Beating Anxiety: How to be 100% Okay With `Who' You Are in
Social Situations
If you could be totally 100% okay with who you are, would you
have anything to feel anxious about?
If you were 100% confident about who you are, would you be
worried about what other people think?
If you felt 100% comfortable with who you are, could you feel
calm, centered and peaceful no matter what anyone else says and
no matter what situation you find yourself in?
Being okay with who we are frees us up from having to worry
about saying or doing the wrong thing.
Yes - it would be great to feel this way - but being okay with
who we are is a tall order. How can we even begin to think about
reaching this level of comfort and confidence?
**Creating space between 'who' and 'what'
To take our first step, let's learn how to create a space
between 'who' we are and 'what' we feel, between 'who' we are
and the anxiety we experience.
Take a look at the following three sentences. And as you read
each one, notice how the energy inside of you (basically how you
feel) changes.
#1 I am anxious.
#2 I am experiencing anxiety.
#3 Something is causing me anxiety.
In sentence #1, we are saying that I AM anxious. The 'who' in
this case is anxious.
This suggests that who you are is anxious. Who we are, at our
highest, highest nature, at the core of our being, is anxious!?
This touches us deeply. It sounds permanent. And seems to be
addressing our very identity as a human being. As who we think
we are.
Now take sentence #2: I am experiencing anxiety now.
We are not anxious, as in sentence #1. But we are HAVING an
EXPERIENCE of anxiety. There seems to be a person separate from
the experience that is taking place.
A deeper or larger presence of who we are is separate from the
anxiety.
Now look at sentence #3. Something is causing me anxiety. Here
there is even more distance between the 'who' that we are and
the anxiety that we feel.
In this case, the anxiety is about something else. It's not
about us. It is about something else that is going on.
Now, I am not saying that any one statement is more true than
another when it comes to anxiety. These are just three
perspectives used to loosen the hold that anxiety has on us.
**Sense the 'who' at the core your being
Use this distinction to carve a gap between 'who' you are and
'what' you are capable of experiencing. Between you and 'what'
happens outside of you, in your thoughts and in your body.
Use this sense of the 'who' at the core of your being to watch
the experience of anxiety as separate and distinct.
This is a first step. Seeing yourself as having a separate
identity from all that you can experience - including anxiety.
The next challenge is to learn how to continually choose your
deeper 'who' over the surface thoughts and feelings.