The anxiety effort paradox

You arrived at psychotherapy with the intent of reducing or eliminating anxiety and depression. You have probably heard that there are tools, techniques, and coping skills that will either help you manage anxiety or cure it completely. Other people around you seem to be less anxious and seem to use methods like meditation, yoga, nutrition, sleep, and exercise to stay calm and healthy. For some reason, the more you try these methods, the more anxious you feel. Or, you’re having trouble consistently engaging in these behaviors, even though you commit with your whole heart and you completely believe that they would be helpful for you. This is the anxiety effort paradox.

What do overcoming anxiety, falling asleep, sneezing and feeling happy have in common? They all require surrender! You have to surrender to the process to allow it to either pass or to happen.

The opposite of surrender is called paradoxical effort, where the more effort you put towards a certain outcome, the further you get from it. Paradoxical effort keeps you stuck, unable to move through uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

Let’s use sensations as an example: Panic attacks occur when you perceive a threat, have the fight-or-flight response, and add an oh, no, I shouldn’t be having these sensations! reaction. When this happens, your amygdala will give you more adrenaline. You’ll keep having more and more of those sensations until it subjectively feels out of your control. In this case, paradoxical effort is: the more you try not to have sensations, the more sensations you have.

As you’re learning to work through panic attacks, you might learn that you need to invite in your sensations in order for them to decrease. Yet, if you secretly hope that when you invite in your sensations, they go away, you will get caught in paradoxical effort and have more sensations.

This also happens with sleeping. One thinking pattern that maintains insomnia is thinking, I need to sleep tonight or I will be exhausted and unable to perform tomorrow. If you worry and worry about this as you try to sleep, you won’t be able to relax enough to fall asleep. Paradoxically, you have to let yourself surrender to the possibility that you might not sleep, you might be exhausted tomorrow, and you might not be able to perform, in order to relax enough to sleep. If you try to trick yourself into thinking this, but you are not actually willing to surrender to being tired tomorrow, you won’t be able to relax enough to sleep.

These paradoxes can make you feel crazy, but your mind is working perfectly. Cells have evolved to fight off infection. Minds have evolved to fight off discomfort and distress. When your mind detects thoughts, feelings, or sensations that cause discomfort and distress, it searches for the source and tries to get rid of it. If the source of discomfort and distress is an actual problem, like hunger, you are typically in luck in the modern world! Eat something and the thought, feeling, and sensation will go away. If the source of discomfort and distress is not an actual problem, but instead another thought, sensation, or feeling, trying to fight it off will get you caught in a loop and it will get worse. Modern life makes us believe that if something causes discomfort or distress, we should be able to do something to make it go away. It works for basically everything except the private experiences of your consciousness. The more you fight with your mind, the worse you will feel.