Can Everyone Overcome Anxiety Disorder?

Video Transcript

Can everyone overcome anxiety disorder?

It’s my opinion that everyone can overcome anxiety disorder when they get the right information and help, and do the right work.

That’s because anxiety is caused by specific reasons. Successfully identifying and addressing those reasons eliminates unhealthy anxiety.

Keep in mind that all of us are anxious from time to time, which is normal and healthy.

In fact, anxiety is an important survival mechanism designed to keep us safe. It does that by warning us of potential danger and motivating us to take action to avoid the threat or prepare to deal with it.

So, overall, anxiety isn’t bad. It’s a valuable asset.

However, healthy anxiety turns into unhealthy anxiety when we view everyday situations and circumstances as being more dangerous than they are.

We do this because we’ve had early life experiences that taught us bad things can happen even from ordinary experiences.

Some examples include:

• Being physically, sexually, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually abused when growing up.
• Experiencing a traumatic event when growing up.
• Having parents who worried a lot when growing up.
• Having overly critical parents when growing up.
• Having parents who overprotected you when growing up.
• Having parents who overindulged you when growing up.

And so on.

Recovery Support members can visit Chapter 7 in the Recovery Support area for a comprehensive list of background factors that often contribute to the development of unhealthy anxiety.

These backgrounds teach us life is dangerous if we aren’t careful. And that danger can come from anywhere, at any time, and from anything, including normal situations and circumstances. They can even come from people that should keep us safe and whom we should trust.

Consequently, we learn to approach life anxiously, which sets us on a course to develop issues with unhealthy anxiety.

So again, it’s not that anxiety is “bad,” but that we’ve developed a habit of coping with life in an overly anxious manner.

The good news is since we learned an unhealthy anxious approach to life, we can learn healthy ways of approaching life. Learning healthy, non-anxious ways of coping eliminates issues with unhealthy anxiety.

We can make that change by getting the right information, guidance, and support. By doing the work required, we can turn an unhealthy anxious approach to life into a healthy, non-anxious approach to life.

I believe everyone can make this healthy behavioral change. It’s just a matter of discovering your unhealthy behaviors and then replacing them with healthy behavior.

So again, yes! I believe everyone can overcome anxiety disorder when they get the right information and help and do the right work. So, no one needs to be stuck with unhealthy anxiety and symptoms.

Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to identify and address the issues that cause problems with unhealthy anxiety.