“Anxiety keeps me sharp.”
“A bit of pressure helps me perform at my best.”
“If I stopped worrying about it, I’d probably forget.”
These are some of the ways anxiety becomes part of the system people use to manage life.
And it makes sense that we do. Anxiety can pull important commitments back into awareness, keep future plans in mind, and create a sense of urgency that helps things get done. Over time, many of us come to rely on worry as a way of remembering things, staying organised and generating enough urgency to tackle procrastination.
It’s easy to see how we might learn to trust it and rely on it over time.
Many of us can point to experiences that offer proof that it is necessary. Missed deadlines. Forgotten appointments. Unfinished tasks. Relationship mishaps. Embarrassing mistakes.
These experiences can leave a powerful impression and lead to the conclusions we often draw about ourselves and others.
Over time, anxiety can become woven into the way we manage responsibilities, commitments and future plans. It can start to feel less like an emotional response and more like a practical tool. Something essential to keeping the whole system running.
If something really matters, we keep bringing it back into awareness. We think about it repeatedly, revisit it in our minds, imagine what could go wrong, make sure it stays visible, and put plans in place to reduce the risks. This might seem sensible, responsible even. The fact that we keep thinking about something can feel like evidence that we care about it. And when things go well, it is easy to conclude that anxiety deserves some of the credit.
However, anxiety rarely provides these services without a cost.
While it is busy holding future commitments in mind, it is often borrowing attention from the present. Energy that could be spent resting, concentrating, enjoying a conversation or engaging with life right now gets redirected towards repeatedly checking in on things that haven’t happened yet. Many people only begin questioning this arrangement when they start noticing that cost in their relationships, their health or their work.
Why Would Anyone Start Using Anxiety This Way?
If anxiety has become part of the system we use to manage life, there is usually a reason.
Taken in isolation, the idea of spending large amounts of time, energy and focus away from the present moment might look counter intuitive. Except most people don’t consciously decide to do this. More often, they gather evidence over time that relying on memory, motivation or good intentions alone doesn’t always work. Examples include forgetting important things, struggling to get started, or losing focus on things that matter.
For some people, particularly those who later discover they are ADHD-ers, these experiences can become a recurring part of life long before it becomes clear what is actually going on. Difficulties with memory, organisation, task initiation and follow-through can easily become confused with personal failings when there is no alternative explanation available.
The practical consequences can be difficult enough. Often, though, the emotional consequences run deeper. It can become easy to believe that forgetting means I am careless, struggling to get started means I am lazy, missing something important means I am unreliable. The details vary from person to person, but many people end up carrying painful stories about what their difficulties say about them. You probably have some examples of your own.
So, if worrying means fewer things are forgotten, more deadlines are met and tasks get started, why wouldn’t I worry?
There is a design flaw in this solution. Anxiety makes it hard to rest, depleting energy over time. Urgency increases a sense of fear and doom and focussing only on risk can make it very hard to be fully present in our lives and relationships. Eventually, some people begin wondering whether the cost is too high. Whether there might be another way that still allows us to care and be responsible, but without the need for constant anxiety to hold it all together.
When Anxiety Isn’t the Only Option
Recognising that anxiety is expensive is one thing, but letting go of it is another. If anxiety has spent years helping us remember things, meet deadlines, manage commitments and avoid mistakes, then stepping back from it can feel risky.This is where the “what if?” questions start feeling very important.
What if worrying less means I forget more?
What if feeling less pressure means I stop getting things done?
What if relying less on anxiety means everything starts falling apart?
Those fears deserve respect. They were forged from real experiences. Blind trust cannot be the first step in this change. We need to start by understanding how our minds work in reality. Making the distinction between the features around our memory, organisation, motivation, procrastination or follow-through and the meaning we attach to those ways of being. All human beings need support in some areas of life. Being human inevitably involves limitations, mistakes and failures. Once we begin understanding ourselves differently and replace self-criticism with self-compassion, we create enough safety to start testing the theory.
If every missed appointment or unfinished task is treated as evidence that there is something wrong with me, experimentation becomes frightening. Too much seems to be at stake. If those same experiences can be understood as part of being human, and perhaps part of being an ADHD-er, experimentation becomes easier, less personal. It becomes possible to entertain the idea that I don’t have to get it right first time, I don’t have to prove my worth, I am simply gathering evidence about what helps. I can test whether a reminder works rather than trying to hold something in mind all day. I can allow a calendar to take responsibility for an appointment. I can let a task list carry information that anxiety used to carry alone. I can test whether accepting support works better than managing everything in isolation.
In these circumstances we are not acting on blind faith, we’re conducting experiments. Experiments that generate evidence. Appointments remembered? Yes or no. Deadlines met? Yes or no. Mistake made. What happened next? Strategies can be tested and the view of ourselves questioned. Over time, that evidence begins to accumulate. Gradually, it becomes easier to trust that systems can help to keep the structure of our lives going, support makes it less lonely, understanding makes it less painful and self-compassion knocks the edges off tough times.
None of those supports are perfect either, but they allow us to stop treating imperfection as evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. As this understanding deepens, anxiety no longer has to carry quite so many responsibilities. At the same time the future still matters and we still get to care about our commitments. We just use other tools to take care of it all
What Might Become Possible?
If anxiety took a holiday tomorrow, would you miss the anxiety itself?
Probably not.
But what about the things anxiety has been helping you protect? The feeling of staying on top of things, the sense of being prepared, the reassurance that comes from repeatedly checking that nothing important has been forgotten?
There is comfort in believing you have thought through every possible risk. What if without anxiety you become careless, unreliable or overwhelmed again. Those concerns deserve respect too. Most people do not stop relying on anxiety because somebody points out its drawbacks. If it were that simple, they would have done it already.
Something else usually has to happen first.
People usually do not change this until some other option looks more desirable or reliable or the status quo is no longer viable, safe or sustainable. Even then, there needs to be enough understanding, support and evidence to suggest that anxiety is not the only way of staying on top of life. That’s when it becomes possible to explore what the alternative might look like. What could I gain? Would I have more attention available for the people sitting in front of me? Would I have more energy for the things actually happening now rather than the things that might happen later? Could I build trust in my new systems and the support networks I have built over time? And view mistakes as data rather than evidence of my value?
We’re not exploring whether anxiety should disappear altogether. It has a real job to do by helping us recognise threats and respond to risk. That stuff keeps us alive and safe.
The question is whether anxiety has become responsible for jobs it was never designed for while costing more than we are willing to put up with.
The goal is to be responsible and to stop relying on anxiety as the thing that makes responsibility possible.
P.S. If this blog has you thinking it might be time to do something different with anxiety, I can offer a couple of options.
On 21 October, I’ll be facilitating an anxiety fitness.com workshop where we’ll be exploring anxiety, ADHD, and some of the jobs anxiety can end up taking on in our lives. You’ll find booking details below.
https://www.anxietyfitness.com/events/PacTFWeu3zMXcjpJYfHh
If you’d prefer to explore your own circumstances in more detail, I also offer therapy online. An optional free introductory Zoom chat offers a chance for us to meet, talk about what’s bringing you here, and see whether we’d be a good fit to work together.
You’ll find booking details for both options below.
