A Really Good Essay On Anxiety

But Not One You Thought You’d See Anyone Write

What if anxiety doesn’t always have to leave before we can keep living? Sometimes courage means making room for it and continuing anyway.

I have lived with enough anxiety, personally and professionally, to have developed a rather unusual question about it.

What if some of our anxiety deserves to stay?

That is probably not what you expected to hear from a therapist. We are supposed to help people reduce anxiety. There are entire shelves of books devoted to calming it, controlling it, overcoming it, rewiring it, stopping it, healing it, and finally getting our lives back from it. I have read some of those books, used some of what they teach, and recommended more

than a few of them.

And there is good reason for this. Anxiety can be miserable. It can steal sleep, tighten muscles, churn stomachs, accelerate hearts, scatter concentration, and persuade otherwise intelligent people that catastrophe has scheduled an appointment for later this afternoon. Severe anxiety can make a person's world very small.

So I am not proposing we become fond of it. But I am wondering whether our relentless effort to get rid of anxiety sometimes prevents us from discovering something more important.

Maybe freedom from anxiety isn't the same thing as freedom.

The Life We Build Around Fear

Anxiety has an interesting business model. It offers certainty on installment. Make one more payment—one more check, one more explanation, one more reassurance, one more hour thinking through every possible outcome—and perhaps tomorrow the account will finally be paid.

It never is.

In fact, anxiety has a peculiar way of treating every payment as evidence that another payment was necessary. The reassurance that settles me tonight becomes the reassurance I need again tomorrow. The checking that gives me relief teaches me to check. I keep paying into an account whose balance somehow never goes down.

This is one reason avoidance works so beautifully in the short term. Don't go. Don't ask. Don't risk it. Stay where things are familiar. Make sure. Prepare a little more. Wait until you feel ready. The anxiety decreases, and because it decreases, the brain concludes that avoidance worked.

It did. That's the problem.

Relief is a remarkably persuasive teacher, even when it teaches the wrong lesson. I don't learn that I could have handled the uncertainty, embarrassment, rejection, bodily sensation, or whatever else I feared. I learn that escaping it kept me safe.

If I avoid enough things that make me anxious, I may eventually become quite accomplished at anxiety management while constructing a life I don't particularly want. The world gets safer because the world gets smaller. Eventually I may have fewer things to fear because I have fewer things left to do, risk, discover, lose, or love.

We can become less anxious by becoming less alive.

Maybe Anxiety Isn't Asking for an Answer

One of the harder lessons I've learned is that anxiety frequently asks questions that cannot be answered. Will this turn out all right? Did I make the right decision? Does this person really love me? What if something happens to one of my children? What if the doctor missed something? What if I fail? What if I lose what I love? What if I die?

These sound like questions, so naturally we try to answer them. But many aren't really questions. They are requests for guarantees, and life is remarkably uncooperative about guarantees. A person can spend decades trying to solve uncertainty rather than learning how to live inside it.

Reassurance may be anxiety’s favorite payment plan. We ask someone we trust, Do you think I’m okay? Are you sure you’re not upset with me? Do you think this will work out? And for a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, we feel better. But reassurance has an expiration date. The anxious mind soon discovers a loophole: Maybe they were just trying to make me feel better. Maybe I didn't explain everything. Maybe I should ask one more person. So we ask again. The problem isn't that reassurance doesn't work. It works remarkably well for a little while, which is precisely why we keep buying it. What it cannot give us is the thing anxiety actually wants—a guarantee.

In fact, anxiety has a peculiar way of treating every payment as evidence that another payment was necessary. The reassurance that settles me tonight becomes the reassurance I need again tomorrow. The checking that gives me relief teaches me to check. I keep paying into an account whose balance somehow never goes down.

Perfection is another way anxiety goes looking for a guarantee. If reassurance says, Someone please tell me this will be okay, perfection says, Maybe I can make absolutely sure it will be. So we prepare a little longer, revise one more time, anticipate every possible problem, make the decision only when we're certain it's the right one, and postpone beginning until we're confident we can do it well. Perfectionism can look remarkably responsible from the outside. That's part of what makes it such excellent camouflage for anxiety.

I know something about this because I like understanding things. Give me a problem and my mind will happily take it apart, examine the pieces, read six books, construct three hypotheses, reconsider the original premise, and then wonder whether I misunderstood the question. I once became interested enough in why chords sound the way they do that I worked backward into harmonics, frequency ratios and the physics of vibrating strings. Apparently just playing the guitar wasn't enough.

There is something wonderful about understanding the machinery underneath things. I still love it. But anxiety can borrow that same curiosity and put it to work all night. Perfectionism does something similar with preparation: it takes a useful human ability and removes the stopping point. There is always one more thing to know, one more possibility to consider, one more improvement to make before we expose ourselves to the terrible uncertainty of being finished.

At some point more thinking stops producing understanding and becomes another lap around the same tree. The problem isn't curiosity, preparation, or wanting to do something well. It's the quiet bargain underneath them: If I understand enough, prepare enough, and get this exactly right, perhaps nothing bad will happen.

Anxiety with a graduate education is still anxiety.

I have had to learn that there are moments when the question needs to change. Instead of How can I finally become certain? it becomes: Can I live well without knowing? or Can I tolerate inevitable uncertainty?

That's a harder question. It is also much more likely to have an answer.

Some Things Get Tighter When You Pull

There are problems in life that respond beautifully to effort. Push harder, practice longer, study more, try again. I have considerable respect for persistence and have probably built a fair portion of my life around it.

But have you ever tried to untangle a badly knotted cord by pulling on both ends?

The harder you pull, the tighter the knot becomes. What looks like insufficient effort is actually a problem requiring a different kind of attention. You loosen something here, find where one strand crosses another, create a little slack, work backward, and occasionally discover that the knot you were fighting was partly being held together by your determination to defeat it.

Anxiety has a way of making us pull harder. Think more. Check again. Prepare longer. Get another opinion. Make absolutely certain. Tighten our grip on people, outcomes, health, decisions and futures that stubbornly refuse to become completely controllable. When the additional effort doesn't produce certainty, anxiety rarely concludes that certainty may be unavailable. It concludes that we haven't pulled hard enough.

There are times when the most skillful thing we can do with a problem is stop tightening it. Create some slack. Look at what is actually tangled rather than continuing to pull from the same two ends. Some problems really do require more effort, but others require a different relationship with the problem.

Anxiety hates that distinction because effort feels like control. As long as I'm pulling, I'm doing something.

The unsettling possibility is that sometimes loosening my grip is doing something too.

What If Anxiety Is the Price of Loving Anything?

I have six grandchildren. I would very much like guarantees concerning all six of them. While we're negotiating, I'd also like guarantees concerning my children, wife, my health, their health, the future, and several other matters about which the universe has apparently neglected to consult me.

I could eliminate some vulnerability by caring less. I have no interest in doing so.

Love creates exposure. The moment another person matters deeply to us, the possibility of losing them enters the room. We don't usually mention that part in wedding ceremonies or birth announcements, but there it is. To love another human being is to give that person the ability to frighten you merely by mattering.

I don't want anxiety to take that realization and turn it into constant vigilance. Worry can masquerade as love while becoming controlling, intrusive and exhausting to everyone involved. I've done enough of that too. But neither do I want to cure myself of the vulnerability that comes from having people whose loss would break my heart.

Some anxiety exists because there are things in life worth losing. A person who loves nothing, risks nothing, hopes for nothing, and belongs to no one could probably eliminate a fair amount of anxiety. It would be a terrible bargain.

The older I get, the more obvious this becomes. Love gives anxiety material to work with. Once you have a significant other you deeply love, children whose lives matter as much as your own, grandchildren who somehow manage to enlarge the vulnerable territory even further, there is simply more that can happen to you without anything actually happening to you. Someone you love hurts, and suddenly geography doesn't provide much protection.

We sometimes treat this vulnerability as though it were a psychological problem to solve. Maybe if I worry enough, check enough, pray the right way, stay alert enough, or anticipate every possibility, I can love deeply without remaining exposed to loss. But there is no version of love that comes with that warranty. To love someone is, among other things, to surrender the possibility of being entirely safe from what happens to them.

None of this means worry is the price we owe for loving someone. Worry can become intrusive, controlling, exhausting, and remarkably ineffective. I don't protect the people I love by mentally rehearsing their deaths. But neither do I want to cure myself of the vulnerability that makes their loss imaginable. That vulnerability and love grew from some of the same roots.

Perhaps maturity isn't finally reaching a place where nothing frightens us. Maybe it includes learning which fears are asking us to change something and which fears simply accompany having something precious. One requires action. The other may require courage, gratitude, presence—and the willingness to stop demanding a guarantee that was never available.

Some anxiety exists because there are things in life worth losing.

Perhaps that anxiety doesn't need curing so much as carrying.

Anxiety Keeps Applying for the Wrong Job

We do have control, just not nearly as much as we would prefer. I can influence my health but cannot guarantee it. I can love my family but cannot protect them from every sorrow. I can work carefully but cannot control every outcome. I can make a thoughtful decision without ever knowing what would have happened had I chosen the other road.

Anxiety notices this gap and immediately applies for the position. Perhaps if we think harder, prepare more thoroughly, monitor more closely and worry more consistently, we can close it. Anxiety is remarkably ambitious this way. It wants responsibility not only for what I do, but for what happens next, what other people do, what my body does, what the future brings, and occasionally what everyone thinks about it afterward.

Anxiety has applied for a job that doesn’t exist: Director of Future Outcomes. We can prepare for tomorrow, influence it, and improve the odds, but tomorrow will still become something unexpected.

Agency: How You React

This doesn't mean we're powerless. In fact, I think anxiety often distracts us from the power we actually have by keeping us preoccupied with the power we don’t. I can spend energy controlling potential negative outcomes but little on how to behave if they occur. These are distinctly different.

Perhaps the more useful distinction is between control and agency. Control determines outcomes, while agency asks what we can do. I can tell the truth without controlling its reception, prepare carefully without guaranteeing success, take care of my body without securing its future, and make decisions with the information I have, accepting the road not taken.

Anxiety is particularly difficult because uncertainty leaves possibilities open. There’s always another option to consider, another precaution to take, or another imaginary future to explore. However, continued deliberation doesn’t give me more control; it delays the moment when I must live without it.

The same is true elsewhere. I cannot control whether anxiety arrives. I can't always control the thoughts that enter my head or my nervous system's decision to discuss the future at three in the morning. But I have considerably more control over what I do after anxiety gets here. This is a smaller kind of control than anxiety promises, but I've come to think it's the more important one.

Anxiety isn't the driver; it's a nervous passenger pointing out potential collisions, suggesting alternate routes, checking the mirrors, and occasionally pressing an imaginary brake pedal. It's still a passenger, though, and I don't need to throw it out of the car. That's another struggle I don't particularly need.

I may not control the passenger. I am still in control of the car and ultimately, I can still keep the car keys.

What If Getting Better Makes You More Anxious?

This is where therapy becomes paradoxical.

The person who stops asking for reassurance initially feels more anxious. The person who quits checking feels more anxious. The person who boards the airplane rather than avoiding it feels more anxious. The person who stops monitoring every bodily sensation may feel frighteningly exposed. The person who finally says no may spend the next several hours wondering whether she has destroyed the relationship.

By the usual measurement—How anxious do I feel?—these people appear to be getting worse.

But we're measuring the wrong thing.

If someone has spent years organizing life around avoiding anxiety, freedom is going to feel anxious at first. The nervous system doesn't immediately distinguish new from dangerous. Sometimes the shaking hands aren't evidence that you're going the wrong direction. They're simply evidence that you're going somewhere you haven't allowed yourself to go.

Their anxiety may have increased while their freedom increased with it.

That is an extraordinary possibility because it changes the therapeutic question. Instead of always asking whether anxiety went down, we can ask whether anxiety got less say.

The Strange Freedom of Giving Up

There are still plenty of things I would like to control. I haven't transcended this, and age hasn't made uncertainty disappear. In some ways it has made uncertainty more concrete. Bodies change. Children become adults. Careers eventually have endings. People we love become ill. Some prayers are answered in ways we recognize; others seem to disappear into silence.

There is a temptation to meet all of this by tightening our grip.

But I'm increasingly interested in another kind of surrender. Not I don't care. Not nothing matters. Almost the opposite: This matters enormously, and I still cannot control it.

That may be one of the hardest sentences a human being can say.

What if some of our anxiety deserves to stay? What if we just radically accept that.

Acceptance isn't indifference. Sometimes acceptance hurts precisely because we're finally acknowledging how much something matters without using control to protect ourselves from that knowledge. There are realities we solve and realities we carry. Wisdom may involve learning which one is standing in front of us.

Perhaps Courage Has Been Misunderstood

I used to think courage meant overcoming fear. I'm less convinced of that now. If I have to wait until I'm no longer afraid before doing something, anxiety still gets to determine the schedule.

Courage may actually require fear. You cannot be courageous about something that costs you nothing. The person who speaks while his voice shakes may be demonstrating more courage than the person who feels completely confident. The person who loves again after being hurt hasn't necessarily conquered vulnerability. She has accepted it.

Maybe courage isn't what remains after anxiety disappears. Maybe courage is one of the things we can do with anxiety still in the room.

That changes the question I sometimes ask as a therapist. Instead of How do we get you to stop feeling anxious? I become more interested in: What would you do if you were willing to feel anxious while doing it?

That question has opened more doors than reassurance ever could.

I Don't Want Anxiety to Have the Final Word

There are still times I want anxiety gone. I would be suspicious of anyone who enjoys waking at three in the morning with a nervous system convinced that immediate action is required concerning something that cannot possibly be addressed until daylight.

There are treatments that help. There are skills worth learning. Some forms of anxiety become debilitating and deserve serious clinical attention. Reducing unnecessary suffering is a worthy goal.

But I no longer think the best life is necessarily the least anxious one. The least anxious life might be the safest one—the one in which nothing sufficiently uncertain was attempted and nobody sufficiently precious was loved.

I don't want that life.

I want enough freedom to go where anxiety tells me not to go when something important is there. Enough humility to admit when I don't know. Enough differentiation to let people I love make choices I wouldn't make. Enough acceptance to stop negotiating with realities that aren't taking offers. Enough presence to notice what is happening now instead of perpetually rehearsing what might happen next. And enough curiosity to keep looking.

Maybe that's the paradox I've been looking for. The opposite of anxiety isn't calm. Calm is lovely when it visits, but it has never struck me as particularly dependable.

The opposite of anxiety may be willingness.

Willingness to know what I can know and leave some questions unanswered. To control what is mine and release what isn't. To risk disappointment. To love without guarantees. To cast without controlling the river. To play the next note without silencing the one still ringing. To remain present when my mind has already traveled miles into an imaginary future.

Anxiety can come along.

It just doesn't get to choose where we're going.

© 2026 Thomas Kurtz. All rights reserved.

Published by Thomas Kurtz Counseling, LLC.