What Purpose Does Anxiety Serve In My Life?

Upon first reading this question, it may sound like a question that insinuates that anxiety is serving you somehow in your life. However, I do believe everything negative or positive we do, does have some type of purpose in life. I think when we get to a place of understanding of that purpose is when we can decide what to do with what we’ve learned from thinking about it. 

This question is interesting because when I manage my anxiety well, meaning, on the days I am able to prevent it from taking over my day or not really notice it at all, I find myself still thinking about it..almost wondering where it is. Even though it was the part of me I wanted gone, it was still something I found missing in my day.

 I have always been an anxious person. Socially anxious, decision making anxiety, future anxiety, past anxiety, any type you can name I have probably experienced it. To some degree it has ingrained itself to be a part of me, and after contemplation of how anxiety serves its purpose in my life, I’ve come to realize that it is something I have just accepted as part of me. 

Even though it doesn’t help me or make me feel good, it is a recognizable feeling that I, strangely, have inadvertently found some strange comfort in. It can be easy to fall into unconscious agreements within yourself, that maybe you haven’t realized or thought about. This was the feeling of anxiety for me, something I hadn’t thought about I just experienced often and never questioned. 

Knowing and understanding this new idea made me realize that anxiety really isn’t serving any purpose, it is just an uncomfortable, yet familiar, feeling I have dealt with my entire life. Adopting this new idea of my anxiety made it easy to begin noticing when it would come up. Awareness of the feeling itself is key to switching this feeling of constant worry and fear, to a more rational state of mind. I notice the feeling of anxiety much more now that I've questioned it, and when it comes up I begin intentionally questioning the feeling. 

Most of the time I find my biggest issue with anxiety is living outside of the present moment. Worry, fear, and rumination lives in the past and the future which is where I noticed I was spending a lot of my time. It’s okay to reflect or plan ahead, but living in those two states of mind is what was creating this sense of dread for me. Coming back to what’s in front of me, rationalizing this feeling by realizing nothing is wrong, and understanding that through repetition that I am okay I noticed the anxiety does find its way out. 

An interesting experience I noticed when I began to release something that has a big energy like anxiety, is that I felt like something was missing. Like I mentioned earlier, I did overall feel lighter and better, but even as I was still managing this feeling of anxiety coming and going I felt a small void. This is a normal occurrence when making any change, the familiar feeling will always come up or you will feel its absence. 

Because of this, I would recommend replacement behaviors. In this example, I would say when I start to search for anxiety or miss that feeling (which still sounds strange to say) what am I going to do when my mind wanders? For me, when I notice my mind wandering searching for something wrong, something to criticize about myself, or anything that evokes my anxiety naturally I replaced that with naming things I really liked about myself or my life. A question that stands out to me is what makes me smile about myself, my day, or my life? I started asking myself this every morning and it makes me happy and it makes me like myself more. Redirecting those old patterns, by seeing what is going well made a big difference.

Although it wasn’t a good purpose, anxiety did serve as a familiar feeling I associated with just being me. But by acknowledgement, questioning, and redirecting I am able to work with this pattern of mine and manage it in a way that does improve my state of mind. It is definitely management and not a “get rid of anxiety” situation, but the parts of you that are “bad” or “negative” are sometimes things that don’t go away completely but you can learn to work with.