You know what makes every problem more of a problem?

Anxiety.

The problem is, you can’t solve anxiety the way you solve other problems.

Like it sucks when you get a bad haircut, when your credit card gets scammed, or when a deadline gets moved. But at least those things are out there in the world. It doesn’t stop them sucking any less, but you can at least try to solve them. You can buy a hat. You can call the bank.

Anxiety doesn’t work like that. Anxiety is different, and in a way worse, because it hijacks how you think and how you see the world.

Being anxious is so similar to our normal waking state that you probably don’t even notice it taking over your brain. When you’re anxious, you can still sleep, eat, doomscroll or do the crossword. You can still crack jokes and cross the road. You still feel like you.

But when we are anxious, we don’t just feel anxious, we are anxious. We think as an anxious person and look out through anxiety’s eyes. For a while, anxiety is our standpoint in the world. For a time, we’ve become someone else, and that makes it very hard to recognise what’s happened.

Losing introspection

One way to think about this strange transition is it’s like the moment someone gets infected by a zombie. The cliché is that they’re normal, they go quiet for a second, then a moment later are lunging for live flesh. Now imagine that sequence from the zombie’s perspective. They’re not thinking, “Oh, wow, I’m not acting like myself, I should calm down.” In the same way, we rarely say to ourselves, “Oh, I’m being anxious right now.”

Losing our introspection is dangerous, especially when we start acting from this flawed view of the world. Here are a few personal examples:

• I’m sitting in the passenger seat yelling at the driver to “watch where you’re going!” They’re probably driving fine, but my anxiety needs them to slow down.
• I’m getting ready for a running race, worrying about whether the apartment’s too hot and whether I’ve had enough water. My anxiety needs the conditions to be just right.
• I’m in a meeting, pointing out every problem I can see. The plan is probably good enough, but my anxiety needs everything to change.

Altered states

Another way to understand this powerful, deranging side of anxiety is to think of it as a different state of consciousness. This is natural, not mystical. Plenty of things can shift us into a different state of being: cold water, a perfume, a conspiracy theory, an acid trip. I like to think of Greek Gods in this way. Hermes, for example, is a quick, restless state of mind. It makes you want to talk, to write, to connect with people. When you’re typing excitedly to a friend, or trying to get an idea across to someone on Zoom, you could be said to be possessed by Hermes.

What you can do

As a mere mortal, we can’t go head to head with a god, and we can’t just ignore or dismiss anxiety’s influence on our lives. But here are a couple of things that might help:

• Drop the thinking. You can’t beat anxiety with more thinking. Anxiety is like a high-powered lawyer who’ll come up with a million arguments before admitting it has no idea what it’s doing. In those personal cases I shared, I believed I was acting correctly and could list many reasons why. As best you can, save your energy and avoid arguing with yourself.

• Notice and limit action. Actions are easier to spot than thoughts. You might be able to notice that you’ve changed your outfit ten times, or that you’re drinking far more water than usual. The goal isn’t to remove anxiety, but to try to limit how much you act on your anxiety. Feeling off-kilter in a meeting for a few minutes is one thing, telling your boss you want to quit is another.

Anxiety and other strong emotions can take us over, making us think and act like them without our realising it. But like a drug trip, or a Hermes-type consciousness, anxiety is a temporary state. The more you practise seeing it objectively, instead of getting sucked in and acting as it, the faster you can get back to being yourself.