Kathleen Smith - Everything Isnt Terrible: Conquer Your Insecurities, Interrupt Your Anxiety, and Finally Calm Down

We truly live in anxious times. In a recent public opinion poll, the American Psychiatric Association reported that a majority of Americans are anxious about their safety, their health, their finances, their relationships, and, of course, politics. We fight on Facebook, we flee the Thanksgiving table, or we freeze up and hope someone calmer will solve the worlds problems. Stuck on high alert, weve stopped looking at the facts and started assessing situations based on our feelings. Were reacting instead of acting, leading, and calming the hell down.

I live and work as a therapist in perhaps the most anxious city in America: Washington, DC. Many of my clients want to be beacons of calmness and wisdom in our anxious world. Others just want to get through the day without snapping at their mother or stalking their exs Instagram. They rely heavily on encouragement from others. Some of them fear vulnerability in their relationships or avoid their anxious coworkers. Others simply feel overwhelmed by the dumpster fire that is our country right now. Sound familiar?

At the end of the day, we all just want long-term, life-altering change. We all want to live a life guided by principle rather than fear or worry. And deep down, we do have the capacity to calm ourselves. We are capable of shutting off our autopilot and grabbing the controls. And by choosing how we handle our anxiety, we choose our fate. So let me tell you about a theory that changed my life.

Every therapist has a theory that guides them in their work with clients. Mine is a theory of human behavior known as Bowen theory. Murray Bowen was a psychiatrist and the father of family psychotherapy. He was from Tennessee, just like me, and I liked his brilliant yet folksy way of describing relationships. Traditional therapists focused on individual people, but Dr. Bowen believed that we could only learn to calm down when we looked at our relationship systems. Because when we feel anxious, we often try to make other people change. We try to calm everyone else down so we can finally relax. But if you can work on managing yourself in these relationships, its likely that your family, your workplace, and even the greater world will calm down a little too.

Dr. Bowen taught that if anxiety is generated in our relationships, then it can also be fixed in relationships. Therefore, long-term change doesnt happen in isolation, or even on a therapists couch. It happens when were willing to work on being our best selves in our most difficult relationships. I realize this sounds gross and hard, but boy, does it make a difference. If a person can learn to think and act for herself in her anxious family, her anxious community, and her anxious world, then her sense of self wont be so dependent on the cooperation of others.

Id love for you to think that Im a genius, but many of the ideas in the book come straight from Bowen theory. You dont need to be an expert in theory to read this book. But if youre interested in learning more, Ive included some basic definitions and resources at the back to help you get started.

Each chapter in this book will examine a particular arena of life where anxiety can get you into trouble. Well take a look at your anxious self, your relationships, your career, and the broader world. Ill use examples from my therapy work to help you get a better picture of what it looks like to build a stronger self and reduce overall anxiety. To protect the confidentiality of my clients, names and identifying information have been changed. Each example is a composite of many people with similar challenges. You may find that you see yourself in a number of these people. I certainly do.

Building a solid, principled self is a complex and lifelong process. To keep you from feeling too overwhelmed, Ill rely on three verbs throughout the book: observing, evaluating, and interrupting your anxious functioning.

First, you have to start observing. Before you can change your anxious behaviors, you need to know what they are. By observing yourself, youre already using the part of your brain that helps calm you down. Much of the book will illustrate the common behaviors that accompany anxiety, so you can become an expert at recognizing them.

Second, you have to evaluate your behavior. You have to take a hard look at what you do to manage your anxiety, and ask yourself, Is this who I really want to be? Ill talk about how to live a life that is guided by thinking and by principle, and not by freaking the hell out.

Third, you have to interrupt whats automatic. Once youve observed your automatic behaviors, and decided how you really want to live, you have to start looking for opportunities to interrupt your autopilot. This implies a certain level of discomfort. Because any time you do something you wouldnt normally do, its a little uncomfortable. Or a lot.

After working on building a more solid self, people often comment that their previous life is totally unrecognizable from their current one. They spend less energy seeking approval and have more energy to work on their goals. They have fewer emotional and physical symptoms. Their relationships are more vulnerable and less anxious.

Some may argue that focusing on yourself while our world is on fire is selfish. But I think the real problem is that theres not enough self in how we respond to the challenges we face. The calmest people will emerge as the change makers, because they understand that in the anxious equation of todays world, you are the only variable you can manipulate.