What you put after the words “I am” can greatly influence your recovery from anxiety.
“I am weak” or “I am an anxious person” were some of the ones I used to have.
“I am a different person than the person I was before”.
And today I want to talk a little about the power of identity. Because whatever we put after the words “I am” is what we believe to be our identity.
And to once again quote ‘Mr Banana Hands’;
“The strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves”.
And this is where it becomes interesting.
If we need to be consistent with the way we define ourselves, we can never steer too far away from that definition.
Like a thermostat, you set the degree. If the temperature goes below that number, it’ll turn up the heat. If it goes over, it’ll turn on the A/C. Right?
Same with our personal identity. If we set our identity to be a certain way, like for example being a “shy person”, then we will always make sure we never steer too far away from that definition.
We need to be consistent with that.
Say we’re all of a sudden chatting to everyone at a party and we find ourselves at the center of attention, we may actually start reminding ourselves of our identity.
“What am I doing? I’m way too shy for this!”
It may not be those exact words we’d use. Instead, it’s often a story or excuse we believe in, but you get my drift.
Then, if we actually find ourselves in the corner of the room, not talking to anyone, the opposite can also happen and we remind ourselves of the definition of ourselves.
“Wait a second, I may be shy – but I do talk to people after a while. Let’s mingle a little.”
We recalibrate that “temperature” to return to the definition we set.
Now let’s look at the thing you’re here for: anxiety. What definition have we given ourselves around anxiety?
The “I am” versus “I do” trap.
The most common thing I see is people identifying with the anxiety itself. I hear things like “I am an anxious person” or “I am very sensitive”.
Even things like “I have anxiety” can sometimes create this level of identity around the problem.
Why? Because if you start to learn more about what anxiety is, you’ll see that anxiety is not much more than a manifestation of a certain behavior.
It’s feedback.
You are communicating to the nervous system that you’re not safe.
The feedback you get is: stress hormones to help you return to safety.
Unfortunately, we mistake that feedback itself for the danger, and run in circles. If you don’t know what I mean with that, check out this video on the Anxiety Cycle.
So instead of anxiety being something that we ‘have’ or we simply ‘are’, it’s something we do. You do anxiety.
If this raises a little bit of resistance, that is totally normal – because once anxiety becomes part of our identity, we subconsciously want to protect it.
We sometimes actually hold onto anxiety because it’s part of who we are.
If you are an anxious person, what’s left of you if anxiety is gone?
Who are you then?
The danger in this is exactly that.
If we truly feel like anxiety is something we have instead of do, we’re not going to make a change.
We need to be consistent with our identity.
Behavior
To stay consistent with our identity, we behave a certain way.
If you truly believe you are an anxious person, you may be more inclined to avoid certain situations. After all, you have a good reason to.
It’s not for people like you.
You have to remain close to that “temperature” you set on the thermostat.
You may warn others about your condition or even use anxiety as an excuse for why things are the way they are.
I used to do that.
I didn’t realize that at the time, but anxiety was actually helping me justify why my life was such a mess, and I wasn’t living up to my full potential.
Underneath, I was actually insecure and afraid to show my full self, with the risk of people not liking me, and anxiety really helped me justify why I didn’t.
If I were to change the “I am” to “I do”, I would lose that excuse and would immediately become truthfully honest with myself.
The fact that I wasn’t doing all these amazing things in my career that I set out to do would be on me… not anxiety?!
No, thank you.
Until – obviously – we are forced to make a change.
When anxiety, or other areas of our lives, get so bad – and change becomes a must – is when we are forced to be brutally honest about our identity.
This is the moment of breakthrough.
Breakthrough Identity
One of the most powerful things holding us back from recovery is identity.
We simply don’t believe potential solutions because of the story. Because of our identification with it.
“The solution needs to be way more complex.”
“This happened to me. I have absolutely no control over this!”
When you create a narrative, the brain will keep looking for evidence to back that up.
And then you miss the actual way out of this, because your identity isn’t set up for recovery yet.
When we hit that breaking point and we say “no more”, something interesting happens.
We start to question this identity and this story.
We see other people who have been in similar situations as yourself, who did get over it, and you wonder… “would I be?”.
Cracks are showing up your identity and an “identity gap” is created.
You’re not yet feeling like the confident person.
But you also no longer fully resonate with the anxious person.
And this is an interesting place to be at, because it’s very uncomfortable.
And part of recovery is allowing that identity to shift. Unfortunately, a lot of times this is when we subconsciously revert back to the old identity as it’s what feels familiar.
The biggest part of anxiety recovery is changing your behavior.
And changing your behavior is tough. Why?
Often it’s habitual. We fight anxiety, analyze it or avoid it because we’re simply used to doing that. We have been for years.
Secondly, that behavior supports our identity.
Trying to change your behavior, without changing your identity, is really hard.
Think about a smoker who wants to quit smoking, without changing his/her identity.
Someone offers them a cigarette and they go “No thank you, I’ve quit smoking”.
Great. That works for a couple of times until that person eventually gives into the temptation and decides to just have ‘one more’.
Because the identity is still a smoker who’s quit.
Now if you were to ask a non-smoker if they want a cigarette, what do you think they’ll say?
Do they ask “hmm.. what brand?”
Obviously not, they’ll go “I’m not a smoker”.
That’s the power of identity.
Identity First
To recover from anxiety, we need to change our behavior and our habits.
If those habits match our identity, it becomes way easier to do that. If it doesn’t, we tend to struggle.
In one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits, James Clear explains this really well. He says we need to change our identity first, so we are more inclined to choose positive behavior and habits that support that identity.
Most people think they need to change their behavior first to become that identity.
“I need to work out every week to become a fit person. Right now I’m still a lazy person”.
How hard do you think it would be to break that need for consistency with being a lazy person?
We try a couple of times and then stop and justify that with “Ahh I’m just a lazy person, I can’t help it”.
Same with anxiety recovery.
We want to change our identity first, so our new behavior matches that naturally.
How to change identity
One of the ways to change your identity around anxiety is through language.
Language reinforces our identity to our brains, so we want to become more aware of that.
Whenever we catch ourselves saying or thinking “I have anxiety”, or “Because of my anxiety I…” we can correct ourselves.
We can go from identity language to experience language.
Instead of saying “I have anxiety” you can say “I’m experiencing anxiety”.
The latter describes a temporary experience.
Or, instead of saying “I can’t do that because of my anxiety”, you can say “I feel anxious about doing that.”
One confirms the identity around anxiety, while the other just describes an emotion. Something that’s not dangerous, that you can deal with.
My favorite thing to ask is “What would someone – with the identity I want to have – do in this situation?”.
What would a person who recovered from anxiety do?
If you surround yourself with people who have recovered, and you listen to them, you can see patterns.
You start to catch things they did, or copy the ways they look at anxiety.
And even though you haven’t reached that identity or result yet, you can get into that mindset and ask yourself: “What would the me who fully recovered from anxiety do in this situation?”
In most cases, that’d be practicing your response to anxiety.
Stop avoiding things you want to do.
Start doing things anxious.
And that behavior then reinforces that new identity you’re trying to create.
So – start with catching yourself creating narratives and an identity around anxiety. And simply question that.
Learn about what anxiety is. A pattern. Something you do. And cracks will start showing up in that old identity.
Then, surround yourself with other people who already have that new identity – and who recovered from anxiety – and start asking yourself; what would they do?
You start to take responsibility and work your way towards that new identity and freedom of anxiety.
And when you do that, things start to move pretty quickly.
Luckily, you are not broken. You are not your anxiety. It’s something that you do – that rather reflects what’s right with you than what’s wrong.
But if it’s decreasing your quality of life (which I’m sure it is) then it may be time to start becoming honest with yourself and start moving towards your new identity.
Your old self, with the knowledge on how to deal with unpleasant emotions.
Your old self, without the unhelpful patterns that got you here.
Trust me, it’s worth it.
Hope this was valueable. As always, no AI has been used into writing this post so my apologies for any grammar mistakes or typos 😉
