FACING THE FACELESS DREAD
Ugh, I’m anxious. I’m so busy and sometimes everything wants my focus. This feeling makes me want to fix change or medicate … uh, something. Something unsettling I can’t identify. Like I’m waiting for an existential jump scare. Washing dishes is good at times like this. Hahaha – but I can’t bring my kitchen sink whenever I get anxious.
So, what is really going on when I feel this unsettling faceless electric dread? Let’s look at it.
Anxiety is a future-oriented state of apprehension in response to perceived threat, uncertainty, or potential negative outcomes. It differs from fear, which responds to immediate danger we can see and touch. Anxiety is fear directed toward unseen speculation, leaving us without a clear framework for resolution.
In anxiety, our nervous and endocrine systems are on high alert without a definable cause. We become cut off, alone, in a state of amplified readiness, scanning for danger that isn’t clear.
At its base, anxiety is natural, it evolved as a survival mechanism that heightens vigilance and prepares us to fight, flight, or freeze. Aside from being a neuro-alert system, it can direct mental focus and enhance performance. When I teach to businesses in the city, I remind people that a touch of anxiety likely drew them to this fast-paced life. As a performer, I’ve learned that a bit of stage fright sharpens focus and presence.
However, chronic anxiety can harm us deeply. It enlarges the amygdala increasing reactivity, shrinks the hippocampus impairing memory and emotional regulation, disrupts the prefrontal cortex, making it harder to calm ourselves, and dysregulates the nervous system causing tension, digestive issues, and sleep disturbances. These affects create a feedback loop between the mind and our nervous system feeding itself with catastrophic thinking, rumination, and the urge to control the uncontrollable.
So how can we train the body/mind system to work with anxiety, so it can guide us without taking control.
Anxiety, Self-Harm, and Compulsions
When anxiety triggers us, we look for an escape like a wild animal. We often reach for habits that soothe in the short term, but ultimately leave us vulnerable and deflated. As a rule, unconscious behaviors ultimately entrench suffering. We might pick our skin, pull our hair, clench our jaw, overeat, drink to numb, or compulsively scroll. Each action offers a brief relief from the discomfort but often creates guilt, physical pain, or more anxiety, trapping us in a loop.
These habits are attempts to manage the unbearable energy of anxiety in the body. They are signals that we need to pause, return to the present, and tend to the body and mind directly, rather than seeking to escape.
Pause before you Act on Anxiety
One of the most helpful rules I’ve learned is to Never act on anxiety.
When we feel anxious, there is an urge to fix, flee, or figure out what went wrong. We want to act, to get rid of the discomfort. But action from anxiety often perpetuate further anxiety, leading to impulsive decisions or words we regret.
Instead, just pause. Allow the anxiety to be there, look at it without feeding it. Then check your body. Are you ready to jump out of your skin? Clenching your fists or jaw? Tapping your feet? On the edge of your seat ready to start doom scrolling at the meeting?
When we pause, we shift from reacting to observing, from doing to being.
The Practice: Stop, Drop, Open
🪐 STOP:
When you notice anxiety, pause. Cut the loop of feeding your brain and having it frighten you in return. Acknowledge anxiety’s presence. Feel your feet on the ground. If you are walking down the street, rather than speeding up to outrun the discomfort, turn you mind to include the body, slow your pace, and rejoin yourself.
🌿 DROP:
Drop your attention from the spiraling thoughts into your body and breath. Notice the sensations: tightness in the chest, clenching in the belly, tension in the shoulders. Take three slow, deep breaths, lengthening the exhale on each breath to signal safety to your nervous system.
If you are at your desk feeling anxious, take a breath and notice the chair beneath you, the sensation of your hands resting, your feet on the floor. Let your awareness drop fully into your body.
🪶 OPEN:
Once you have paused and acknowledged the body, allow your breath to soften the areas of tension. Breathe into the tightness with warmth, like comforting a frightened child or a barking dog. Anxiety is the body trying to protect a frightened part of you; so treat it with kindness or you will only make things worse. Boycott judgement. Dont think about “relaxing”. Just open and become aware.
Opening means allowing the breath to flow fully and letting the body gradually release its grip. You can place a hand on your heart or belly, reminding yourself:
“I’m here with you.”
When our mind and body are present, we are more complete, as though we’ve returned home. There may be fear, but we can handle it together.
This practice counters the cycle of anxiety feeding on itself. By not acting from anxiety, by stopping, dropping, and opening, you shift from reactive patterns to responsive presence. You do not have to get rid of anxiety to learn to live with it. Just remember it’s stories are never real. Drop the narrative and feel.
Welcome home.