Anxiety Journal 1: Is Your Anxiety Warning You—or Running Your Life?

Anxiety has a job. It gets our attention. It helps us prepare, recognize potential danger, and respond when something matters.

But sometimes the alarm keeps ringing even when there isn't an immediate threat. Sometimes anxiety stops being information and starts becoming the person making the decisions.

This journal isn't about getting rid of anxiety. It's about becoming curious about it. The questions below are designed to help you notice what anxiety is telling you, what you're doing in response to it, and whether it is helping you—or quietly shrinking your life.

1. Is your anxiety warning you—or running your life?

Think about something making you anxious right now.

What is actually happening?

Write only what you know to be true—not what you fear might happen. Now, what is your anxiety predicting will happen?

Look at the two answers.

How much of your anxiety is responding to what is happening—and how much is responding to what might happen?

2. What if feeling anxious doesn't mean something is wrong?

Anxiety can produce very real physical sensations: a pounding heart, tight muscles, sweating, stomach discomfort, dizziness, trembling, or changes in breathing. Those sensations can be frightening without necessarily meaning something catastrophic is happening.

When I'm anxious, what do I notice in my body?

What does my anxious mind immediately tell me those sensations mean?

Now ask:

Is what I'm experiencing uncomfortable—or is there evidence that I am actually in danger?

3. Is anxiety helping you prepare—or keeping you stuck?

Some anxiety is useful.

Worrying about an upcoming interview might encourage you to prepare. Feeling nervous before an important medical appointment might remind you to write down your questions.

But preparation eventually produces an action. Anxiety can keep producing more anxiety. Think about something you've been worrying about.

What useful action has this worry encouraged me to take?

Have I already done what reasonably can be done?

Am I solving the problem—or repeatedly thinking about the problem? What is ONE useful next step I can take?

4. What is anxiety deciding for you?

Anxiety often gains power quietly through avoidance.

Think about the last few weeks.

What have I avoided, postponed, escaped from, cancelled, or said no to because I felt anxious?

Choose one.

What was I afraid would happen?

What did avoiding it give me in the short term?

What has avoiding it cost me in the longer term?

Now consider:

What might I have done if anxiety were allowed a voice—but not a vote?

5. Are you waiting to feel calm before you start living?

Finish this sentence without thinking about it too much:

“When I finally stop feeling anxious, I'll __________________________.” Read your answer again.

Now ask yourself:

Why does anxiety have to disappear before I am allowed to do that? Could I take one small step toward it while still feeling some anxiety?

The goal isn't necessarily to become fearless first. Your original article asks a particularly useful question: “What would I do next if I were allowed to feel anxious while doing it?”

6. Are you looking for reassurance—or certainty?

When we're anxious, reassurance can feel wonderful.

“Do you think I'm okay?”

“Are you sure they're not angry with me?”

“Do you think this is normal?”

Sometimes reassurance is appropriate. But notice what happens when you repeatedly need the same reassurance and the relief never lasts very long—one of the patterns identified in your original blog.

What have I been asking other people—or the internet—to reassure me about? How long does the reassurance actually make me feel better?

What am I really looking for: reassurance, or a guarantee that nothing bad will happen? Can anyone realistically give me that guarantee?

7. What does your anxiety get wrong about you?

Write down something anxiety predicts about you.

Maybe:

I won't be able to handle it.

I'll fall apart.

I'll embarrass myself.

I'll panic.

Everyone will notice.

My anxious prediction is:

Now think about another difficult situation when you felt anxious and went through it anyway.

What happened?

What did I do to cope?

What does that experience tell me about myself that anxiety conveniently forgot to mention?

8. Is your alarm reacting to NOW—or to WHAT IF?

Draw a line down the middle of a journal page.

On the left write:

WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?

On the right write:

WHAT AM I AFRAID MIGHT HAPPEN?

Fill in both sides.

Then look carefully at where most of the fear lives.

Is my nervous system responding primarily to something happening now—or to something my mind has traveled into the future to imagine?

That doesn't make the fear foolish or imaginary. The feeling is real. But a real feeling and a real danger aren't necessarily the same thing.

9. What would you do next if anxiety didn't have to disappear first? This time, don't ask:

“How do I make this anxiety stop?”

Try asking:

“What would I do next if I were allowed to feel anxious while doing it?” My answer:

What is the smallest version of that action I could actually attempt?

What would count as success—doing it perfectly, or simply doing it while anxiety was present?

10. What would change if anxiety stopped making the decisions? Imagine something different.

Not a life without anxiety.

A life in which anxiety occasionally sits beside you, complains loudly, predicts terrible things, makes your stomach flutter and tells you that you probably shouldn't go...

and you get to decide anyway.

What would you do differently?

Where would you go?

What would you try?

Who would you spend time with?

What would you stop avoiding?

What is ONE decision you could make differently this week?

One Last Question

Go back to the beginning of this journal.

Think again about the anxiety that brought you here.

Then ask yourself:

Is my anxiety warning me—or has it started running my life?

If it's warning you, listen. There may be something useful there.

If it's running your life, perhaps the goal isn't to fight harder to make it disappear.

Perhaps the work is learning to say:

“I hear you. I know you're here. But you don't get to make this decision for me.” Because the goal isn't a life with zero anxiety.

It's a life in which anxiety no longer makes all the decisions.