Anxiety and Avoidance

"The cure for the pain is in the pain."

― Rumi

Your Anxiety Isn't the Problem. Your Avoidance Is.

Let’s talk about that feeling. The tightness in your chest. The frantic, looping thoughts that hijack your mind at three in the morning. The racing pulse that comes out of nowhere. That familiar hum of dread you feel on a Sunday night. We call it anxiety. And we have been taught to treat it like an enemy.

We treat it like a disease to be cured, a malfunction to be fixed, a monster to be slain. We throw medication at it, we distract ourselves from it, we numb it with alcohol, we try to outrun it with busyness. We spend a colossal amount of our life’s energy simply trying to make that feeling go away.

I’m here to tell you that you are fighting the wrong battle.

Your entire approach is wrong. Your anxiety is not the problem. Your frantic, desperate, and constant avoidance of it is the problem. You are spending all your time trying to smash the fire alarm, while refusing to acknowledge that your house is on fire.

Stop treating your anxiety like a disease. It's not. It’s information. It is a message from the wisest, most primal part of you. Every panic attack, every sleepless night, every racing thought is your inner wisdom screaming, with the force of a hurricane, that something in your life is fundamentally wrong and needs to change. The problem isn't the screaming. The problem is that you keep putting your hands over your ears and refusing to hear it.

The Messenger You Keep Shooting

Imagine you’re the captain of a ship. Deep in the engine room, a skilled engineer knows the vessel inside and out. One day, he notices a tiny leak. He sends a polite note up to your captain’s quarters. You’re busy, so you ignore it.

The leak gets a little worse. The engineer sends an urgent telegram this time. You glance at it, feel a flicker of annoyance at the interruption, and file it away for ‘later’.

Now the water is ankle deep. The engineer, panicked, starts ringing the ship’s emergency bell. The loud, clanging noise is jarring. It’s ruining the calm atmosphere on your deck. So what do you do? You send security down to detain the engineer and you order someone to cut the wires to the bell.

Problem solved, right? The noise has stopped. All is calm again. But the ship is still sinking.

Your anxiety is that loyal engineer. Your inner wisdom. It starts with whispers, with subtle gut feelings. A sense of unease. A feeling of being ‘off’. When you ignore those whispers, it has no choice but to get louder. The sleepless nights are the urgent telegrams. The panic attacks are the full blown emergency bells, ringing with everything they’ve got because you are in danger and you are refusing to listen.

Every time you distract, numb, or suppress the feeling, you are shooting the messenger. You are cutting the wires to the alarm. And in the process, you are allowing the real problem, the actual fire, to grow, spread, and consume your life.

The High Price of Running

This cycle of avoidance is exhausting. It's the reason you feel so tired all the time. It takes more energy to suppress a truth than it does to face it.

This avoidance creates a second, more insidious layer of suffering. First, there is the original problem, the ‘fire’: the soul crushing job, the toxic relationship, the life that is completely out of alignment with your values. Then, you add the suffering of the anxiety itself, the physical and mental turmoil of the alarm bell.

But then comes the third layer, the one born from avoidance. The shame. The guilt. The self criticism. "What is wrong with me? Why can't I just cope? Why am I so broken?" You start to believe the alarm is the problem. You start to believe you are the problem. You are now so far from the original issue that you can’t even remember what started the fire in the first place. All you know is that you are in a constant state of fighting yourself.

The problem isn't your anxiety. It is that you keep running from what it's trying to tell you.

How to Start Listening

So, how do you stop running and start listening? It requires a radical shift in your approach. It requires courage. It requires you to do the very thing you have spent years avoiding: you have to turn towards the feeling.

This does not mean you have to solve the whole fire in one go. It simply means you have to stop fighting the alarm and walk into it.

1. Acknowledge the Messenger.

The next time you feel that familiar wave of anxiety, I want you to try something radical. Do not immediately pick up your phone. Do not open the fridge. Do not turn on the television. For just thirty seconds, I want you to stop. Just stop. Close your eyes, put a hand on your chest or your stomach, and just be with the physical sensation. Acknowledge its presence without judgement. You can even say it internally, "Ah, there you are. I feel you. You are welcome here." This act alone is revolutionary. It ends the war.

2. Ask a Different Question.

For your entire life, your only question for anxiety has been, "How do I make you go away?" This is an aggressive, dismissive question. Today, you will ask a new one. With a sense of genuine curiosity, like you were talking to a wise teacher, you ask, "What are you trying to tell me?" or "What information do you have for me?"

3. Listen for the Whisper.

Do not expect a booming voice from the heavens. The answers from your inner wisdom are often quiet. They are gut feelings, recurring thoughts, subtle images. What situation immediately comes to mind when you ask the question? What person? What choice? The answer is almost certainly something you already know, but have been refusing to admit to yourself.

Is it the job that requires you to be someone you are not? Is it the relationship that makes you feel small? Is it the deep disconnect between the life you are living and the one your soul actually wants?

Listening is not about finding an immediate solution. It is about correctly identifying the problem. Once you know the fire is in the kitchen, you can stop wasting time searching the rest of the house. Once you admit to yourself, "My job is causing this," or "This friendship is draining me," the anxiety has done its job. The alarm may quieten down, because it has finally been heard. Now, you have a new task. Not fighting the alarm, but calmly and rationally deciding what to do about the fire.

Your anxiety is not a weakness. It is not a malfunction. It is your most loyal and protective guide. It is the compass of your soul, telling you when you have strayed from your true path. To connect with your Naiture Within is to learn how to read that compass, not to try and break it because you don't like the direction it's pointing.

Stop fighting. Start listening. Your best self is trying to speak to you.