Anxiety

Exercises & Practices

Is This Me?

These questions aren't a test. Just notice your internal response — what lands, what you want to skip past, what makes you uncomfortable.

• Does your mind run worst-case scenarios on repeat — at night, in the car, during quiet moments — and you can't turn it off?

• Have you had physical symptoms — racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, stomach problems — that turned out to be anxiety, not a medical emergency?

• Is your world getting smaller? Are there things you used to do without thinking that now feel impossible or exhausting?

• Do you worry about your worrying — dreading the next panic attack or anxious episode almost as much as the thing itself?

• Do you find yourself avoiding situations, conversations, or decisions — not because they're actually dangerous, but because they might make you feel anxious?

• When something uncertain comes up, does your brain immediately jump to the worst possible outcome and then treat it as if it's already happening?

• Do people tell you to relax, and it makes you feel worse — because if you could relax, you would?

• Have you become the person who checks, double-checks, controls, plans, or manages everything — because the alternative feels unbearable?

• Do you look competent and together on the outside while running an exhausting internal alarm system that never shuts off?

Questions Worth Sitting With

These don't have quick answers. Sit with them. Let them work on you over days, not minutes.

• What is your alarm system actually protecting you from? Not what it says it's protecting you from — but the real fear underneath. Rejection? Failure? Being seen? Being alone?

• When did this start? Can you trace it to a season, an event, a relationship, or a pattern in your family? What was the first time you remember feeling this way?

• What would you do tomorrow if the anxiety just... wasn't there? Where would you go? Who would you call? What would you try? That gap between your life now and that life — that's what anxiety is costing you.

• Your brain produces anxious thoughts automatically — like smoke from a chimney. How much of what your brain tells you when you're anxious do you actually believe? And what if you didn't have to believe any of it?

• What are you avoiding right now that you know, deep down, you need to walk into? What would it take to walk in anyway — not without fear, but with it?

• If a stranger walked up to you and said the things your anxious brain tells you — you're going to fail, no one will like you, something terrible is about to happen — would you take them seriously? Then why do you take it seriously when the voice is inside your own head?

• Dr. Cloud says you can't reduce anxiety without stopping anxious behaviors first. What's the one avoidance behavior that's running your life right now?

• Of the four sources of anxiety — fear of rejection, control issues, perfectionism, feeling one-down — which one do you recognize most in yourself? What evidence do you see?

Growth Practices

Pick one. Try it this week. Notice what happens.

Week 1: Notice. This week, pay attention to your anxiety without trying to change it. When it shows up, name it: "There's anxiety." Notice where you feel it in your body. Notice what triggered it. Notice what story your brain is telling you. Notice what you want to do (avoid, control, check, fix). Don't change anything — just notice. Keep a simple log: what happened, what you felt, what your brain said, what you did.

Week 2: Let It Be. When anxiety arrives this week, try something counterintuitive: don't fight it and don't feed it. Don't wrestle it away and don't spiral into the catastrophic stories. Just let it be there — like weather happening inside you. Say to yourself: "I see you, but I'm not buying it today." Continue doing whatever you were doing. Set a timer for five minutes and observe what happens to the anxiety when you stop engaging with it. Most people find it rises, plateaus, and gradually fades.

Week 3: Face One Thing. Identify something you've been avoiding that is actually safe — a phone call, a social event, a conversation, an activity you used to enjoy. Do it this week, even though you feel anxious. Your job isn't to feel calm first; your job is to do the thing anxious and learn that you can handle it. Write down what happened afterward: what you feared, what actually occurred, and how you felt after.

Week 4: Build One Connection. Reach out to one person and let them into something real that's going on with you. It doesn't have to be about anxiety specifically — just practice letting someone past the surface. Tell them what you're actually feeling, not just what you're doing. Notice what it feels like to be known. Anxiety thrives in isolation; this practice starves it.

Week 5: Control Experiment. Each day this week, when you catch yourself trying to control something outside your control — a person, an outcome, a situation — pause. Name it: "This isn't mine to control." Redirect your energy to something you can actually affect. At the end of the week, note what you observed about how often you reach for control and what happens when you let go.

Scenario Cards

Scenario 1: The Shrinking Social Life You used to love hosting friends for dinner, but over the past year you've declined more and more invitations. Last week, you cancelled on your best friend's birthday at the last minute because the thought of small talk made your stomach knot up. Your friend was hurt. You feel guilty but also relieved you didn't have to go. Your partner has started making excuses for you.

What pattern do you see? What is the avoidance costing? If this were your friend, how would you lovingly support them without enabling the avoidance?

Scenario 2: The Micromanager You grew up with a parent whose moods were completely unpredictable. Now as an adult, you're known at work as someone who needs to oversee everything. At home, you monitor finances obsessively, check your kids' locations constantly, and get irritable when your partner makes plans without consulting you. Your partner says they feel controlled, not loved. You insist you're just being responsible. You're also exhausted and can't sleep.

How is the childhood showing up in the current behavior? What is this person actually trying to accomplish — and is it working? What would healthy self-control look like here?

Scenario 3: The Faith Question You've prayed daily for years for God to take away your anxiety, but it hasn't worked. You wonder if you don't have enough faith. A well-meaning friend suggested you "just trust God more," which made you feel worse. You've started to feel anxious about being anxious — what does it mean that you can't just "give it to God"?

What's wrong with the advice? How might faith and practical anxiety work go together rather than against each other? What would you want this person to know?

Journaling & Reflection

Looking Back

• When did you first become aware of anxiety in your life? Was there a specific moment, season, or relationship that brought it into focus? What do you remember about how it started?

• What did your childhood environment teach you about safety and predictability? Was your home stable or chaotic? Did you feel securely loved, or was love inconsistent? How might those early experiences show up in your anxiety patterns today?

• Who taught you how to handle fear? What messages did you receive — spoken or unspoken — about what to do when you were afraid? Were you comforted, dismissed, told to tough it out, or shamed?

Looking Inward

• When anxiety spikes, what story are you telling yourself? What does your internal voice say will happen? How much of that is actually likely? How much is catastrophizing?

• Write about what anxiety says to you. Give it a voice. What does it claim will happen? What is it trying to protect you from? Then write a response — what's true that anxiety doesn't want you to remember?

• Where are you trying to control things that aren't yours to control? People? Outcomes? The future? Other people's opinions? What would it look like to release those?

Looking Forward

• Describe a day in your life one year from now if you do the growth work on anxiety. What does morning feel like? What do you do without hesitating? What conversations do you have? Who knows you? What has changed?

• What is one thing you've been avoiding that you're willing to face this week? Not something dangerous — something that's actually safe but uncomfortable. What would it mean to do it anyway?

• Who actually knows what's going on with you? If no one does, what would you need to do to change that? What's getting in the way?