Dan’s Blog

Except when your anxiety is overwhelming, there can be many benefits to anxiety. Of course, if you struggle with heart palpitations, shaking, panic attacks and a racing mind, it may be difficult to believe that your anxiety has any positive points.

But here’s the thing, at the very least those anxiety feelings and thoughts let you know that your safety responses are working well (even if they are set a bit too high right now). Should you ever be in a dangerous situation (although I hope you never are) you would want your body to automatically keep you safe by getting you out of there – so the sweating, increased breathing rate and rush of blood to the muslces can be pretty handy indeed.

And there are also many other things that flow from anxiety if you are able to harness them (even after you learn how to feel calmer and in control).

Do you need to be perfect all the time? Would you describe yourself as a perfectionist? Is it either a complete success or complete disaster?

It’s a good thing to set your standards high and aim to hit them, yet often I meet people who feel bad because hitting 100% every time can be hard work and may not always be only up to you. You can then feel rubbish because if it isn’t perfect then it is that disaster.

Recently I worked with a client with anxiety. He had set himself five goals a day to drive forward feeling better, yet when he only hit 4 (80%) on one day he felt bad and considered the day a disaster and described himself as a failure (in fact, he was quite keen to write off the whole week).

Another client wanted to end the fear of driving, yet even after she got in the car for the first time in years and drove a few miles, she wrote it off as a failure because she wasn’t yet 100% calm and relaxed.

I also worked with a client who wanted more confidence so he could deliver presentations. He was calm and confident throughout but because he didn’t know the answer to one question, he started telling himself that he was rubbish at presentations.

The all or nothing attitude can keep reinforcing your anxiety and low confidence and help you stay stuck because you can’t recognise your positive progress.