Reflections on Anxiety: A practice
Reflections on Anxiety
Anxiety gets a bad reputation. In therapy rooms and everyday conversation alike, it's often spoken about as something to be managed, silenced, or overridden — a problem part to be handled by a "calmer," more capable part of us. But from an IFS perspective, anxious parts aren't malfunctions. They have a role to play. They are trying, however clumsily, to keep us safe.
The trouble isn't that anxiety exists — it's that anxious parts can get stuck. Stuck in a level of arousal that made sense once, in a moment that needed vigilance, but which now operates at 3am in the morning, over things that were never actually emergencies. When we try to simply manage or suppress these parts, we miss the chance to actually help them. And parts that don't feel met tend to get louder, not quieter.
So instead of managing, we meet and come into relationship.
A practice: getting to know your anxious part
The next time anxiety shows up, with Self energy try turning toward it rather than away from it — with curiosity rather than judgment.
Get to know it. See if it has a name, an age, a shape, a felt sense in the body.
Ask what it's afraid of. Anxious parts are almost always guarding something tender — an exile, an old wound, a fear of things falling apart in some way.
Do the healing work. As that part comes into relationship with the Self, it feels seen, heard and understood. The burden it carries is transformed and released, and so it is able to become less extreme in its role. This is slow, gentle work, and it doesn't happen in one sitting.
Then comes rehabilitation
Once an anxious part feels less burdened, something interesting happens — it becomes available for a new kind of relationship and role within the system. This is where the coaching begins: helping the part naturally find more productive ways to contribute than obsessing, ruminating, or catastrophising about the future.
Self-energy leads this process — kind but firm. We invite it this part of us to mature and senior alongside us. Give it real problems to chew on instead of imagined future disasters. Keep it engaged with what's actually in front of us. And where possible, give it plenty of exposure to nature and the natural world — anxious parts often soften in the presence of something larger, slower, and steadier than the nervous system's own pace.
Anxiety, met well, doesn't need to be exiled or managed into silence. It can mature into a wise, careful and experienced ally, helping us solve problems and make more informed choices and decisions.