— by Dr. Gregory Jantz

How The Tentacles Of Anxiety Affect Your Life

Millions of people live day in and day out with the negative—and sometimes severe—consequences of uncontrolled anxiety without ever recognizing it as such. For many, anxiety has been a part of daily life for so long—often developing in early childhood—that it is accepted as “normal”.  That’s bad enough for each individual, but we must multiply that number by all the others who are also negatively affected: parents, spouses, children, employers, co-workers, friends, neighbors, and even strangers they interact with at the coffee shop or grocery store.

Untreated anxiety can negatively influence every aspect of life, including areas you may not consider:

Physical and Mental Well-being

Anxiety can take a toll on our mental and physical health—and that’s before you consider how anxiety can disrupt healthy eating and sleep habits and inhibit proper exercise. Furthermore, anxiety has been linked to other disorders, including heart disease, migraine headaches, insomnia, chronic respiratory disorders, and gastrointestinal disorders. Untreated anxiety often makes dealing with associated physical conditions much more difficult.

Social Freedom and Enjoyment

People with severe symptoms of anxiety report being terrified to ride in an elevator with strangers. They fear ordering food at a restaurant, answering an unexpected phone call, being caught in casual conversation with a coworker at the office copy machine—or any of a thousand other daily contacts with people that are bound to occur.

What are the chances, then, that they would choose to spend a day at an amusement park with friends, or attend a crowded concert, or say yes when invited to a going-away party for a coworker at a popular nightclub? Anxiety has a way of shrinking a person’s world down to a handful of places, activities, and experiences that feel “safe.” 

Professional Opportunity and Success

Imagine a company employee who takes the stairs to avoid elevator small talk, rarely enters the break room, never accepts a lunch invitation from coworkers or supervisors, and speaks mostly in monosyllables on those occasions when avoidance fails. This person probably is the first to arrive and the last to leave every day, but their work may be only so-so because they never ask for help or feedback for fear of being thought incompetent.

How would you rate this person’s chances for career advancement? Or of being among the first to be laid off when the need arises? It is impossible to overstate the cost of untreated anxiety in the workplace—measured first in misery for those who live like this but also in lost potential, lower wages, and job insecurity. Beyond that, businesses themselves lose the full, productive services of otherwise qualified and competent employees.

Civic Engagement

Imagine how a person who is afraid of crowds and who avoids confining spaces at all costs would feel about going to vote on election day. How would the prospect of attending a public meeting on an important issue feel to someone reluctant to speak up even when ordering fast-food at a drive-thru window? In a very real sense, untreated anxiety has the potential to rob people of their voice in society—and, conversely, to rob society of their unique and valuable perspective.

Spiritual Resilience

People of faith often find it difficult to acknowledge that prayer and other spiritual healing practices must be accompanied by the help and expertise of medical professionals. It is sadly common for those people to conclude that their inability to get the upper hand on their disorder by appealing to God alone is a sign of failure—theirs or God’s. As a result, they can lose faith at exactly the moment when they need it most.

Faith and medicine do not stand in either-or opposition to each other. Instead, they work hand in glove, because committing to and successfully sticking with treatment very often requires inner strength and resolve that only trust in God can deliver. Left untreated, anxiety can ultimately cut you off from both sources of help.

Your Personal Reset Plan

One effect of living with untreated anxiety for years is that you lose sight of what life could be like without it. You adjust to a distorted view of normal. Use these exercises to break that pattern and reclaim your hope in a better future.

1. Engage with others who experience anxiety. Self-isolation is often one of the first things people in mental and emotional distress do to protect themselves. It is also one of the most detrimental. Left alone, it’s easy for you to conclude that your condition is simply who you are, with nothing more to be done. Listening to the struggles of others and seeing the similarities between your story and theirs can break that spell. Furthermore, others may have found solutions that will work for you as well, or you’ll have something to offer them. Community is always a step in the right direction. 

Answer these questions: Who do I know who has experienced anxiety that I can talk to? What online, national, or local groups or communities support people who experience anxiety? (A Google search might help you answer this question) 

2. Make a wish list of things you would do, if not for anxiety in your life. Be bold, and be specific. Think back to dreams you had when you were younger—to learn to sail, take an art-history tour through Italy, write a screenplay, or start a business. Considering these things will help you see more clearly what anxiety has cost you—freedom, enjoyment, opportunity, and achievement. The purpose is not to remind you of pain but to fuel your motivation to do what is necessary to reclaim all that you’ve lost. Give yourself permission to dream big. You are worth it!

3. In your journal, explore your reasons for wanting to heal from anxiety. Write this sentence and then complete it for each reason you can think of: “I yearn to be free of anxiety because . . .” Some examples might include, “I want to feel more healthy,” or “I want to build better relationships,” or “I want to explore the world, not hide from it.” In this exercise you are reclaiming two powerful words that you may have lost along the way: “I want.”

4. Pick one thing from your wish list above and start planning for it to come true. Your mind may still tell you it’s impossible, but that doesn’t matter. Make a plan anyway, in detail. Courage (and healing) is found when we act in spite of fear, not wait for it to disappear.

5. Create a storyboard or collage of imagery that describes what you want from your life. Yes, this will make you feel that you are back in school—the magazines, the scissors for clipping out images, the smell of Elmer’s glue. Let the art embody your desire. Place it somewhere you’ll see it every day.

So there’s good news: YOU get to decide which path you will take—and I have faith that you will take the path toward healing.

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Taken from The Anxiety Reset by Gregory L. Jantz Ph.D. Copyright © 2021. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.

Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center • A Place of HOPE in Edmonds, Washington, is an expert on depression, anxiety, eating disorders, technology addiction and abuse. His new book is The Anxiety Reset: A Life-Changing Approach to Overcoming Fear, Stress, Worry, Panic Attacks, OCD and More

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