By Kimberly Mueller, M.Sc, Registered Psychologist and co-founder SheWorth
As a therapist, I often encounter clients who are struggling with anxiety. They sit down in my chair and say “My anxiety is out of control, can you help me make it go away?” I calmly listen, nodding my head at the innumerable struggles that anxiety can wreak on people’s lives. Once we have gathered some history and start to deconstruct their anxiety, I talk about WHY we have anxiety in the first place.
Anxiety is an evolutionary adaptation so that when we encounter “fearful” situations, we are prepared to fight, flight, or freeze. For example, when we were wandering on the African savanna in our early days and we encountered a lion, our body quickly froze, and then either prepared us to run (by stopping blood flow to our digestion and diverting it to our large muscle groups), to fight back, or to remain frozen. This all makes complete sense given the circumstances, but unfortunately, our minds have not caught up to the realities of our safer environments.
Anxiety occurs when we are misinterpreting, and often overestimating threat. For example, the difficult conversation you need to have with your boss or the uncertainty we may have about the future gets interpreted by our brains as a lion about to attack. This is certainly not beneficial, accurate or helpful.
How do we approach a fear? WE break it down, into something called “graduated exposure,” which is just a fancy term for identifying what we are afraid of and slowly, and systematically moving toward it. The more we avoid “scary” things, the more they grow. The more we approach them, the smaller they become.
SheWorth uses this very concept in the anatomy of a Brave Moment. We believe that women are often faced with situations that feel anxiety-provoking and it would be easier to just “avoid” them and walk away. The problem is, this only exacerbates and prolongs the anxiety. So…we are challenging every woman when you face a moment that feels uncomfortable, scary, and challenging to be BRAVE and approach it. Don’t avoid it.
The benefit? You will slowly start to rebuild your neural circuitry to no longer be afraid of previously uncomfortable situations. When you start to practice Brave Moments, you ultimately improve your self-worth. Why is this? The reason is that when we do things we are afraid of, we start to feel better about ourselves and this reinforces that we are indeed worthy. Repeated graduated exposure to things you fear acts as an anxiety treatment, it helps your anxiety, self-worth and overall well-being.
SheWorth believes every single woman has the ability to have Brave Moments and deserves to experience a high sense of self-worth. Visit us to learn more about our fabulous free resources, as well as our beautiful SheWorth journal which is offered using science-based strategies for you as anxiety treatment to improve your self-worth.
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