How to Break Free from Your Comfort Zone | Anxiety Recovery

If you're like most sufferers, your anxiety is in the driver’s seat. Your anxiety dictates the places you can’t go, and things you can and can’t do. It tells you that you can’t go to that dinner, you can’t attend that event, and you can’t take that trip. Anxiety can put limitations on your life and keep you confined inside a comfort zone, which means there are clear limitations on your experiences, opportunities, and even your happiness.

We can’t have that. So in today’s episode, let’s talk about why anxiety has put these limitations on your life, and how we’re going to overcome them so you can get back to living. 

 Alright, first things first, you must understand that your anxiety is being caused by your overactive fight or flight response. Your body is triggering its fight-or-flight response, and that is preparing you to either fight a threat or flee from danger. That causes you to experience a range of physical symptoms, like a surge of panic, an increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and muscle tension. It is creating all these symptoms that you're experiencing, and these symptoms are frightening. At their baseline, they are terribly uncomfortable, and when they get worse they can feel near torturous. So, because of that, you want to avoid triggering your anxiety whenever possible. 

OK, there are situations that you know are likely to trigger your anxiety. It might be whenever you get too far from home, whenever you're in crowded places, or in social environments. Or, it might be even worse than that, and you worry about triggering your anxiety whenever you step outside your home. 

But, as you know, you might not actually experience anxiety each time you put yourself in these situations. It’s more the worry that you might trigger your anxiety, and that’s enough. That’s enough for you to designate a comfort zone. What is a comfort zone? A comfort zone is those places and situations in which you feel comfortable. It’s those situations that are less likely to experience anxiety and, even if your anxiety is triggered, these are “safe places” where you feel more comfortable dealing with your anxiety. 

When I had anxiety, my comfort zone progressively shrunk as my anxiety became worse and worse. At the start of my anxiety, I was still willing to go anywhere within a short driving distance. I would go to grocery stores and restaurants, knowing that if my anxiety got bad, I could jump in my car and head home. But a few months into my anxiety, my comfort zone had decreased just to my house. I didn’t want to leave my house, as I was constantly having anxiety and panic attacks. I didn’t feel comfortable suffering through it anywhere except inside my home. So, I began to leave my house only when I absolutely had to. 

But at that time, here’s what I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand that the sensations I was experiencing weren’t actually harmful. They felt harmful - sometimes terribly harmful - but I wasn’t actually being injured in any way. Because remember, your anxiety is simply your body’s defense mechanism at work. Once you realize that, you then just need a system to implement each time you have anxiety. That’s key - you need to have the right system that you can engage every time your anxiety strikes. I have actually put that system in the link below, it’s called the Five Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks and it’s completely free.

With that system in place, you can begin gradually exposing yourself to the situations that make you anxious. In other words, you get outside your comfort zone. Now, I do recommend starting slow and gradually increasing your exposure to these situations. But ultimately, yes your goal is to put yourself in positions that you’re currently avoiding. That might mean you leave your house and go for a walk, go to a restaurant for dinner with friends, or take that road trip with your family. You are going to be putting yourself in the situations that you are afraid of. 

For me, as my recovery progressed, this initially meant starting to go back to the grocery store and run other errands. Then I began to go over to friends' houses and have dinner at restaurants. It took some time and consistent exposure to these situations, but I retrained my brain to recognize that these situations were not dangerous and that it didn’t need to go on the defensive. It didn’t need to trigger my fight-or-flight response. Eventually, what that meant is I no longer had any restrictions on my life. Anxiety could no longer dictate any part of my life. 

You can achieve this same freedom - I am 100% sure of it. But again, all of this is prefaced that you have the right systems in place. That’s why I’ve put the 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks so that you have that framework to start the recovery process.