Defeating Anxiety AA Style: One Day At A Time
In the fight to keep anxiety at bay, borrowing from the Alcoholic Anonymous’ playbook can help.
I have always been a very anxious person, to the point where anxiety and worry about the future were so intense they were preventing me from fully living in the present. Until I eventually had an anxiety attack.
I didn’t recognize it for what it was in the moment. I felt short of breath, then, as I tried to breath, it was as if the world had suddenly ran out of air. There was nothing left but void. No matter how hard I tried, nothing was getting into my lungs.
It felt like drowning on dry land.
That was about a year and a half ago, and now I’m a very different person. I can’t say I’ve completely defeated anxiety, but I’ve reduced it by about 80–90%. Therapy has been helping, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who suffers from anxiety. Anything else I recommend you try here should be second to therapy, not instead of therapy.
Anxiety, like alcoholism, is a disease
We understand anxiety like something we all feel from time to time, but what most of us ignore is that anxiety disorder is an actual disease, which, if it gets serious enough, can completely paralyze your life. Just like alcoholism.
With alcoholics, the first step towards recovering is admitting you have a problem. With anxiety, it’s the same thing. Admitting you have an issue that’s robbing days out of your life isn’t always easy. It requires a lot of self-awareness and reflection, but once you do it, you’ll find it much easier to start to fight it. I know I did.
Stay sober one day at a time
One of the guiding philosophies of the Alcoholics Anonymous is that sobriety is attained one day at a time. The same goes for fending off anxiety.
The one day at time has a double meaning to me. In one hand, it means I’ve avoided falling in the traps of anxiety for one more day. In another hand, it means I’m living my life one day at a time, concentrating on what’s happening today, not on what’s coming tomorrow.
As an anxious person, I often found myself focused on what I expected to happen next year, or in a decade from now, or even twenty years from now — and I completely forgot about today.
Being extremely anxious, it’s easy to forget that the foundations to whatever I wish would happen in five years need to be build today. Anxiety used to often paralyze me in a way that even doing basic daily tasks became impossible, since my mind was so occupied with thoughts of what was to come.
The truth is all any of us have is today, since the past is past and the future will forever be ahead of us.
This is one of my favorite quotes, and it always helps to keep me grounded:
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard
What’s to come doesn’t matter as much as what I do today. That’s what one day at a time means for me: if I manage to make today matter, I’m a winner.
Recovering alcoholics enjoy daily sobriety from inebriation, recovering anxious people stay sober on today. It’s an enlightening kind of sobriety.
Recognize the power that anxiety has over you
Any recovering alcoholic will avoid alcohol because they know once they take a sip, they’re lost. They have no poder over alcohol, only the power to stay away from it if they wish to remain sober.
Anxiety is not a liquid that you can literally refuse to drink, it is something that comes from inside and follows you like a shadow. But recognizing the power that anxiety has over you can dilute the shadow, bathing it in the light of self-knowledge.
Recognizing that anxiety can paralyze you takes power away from it bit by bit.
I found out that I can’r refuse to have anxiety, but I can refuse to give in to it. I can take a deep breath and remind myself of the task at hand, bringing my focus into what matters: the present. Like the alcoholic who refuses a drink, it’s an exercise, and not an easy one, but one that can be done.
Find help
Like no recovering alcoholic is expected to tread the path alone, no anxious person should go on without help.
But here is the caveat: find the help of the right person.
A friend or family member who’s also battling anxiety can be a start, because they might be able to relate, but choose them wisely. Friends and family members can be great people, but they can also be enablers and deniers, standing in the way of you facing the worse aspects of your problems head-on. Friends and family can also be great people to vent to, but specialized, professional help is the ideal. That is, find a therapist.
Anxiety can be intense, overwhelming, and crippling, but it can be beaten. Just remember: take it one day at a time.
