If you treat yourself with compassion after you challenge your suffering, no matter the outcome, you will reduce your future anticipatory anxiety and it will be easier to see these challenging experiences as an opportunity rather than a threat.

You're in it for the long-haul with yourself. Giving up is demoralizing and will increase your suffering. Demanding perfection isn't sustainable and will create a secondary self-critical loop that makes recovery harder. Commit to yourself and your own process. Even before you recover, you'll find that you like yourself when you own and appreciate your own journey. You have hope because you have you.

Everyone has underlying biological processes that make mental illness more or less likely. Lately, environmental stress is making those who aren’t particularly biologically vulnerable more vulnerable. Whether your emotional distress or impairment is primarily biological or environmental or a combination or the two, responding to yourself with courage, curiosity, and compassion is the key to responding well.

The more triggers you have, the more likely you are to feel dread about how you will respond. But then again, the more triggers you have, the more opportunities you have to practice.

Doing nothing to resist it or make it go away is a powerful and intentional stance. Just like other parts of the anxious pattern, every time you label and actively accept what you’re experiencing, your mind is less likely to associate that experience as something to fear. The anticipatory anxiety may not dissipate in this moment, but you’re setting yourself up for success in future moments.

When you try this new approach, it will be uncomfortable at first, but eventually your anxious moment becomes an opportunity for courage, empowerment, and self-trust.