What I do when anxiety shows up and won't leave
By Andy Petranek
A 3-part process for being your own best friend and rescuer when life gets hard.
How do you handle it when life knocks you sideways? When a setback lands and your mind won’t stop chewing on it? How resilient are you, really?
I ask because I had to build my answer the hard way.
In 2019, my big year, panic attacks started showing up out of nowhere. Anxiety. Fear. Recurring, uninvited, and relentless. And here’s the humbling part: I had a Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology. I’d studied this stuff formally. Turns out understanding something in a classroom and living it at 2am are two very different sports.
I was desperate to get out of that state, and for a long time nothing worked.
The turn came when I finally saw where the pain was actually coming from. It was coming from the way I was relating to myself and to what was happening. The events themselves were just events.
People ask me all the time how I deal with the hard stretches now. And a while back, something happened that had me questioning myself, my capacity as a coach, a father, a husband. It sent me right back to my own process, so I figured I’d write it down.
First, the frame that makes the whole thing work. I treat challenges as opportunities to practice: to support myself, to loosen old patterns, to build the muscle. And the steps below have nothing to do with the actual life events you’re facing. Those will resolve themselves over time, or they won’t. What you’re working with here is the anxiety, worry, fear, and doubt that look like they’re coming from the outside, when they’re actually coming from how you’re relating to the events, and to yourself.
Here’s the process. 3 parts.
1. Stop fighting the feeling. Accept it, face it, be with it.
Every time you fight a feeling, struggle against it, or try to make it go away, you teach your nervous system that the feeling is a real threat.
A tiger chasing you is a real threat. Someone physically coming at you is a real threat. A wave of dread on a Tuesday is a feeling. But your mind can’t tell the difference, so it fires up the sympathetic nervous system, fight, flight, or freeze, exactly as if the tiger were in the room.
And here’s the trap: fighting, running, or freezing confirms the threat. Your system goes, “See? We’re reacting, so it must be dangerous.” Round and round.
So I do the opposite. I let the feeling be there. I face it. I sit with it like it’s a scared animal instead of an enemy. That’s what tells the nervous system the alarm can stand down.
2. Question your thinking.
Has it ever occurred to you that you are not your thoughts? Or that you don’t have to believe them?
Unquestioned thoughts run the whole show. This situation is bad. That decision was a costly mistake. I should have done it differently. Here’s how it all falls apart from here. Thoughts like those generate doubt, worry, fear, and anxiety, and those feelings generate more dreadful thoughts. An infinite loop, like standing between two mirrors facing each other.
The way out is to take one of the mirrors away. Question the thought. Is it actually true? Sit with that honestly for a minute.
Most of the time, mine isn’t.
3. Lean into your morning routine.
If you don’t have one, build one. Think of it as an act of self-respect, proof, delivered daily, that you show up for yourself and keep your word to yourself. Over time that builds self-trust, and self-trust is exactly what you need when the hard stretch hits.
Length and difficulty don’t matter. What matters is that it’s yours and you do it.
Mine: a green drink in about 32 ounces of water, a walk or run (usually with my dogs), meditation, a cold plunge, a core and mobility warm-up, and journaling. Somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours, depending on the day. Yours could be prayer, reading, a note of appreciation to someone, yoga, a walk outside. Keep it short enough to actually do every day.
And do it early. I start, and sometimes finish, before anyone else is awake, usually before sunrise. That way I get all the way through it before the day gets ahead of me.
That’s the process. If anxiety, worry, fear, or doubt has been riding you lately, try it. Be the friend who shows up for you at 2am. Be your own rescuer when rescue is needed.
And if you’re in the thick of it, reach out. I’ve been there.
With love, Andy