No, this isn’t about tween drama, but it is about something that can cause all sorts of drama in our lives; anxiety. Anxiety can be looked at as trying to control something beyond your control. By this explanation, it creates a very specific dynamic between itself and control. That is that anxiety and control become frenemies. A frenemy is defined as a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry. Anxiety and control try to play nicely with each other to keep some form of balance, but they keep trying to take each other over as well. Control likes not being under the reign of anxiety so that anxiety is kept at bay and a person can function, and anxiety likes to try to overpower control at any chance it gets, even when it’s been subdued previously in a different way.
So, what can a person even do in this scenario? The trick is focusing on the things that are within your control and using them in a way to help you gain control over anxiety. If you have tools that work for you to help you relax, using them to intervene at the slightest warning sign that anxiety is starting to creep up and trying to overthrow control, and if you practice some form of relaxation on a regular basis so that your baseline is low enough that inevitable triggers won’t tip you over, control can start to have a long term as leader and you don’t have to feel helpless to your anxiety’s whim.
If you are struggling with the constant power struggle that exists between control, frenemies and anxiety, please call us Specialized Therapy Associated (STA) at (201) 488-6678, so that we can help build up your army’s defenses to prevent anxiety’s coup.
