How "Checking In" With Anxiety Gives You MORE Anxiety

Checking in with your symptoms is something every anxiety sufferer does. “Checking in” is the habit of scanning your mind and body to identify and monitor your anxiety symptoms. But here’s the problem: constantly checking in and worrying about your anxiety only makes your anxiety worse. So, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about why you need to stop checking in with your symptoms, and how to stop this habit so you can begin to focus on more productive and enjoyable activities.

 Before we get started, I want to let you know that I’ve put the complete recovery guide in the link below. It’s free, and it’s my gift to you for joining me here today. It’ll show you the exact path that you need to take to reach a full recovery. 

Alright, if you’re suffering from anxiety, you’re probably experiencing a bunch of strange and frightening physical symptoms. Maybe you’re getting intense anxiety, panic attacks, derealization, heart palpitations, nausea, and other strange sensations. But what you're doing, even if you aren’t realizing it, is you’re constantly checking in with these physical symptoms. For example, you might scan your body and think, “Oh, I’m starting to feel a bit lightheaded. I hope I don’t pass out.” Or “Oh no, my anxiety seems to be getting worse. What if I have a panic attack?”

OK, why are you doing that? Well, the reason you’re checking in with these sensations is because you see the symptoms of your anxiety as threatening, and therefore you worry about them. It’s not hard to understand why we see the sensations of our anxiety as threatening. I mean, anxiety symptoms can range from uncomfortable to downright dangerous and even torturous. And your brain, it’s wired for survival, so it’s going to keep checking in with these sensations and try to come up with ways to protect you from them. 

When I was suffering from anxiety, I remember the moment I realized just how often I was thinking about my anxiety. It suddenly hit me that I was constantly monitoring my symptoms and checking for new ones. I became so internally focused on my symptoms that I struggled to concentrate on anything else. In fact, I remember there were times when I’d struggle to carry on a conversation with my fiance because my focus just seemed to drift back to worrying about how I was feeling. 

That’s what anxiety does - it makes us very internally focused. But focusing on ourselves and our symptoms is the worst thing we can do. Tony Robbins, the self-help guru, had a great quote. He said, “Suffering happens when you’re focusing on yourself.” That couldn’t be more true when it comes to anxiety. Because when you focus on yourself and your symptoms, you’re actually making your anxiety worse. You are increasing your suffering. 

The reason checking in with your symptoms increases your anxiety is because it allows your brain to run wild with negative thoughts. For instance, if you check in on your heart palpitations, your mind then begins to worry, “Why is my heart beating so fast? Did it just skip a beat? Is something wrong with my heart?” It leads you down a rabbit hole of negative thoughts that only do one thing: make you more anxious. 

We can’t have that. We cannot check in with our anxiety symptoms every few moments if we’re going to recover from anxiety. So, here’s what you are going to do.

First, you need to understand why you are experiencing anxiety. You need to understand why you’re having panic attacks, heart palpitations, derealization, and any of the symptoms you're experiencing. This is a critical step. Because once you understand why you’re experiencing these symptoms, they will soon no longer be seen by your brain as threatening and dangerous. Instead, you start to lose your interest in them because you know they aren’t harmful. As a side note, if you don’t yet understand why you're having these symptoms, you have to click the link below to get the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks. It’s free and it’s going to teach all about your anxiety.

But the short reason that you are experiencing these symptoms is because your body is inadvertently triggering your fight or flight response and flooding your system with stress hormones like adrenaline. But here’s the important part, your fight or flight response is your body’s natural protective mechanism. So no, these sensations are not threatening or dangerous. They are actually a sign of your body being in an ultra-protective and safe state. Having that realization is a big deal because you instantly take a huge step forward in the recovery process. 

Second, we need to break the habit of checking in with our symptoms. To do that, each time you scan yourself and have an anxious thought, I want you to dismiss that anxious thought. What do I mean by that? Ok, for example, let’s say you scan yourself and you think: “Oh no, I notice my heart palpitations are getting worse.” What I want you to do is dismiss that anxious thought by responding with “Who cares!” 

In other words, any time you check in with your symptoms, you say “Who cares!” The reason this works is because you understand that your anxiety is non-threatening. You know that it’s simply the result of excess stress hormones in your body and that those hormones are designed to protect you, not harm you.  

After you dismiss an anxious thought, here’s what you need to do. You must shift your focus away from anxiety and to an engaging or immersive activity. So, run an errand, read a book, write a letter, do whatever you want, but just make sure it’s something you can really concentrate on. We need to give our brain a focus to help prevent it from returning back to worrying about anxiety. 

This is going to take practice, but with some time it’s going to allow you to break the habit of checking in with your anxiety. Again, this is not going to happen overnight, you will need to work on it. But soon you’ll stop checking in and your brain will be able to concentrate on more important things.