the most superficial level:
“Oh, you’re anxious? How ungrateful.”
Instead of: “Oh, you’re anxious? That’s totally human.”
That small shift in wording matters, because it changes what happens next. When you treat anxiety like a moral failure, you respond with shame and suppression. When you treat anxiety like a normal internal signal, you respond with regulation and responsibility. Full article here: https://open.substack.com/pub/dockili/p/anxiety-is-not-something-you-try?r=51z0p2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
