Your Anxiety Deserves Your Kindness - It's A Part Of You

When your anxiety arises, do you treat it with kindness or reject it and try to get rid of it? When you reject your anxiety, you are rejecting a part of yourself. Your anxiety is a remnant part of your younger self. If you reject your younger anxious self, this part will stay suppressed and cause conflict within you. To have a kind happy relationship with yourself, you must treat your anxiety with kindness.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Noah Elkrief and today I'd like to talk to you about why your fear deserves your kindness.

So to start off,

Take a moment,

Close your eyes,

And just ask yourself,

How do I normally treat my anxiety or fear or stress when it arises in my system?

What is my first response towards it?

Is it,

Welcome,

Nice to see you,

I'm here for you.

Or is it more like,

Not you again.

Get away from me.

Why are you here?

You're so annoying.

You're ruining everything.

I hate you.

Or you're making me feel weak,

Or I feel worthless when I have you,

Or I'm so stupid and illogical for having you,

Right?

I shouldn't feel anxious here.

There's nothing dangerous.

I shouldn't feel afraid here.

There's nothing that can hurt me.

So for most of us,

We tend to judge our fear,

Be upset towards our fear,

Try to push our fear away,

Reject our fear,

And we judge ourselves for having it,

Whether that's I'm weak,

Or I'm stupid,

Or illogical,

Or defective,

Or broken,

Or one of these types of things.

And I'm here to tell you that your fear,

And I use fear as a sort of synonym for anxiety or nervousness or stress,

Your fear is not just an inanimate object,

Like a sensation.

Your fear is a remnant part of your childhood.

Your fear is a trapped moment in time when you felt a certain way.

So if you feel anxiety in a social situation,

It's not just a feeling in your chest,

It's a remnant fear from something that happened in your childhood,

Maybe when you were surrounded by adults,

And you didn't know anyone,

And you got really scared,

Or you went to a new school and you didn't know anyone,

And you were really scared,

Or someone wasn't kind to you,

And you were really scared,

And you didn't have a way to express that fear,

So you kind of pushed it down,

Suppressed it,

Because it was too intense,

Too painful.

And now,

When anxiety comes up,

When anxiety gets triggered,

It's that little you,

It's that five-year-old,

It's that eight-year-old,

It's their anxiety,

Their fear.

And so when anxiety arises in you,

And you treat it like shit,

You reject it,

You hate it,

You judge it,

You're basically rejecting,

And hating,

And judging a part of yourself.

And whenever we reject,

Or hate,

Or judge a part of ourselves,

It creates an internal conflict,

It creates oppression,

It creates tension,

It hurts our self-worth,

It's just a very not-nice experience inside of ourselves,

And it certainly doesn't help our healing journey.

It doesn't help us to heal the anxiety so that we can feel confident,

And solid,

And safe inside of ourselves.

So if that's how you treat your fear,

With this sort of judgment,

Or pushing them away,

Or rejecting them,

Or hating them,

It's usually because that's how your fear was treated when you were young by your parents,

And your school system,

Or your older siblings,

Or whoever was around you.

So I want you to close your eyes and take a moment and just ask yourself,

Like,

How was I treated when I showed anxiety or fear to my parents?

What was their response?

How did they feel towards me?

How did they feel within themselves when I showed fear?

Maybe I was afraid of the dark.

How did they feel when I was like,

Mommy,

Mommy,

Come!

Or Daddy,

Come,

I'm scared!

What was their response inside of themselves,

Or towards you?

Or when you were scared of a bug?

Or when you were scared to,

Like,

Walk into the restaurant?

Or scared to,

Like,

Go somewhere by yourself?

For many of our parents,

Even though they loved us and cared about us,

They can have some judgment or annoyance.

The annoyance can be because they'd rather be doing something else with their time,

Like,

Oh,

I don't want to give my time to you.

And the judgment can be,

Like,

It's stupid and illogical,

Because for them,

They see there's nothing scary in the dark.

There's nothing dangerous here.

So they're treating you based on their perspective,

Right?

Or you don't need to be as scared of the ant.

Come on,

It's not going to hurt you.

Or you don't need to be scared to go into that restaurant,

Or to go to the bathroom by yourself.

No one's going to hurt you.

So they're viewing your fear as illogical or stupid,

Because they have the understanding that nothing's going to hurt you.

Instead of having compassion for your fear,

That you don't know that,

That you're a child,

That there's some reason you're afraid of the dark,

The ant,

Because it's the unknown,

And you don't have any way to protect yourself,

Because you're just a little boy or a little girl.

So basically,

We internalize our parents' treatment towards our fear,

And we internalize their internal judgment.

So even if they didn't say,

Come on,

You're stupid and illogical,

They project their energy onto us,

And it penetrates us.

It impacts us and becomes our internal treatment towards ourselves.

So take a moment,

And look at your little inner child when they're afraid or anxious,

And treat them the way they deserve,

With kindness and compassion,

That I'm so sorry,

So sorry you're afraid.

I'm here,

Let me hold you,

Let me comfort you.

I understand that it seems scary to you,

And I get that,

And you're allowed to be afraid,

And it doesn't mean you're bad or defective or stupid.

Of course you're afraid,

I get it.

Let me hold you,

Let me love you.

Mommy or daddy is judging you and annoyed because of their own resolved unresolved issues.

Not because you're bad,

Not because you're stupid,

Not because you're annoying,

You're wonderful,

And they just don't know how to deal with a child.

They don't know how to deal with their own emotions,

And they project their confusions onto you.

You deserve kindness.

Would you agree with me that every two-year-old deserves kindness when they're afraid,

No matter what the reason is,

Whether it's seemingly logical or illogical.

Maybe their child is afraid when mommy walks out of the room.

Yeah,

There's something logical in that.

Right,

They could be in danger.

Would you agree every five-year-old deserves compassion,

Sweetness,

Gentleness when they feel fear?

Well,

I'm here to tell you that every human being at every age deserves compassion and gentleness when they're afraid,

Even if it's seemingly illogical.

There's always a logical reason behind it.

Even if someone is scared of the color red,

Well maybe they saw blood when they were young,

Or they're scared of ants,

Well maybe an ant was scary when they were a child and it was so intense that they suppressed it and it became a trauma.

There's always a logical reason behind our fears,

And every human being deserves kindness and gentleness in every moment that they're afraid.

So I want you to imagine now a situation in your current life when you feel anxiety,

And try to trigger it for a moment.

Trigger yourself feeling anxious at work,

Feeling anxious at a social situation,

Feeling anxious in a romantic situation.

And look at yourself from the third-person perspective.

Notice your judgment towards yourself,

Oh they're weak,

Oh they're stupid,

Oh they're bad,

Anxiety,

Go away,

Whatever.

And stop and say no,

You deserve kindness,

I'm so sorry for how I've been treating you,

I didn't realize that I internalized how my parents treated you.

I want to give you kindness and gentleness,

I'm so sorry you feel anxious right now.

I'm sure there's a really logical reason why you feel it from something that happened in your childhood.

Let me hold you,

Let me be there for you,

I love you while you're anxious,

I care about you while you're afraid.

You don't have to fix it to be lovable,

You don't have to fix it to be good enough.

How does that feel?

Your fear deserves kindness,

Your anxiety deserves kindness.

And you could still work on healing it and helping that younger you to resolve their fear so they can feel calm and happy and open-hearted,

But we want to help them from a kind,

Accepting place instead of from rejection and judgment.

So I hope that helps you to be kinder towards your anxiety,

And if you need more help you're welcome to contact me for sessions or check out my courses.

Have a beautiful day,

Bye.

Reviews

Thank you 🙏🏾 for showing me how to be kind to my younger self. Very nurturing 😌💜🌱

Wow, brought up emotions. I never thought I had had to be strong. I’ve been in survival mode since a child started crying thank God it ended. I still have to be strong.

Excellent! Thank you!