Understanding how to work through anxiety starts with shifting the way you relate to your inner experience. Anxiety becomes more manageable when you learn to notice what it’s responding to, how it’s protecting you, and what it needs from you. This article outlines five elements that support that process.
1. Be Willing to Feel Anxiety Instead of Trying to Fix It
Most people respond to anxiety with urgency, trying to shut it down, control it, or talk themselves out of it. While understandable, this “fix-first” approach creates more internal pressure. Real change begins with the willingness to feel your anxious responses long enough to understand them. Feeling anxiety doesn’t mean indulging it or getting swept away. It means allowing the sensations to be present while staying curious about what they’re connected to. Anxiety is often a reaction to something underneath: fear of being misunderstood, a sense of responsibility that feels too heavy, unmet needs, or old relational patterns resurfacing.
Tools like grounding can reduce intensity, but the deeper shift comes from asking:
“What is this anxiety protecting? What part of me feels threatened or unsupported?”
When you stop treating anxiety as a malfunction and start viewing it as communication, the nervous system naturally becomes less reactive.
2. Give Yourself Permission to Feel Anger
A surprising amount of anxiety is actually unexpressed anger. Not explosive anger, suppressed anger. The kind that was discouraged, minimized, or punished. When anger isn’t allowed to exist, the body absorbs it as tension, overthinking, irritability, or chronic worry.
Making room for anger is not about becoming confrontational. It’s about acknowledging what the anger is pointing to:
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a boundary that was crossed
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a need that wasn’t met
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a sense of unfairness or overwhelm
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a part of you that didn’t feel protected
When anger is approached with curiosity instead of shame, anxiety loosens. Ask yourself: “Am I anxious or am I feeling something else? What is my anger signaling? What part of me needed something I didn’t know how to ask for?”
If you’re exploring how to work through anxiety in a sustainable way, it helps to recognise that emotions often show up in layers. Allowing anger to be part of your emotional range reduces the burden your body carries quietly.
3. Shift From Self-Criticism to Self-Understanding
Anxiety intensifies when the inner reaction to it is judgment. Many people meet anxious thoughts with internal criticism: “Why am I like this?” “I should be stronger.” “I’m overreacting.” That internal hostility tells your nervous system that you’re unsafe even within yourself.
A more effective stance is self-understanding. This means observing your reactions and asking what they reveal about your needs, fears, or values, rather than attacking yourself for having them. Self-understanding sounds like:
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“This reaction makes sense given what I’ve been through.”
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“My anxiety is trying to alert me to something important.”
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“There’s a reason this feels overwhelming. What is it?”
When you meet anxiety with curiosity instead of criticism, you create internal conditions that allow your system to soften. You also build the emotional literacy needed to respond rather than react. Over time, this decreases reactivity and strengthens your sense of agency.
4. Integrate Tools Consistently as You Learn How to Work Through Anxiety
Insight without integration doesn’t create change. What shifts anxiety patterns is repetition, how you pause, regulate, reflect, and respond in the small moments of everyday life. Therapy is powerful, but what happens between sessions is equally essential. Ask yourself regularly:
“How do I apply what I’ve learned when I’m triggered?”
“How can I practice this skill in real time?”
And if you’re not in therapy, reflect on how intentional and consistent you’re being with the specific behaviour you’re trying to change and if you feel stuck, therapy can offer support and structure to help you move forward. The key thing to remember here is that : Your system learns through experience, not intention. Consistency matters more than perfection.
5. Step Into Self-Leadership Instead of Waiting to Be Rescued
While support is deeply valuable, working through anxiety ultimately requires internal leadership. No therapist, partner, or friend can regulate your emotions for you. They can help, guide, and walk beside you, but the ongoing work of understanding your reactions, choosing responses, and creating internal safety is yours. Self-leadership isn’t about being hyper-independent or doing everything alone. It’s about acknowledging your capacity to influence your inner world.
Self-leadership sounds like:
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“I can learn to support myself when I’m overwhelmed.”
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“I’m responsible for how I interpret this moment.”
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“I can reach for support, but I won’t abandon my own role in this.”
It’s the shift from needing rescue to trusting your ability to navigate discomfort with self-acceptance. This is what builds internal stability, not perfection, and not self-pressure, but the quiet confidence that you can meet yourself in difficult moments. Learning how to work through anxiety isn’t about eliminating it, but about developing the capacity to understand and support yourself differently.
About the Author
Dr. Pauline Chiarizia is a Counselling Psychologist specialising in trauma. She offers online therapy and EMDR for individuals who are ready to explore themselves more deeply, break free from unhelpful patterns, and address challenges like anxiety, depression, trauma, low self-esteem, and burnout.
Dr. Chiarizia helps you develop resilience, strengthen self-trust, and build the confidence to navigate life’s challenges: personally and professionally. Her approach empowers clients to cope with adversity while also being fully present for moments of joy, love, and connection.