Anxiety: Predator & Prey

Anxiety is personal in how it is formed and dealt by everyone. External factors, often outside our control, will always burden our coping process. We may not be able to prevent anxiety from occurring, but we are capable of controlling its aftermath. The acknowledgment that we are the predator /and/ prey of our own anxiety can help us learn how to tame it. As our anxiety’s effect is self-inflicted, we can spot when we are falling prey to our own selves and learn to switch roles, assuming a predatory position, in charge of our underlying thinking patterns. Changing our mind’s narrative in this way can radically shift our perspective, as we set out to remove predispositions or hypotheticals, seeking to be our pure selves, unrestricted by a busy, worried mind.

Anxiety Perceived

When talking about anxiety, one condition that is /always/ present is that anxiety is personal. This sounds fairly obvious — and, on paper, it is. When we feel anxious, we often attribute it to our current environment, our past experiences, and even our future considerations. But more importantly, as our anxiety is personal, it follows, that anxiety is also *self-referential*. In plain terms, this means that we are the predator and the prey of our anxiety simultaneously. Of course, despite this important truth which is the core of today’s theme, reality is never that straight-forward.

Factors

The most important hurdle that complicates the real-life anxiety we face, is the collection of externals factors in our life, which are outside of our control. Those contribute heavily to the formation of our anxiety and can even determine whether or not we can openly express and communicate this anxiety. Such factors range from our family environment, to our friends and acquaintances, and more macroscopically, to our entire cultural surroundings, which tend to project expectations about how are mental health “should” be and how much we should or shouldn’t openly talk about it between peers, or, when the privilege is available, to licensed professionals.
I can personally confirm this cultural influence. As a male living Greece, I am often exposed to unhealthy behavioural stereotypes which mandate how males should act, think and feel — which is to say, ideas that reside in the realm of toxic masculinity. Things only get worse when it comes to seeking help if you wish to discuss your feeling with a professional. I have personally had the utmost fortunate to grow in an understanding family where such stereotypes were always kept to virtual zero, but I can say the same for the average Greek person, out of experience. This testimony of course, is far from the a worst-case scenario example. Many countries and regions across the globe are far more severe in how the unwritten rules the impose our mental health care.

Predator and Prey

It is clear then, that it’s not a level playing field when it comes to learning and talking about our mental health, including anxiety. Depending on where we’ve grown up, geographically and socially, we are tasked with dealing with more than our anxiety itself; we have to also deal with the outer world which tries to enforce a certain status quo on us. Such considerations should never be discounted, since their strength and effect can be devastating on any one of us. But this discussion deals with a more internal part of anxiety, despite these factors’ omnipresence around us and influence on us.

This discussion is about how we, can gradually and meaningfully tame our individual anxiety. This advice, is far from technical or medical; I have no such credentials to attach to my experience. Instead, it is merely friendly advice coming from someone who has dealt — and is still dealing with — anxiety. It’s an effort to humbly convey a little trick that has worked in my case, in hopes of potentially working in yours, too.

I use the concept that I briefly mentioned earlier in the discussion, on the predator-prey dynamic. Aside from the external factors that we touched upon before, our anxiety, like most other feelings we experience, are ultimately self-inflicted. Of course, without a doubt, feelings are caused, more often than not, due to external events or interactions. No one willingly wakes up one morning and says “alright, today I would like to feel anxious about everything the entire day!”.

The predator-pray dynamic is not about preventing the feeling in the first place, but about controlling most of the aftermath of it.

From Prey to Predator

Say, I am feeling anxious about an upcoming encounter, social or professional. I may be anxious for a million things around the upcoming encounter. I could worry about what impression I will make, how I will look or sound, or simply, be around the other party; I think that such thoughts are frequent for most people, to varying degrees. Things can look pretty overwhelming when we consider such encounters in this light. Here, we are being the prey of our anxiety, overwhelmed with hypotheticals and worse-off scenarios that, usually, we have no actual facts to support them with. It is at that moment that we can learn to identify in our day-today thinking; with time, we can learn to stop at this point and say “oh hey, I am being my own prey right now”.

Turning the Tide

Upon recognising the turning point, and that we are being prey to our thoughts, we will become capable of, instead, assuming a predatory role, in control of that same power that previously made us feel vulnerable. In this particular example, taking control of the predatory side, would mean switching that underlying assumption of our worries: that we will make a bad impression, or that we will look bad or sound bad. Instead, we can stop and ask “why is that the main assumption?”, “why wouldn’t it be the other way around?”. We could, and most probably will, make a good impression, and look and sound as good as ever. This is not just positive thinking; social experiments asking strangers to converse and interact for a given amount of time showed this needlessly pessimistic presumption clearly: most people thought that their counter-party didn’t enjoy their conversation, while, their opinion was overwhelmingly positive in reality.

Futher, the overly simple truth we often forget is that when we are just being ourselves, our true selves, unbound by hypothetical worries and unneeded thoughts, our presence is always as bright as it can be. Of course, some may ask “but, what if the time comes and we do indeed make a bad impression as we feared?”. The simple answer to that is: even that happens, so be it. Even then, there is no reason to feel negatively about our performance, if we allow ourselves to be of a clean mind as we approach the event. We owe it to ourselves to not worry proactively prior to any encounter.

In simple terms, if it goes well, great; if it doesn’t that’s okay all the same. It is infinitely more likely that the former outcome will emerge if we at least enter the event with a clear, undisturbed mind, which our anxiety can prevent, if left untamed.

In success and failure alike, we can teach ourselves to spot when we are being ourself’s own prey, to become the predator instead, switching up our narrative, and minimising our anxiety that is often unwarranted. Negative thoughts and feeling will arise irrespective of our efforts, but the prey-predator dynamic can always remind us that, although we are not responsible for their emergence, we can definitely be in charge of its subsequent effect.

Thank you kindly for dedicating the time to hear these thoughts on anxiety. If you wish, I would be delighted to hear your thoughts or coping mechanisms around anxiety. Do you feel anxious often? If yes, what helps you tame or constant it? Looking forward to hearing your stories and input below!

Have a happy, healthy day ahead. 🌱