3 Attitude Shifts for Anxiety & Panic (That Help YOU Thrive at Work, Relationships, and Health) | Ep. 423
In this episode, we explore three powerful attitude shifts that can transform your relationship with anxiety, helping you navigate life’s challenges with confidence and resilience.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why anxiety is not a problem—and how shifting this mindset can change everything.
- How to stop believing that anxiety means you are broken, weak, or failing.
- The “Bring It On” approach and how it empowers you to face fears head-on.
- Real-life examples of how these mindset shifts can improve your relationships, career, and health.
- Practical steps to embrace anxiety without letting it control your decisions.
- How to make bold moves in life even when anxiety tries to hold you back.
Content
3 Attitude Shifts to Transform Your Relationship with Anxiety
Anxiety has been a constant companion in my life—through marriage, parenthood, and building my career. For years, I struggled with various anxiety disorders, including an eating disorder, and I wondered if that anxious voice in my head would ever go away.
But what if the goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety? What if, instead, we could change the way we respond to it?
These three attitude shifts have completely transformed how I experience anxiety. They have helped me thrive in my marriage, my career, and as a parent—allowing me to support both myself and my children through our fears. If you feel stuck in anxiety, these mindset changes may be exactly what you need to move forward with confidence.
Attitude Shift #1: Anxiety Is Not a Problem
For the longest time, I treated anxiety like an emergency—something I had to fix, eliminate, or avoid at all costs. I engaged in endless safety behaviors, convinced that anxiety was a real threat.
Then, I learned a powerful truth: anxiety is not a problem.
Sure, anxiety is uncomfortable. But so is hunger, pain, or getting caught in traffic. We don’t make those experiences mean something is wrong with us. So why do we treat anxiety as something catastrophic?
Now, when anxiety shows up, I ask myself: “So what? Who cares?”
Anxiety says, Something bad is going to happen! And I say, Okay, thanks for your input. Noted. Instead of engaging with the fear, I observe it. I remind myself that my brain is just doing what brains do—creating noise, stirring up drama.
This shift has been life-changing. When real stressors arise, I can separate the actual challenge from the anxiety-driven catastrophizing. Instead of panicking, I focus on what truly needs to be done.
And in my marriage? This has been a game changer. I used to dump my anxiety onto my husband, listing every potential disaster. His response? I don’t even think there’s a problem. At first, that frustrated me. But now, I see it: I was making anxiety the problem. Instead, I can acknowledge it and move forward without getting stuck in fear.
Attitude Shift #2: Anxiety Does Not Mean You Are Broken
Many of us believe that if we feel anxious, something must be wrong with us. We fall into a shame spiral:
- Why does my brain do this?
- What’s wrong with me?
- I must be weak, bad, or incapable.
But here’s the truth: having anxiety does not mean you are broken.
Think about hunger. If you get hungry, do you beat yourself up about it? No! You simply recognize that your body is signaling a need, and you eat. Anxiety is the same—it’s just your brain misinterpreting a situation as dangerous.
When I started responding to anxiety with the same neutrality and care I give to hunger, everything changed. Instead of treating anxiety as evidence that I was failing, I began seeing it as a natural part of my experience. My brain is wired for anxiety, and that’s okay. I can work with it, not against it.
Attitude Shift #3: The “Bring It On” Approach
Once I stopped seeing anxiety as a problem and stopped making it mean something negative about me, I took things one step further: I embraced the Bring It On approach.
Instead of fearing anxiety, I started inviting it in:
- Afraid of driving? Bring it on. Let’s go to the beach with the family anyway.
- Afraid of judgment? Bring it on. I’m going to show up authentically in my relationships.
- Afraid of failing at work? Bring it on. I’ll put myself out there and take risks.
This attitude shift has allowed me to grow in ways I never imagined. It’s the reason I’ve been able to build an award-winning podcast, despite my fear of failure. It’s the reason I show up fully in my relationships and career. And it’s the reason I’ve been able to push past fear and prioritize my health, even when every excuse told me not to.
When we take a “Bring It On” approach, anxiety no longer dictates our decisions. We do.
The Power of These Shifts in Everyday Life
These three shifts—
- Anxiety is not a problem.
- Anxiety does not mean you are broken.
- Bring it on.
—have changed everything for me. They’ve helped me manage stress, improve my health, and step into my best self.
For example, I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and I’ve noticed that the more I stress, the worse my symptoms become. By managing my anxiety with these mindset shifts, I actually feel physically healthier. And when it came time to start weight training again (a daunting task!), these shifts helped me push past the excuses and get started.
No more waiting for the perfect moment. No more letting fear hold me back.
What’s Next for You?
Anxiety will always be part of life, but it doesn’t have to control you. Try practicing these three attitude shifts and notice the difference in your relationships, your work, your health, and your happiness.
And if you found this helpful, share this with a friend who might need it. Let’s grow together. 💛
As always, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things.
Interested in Your Anxiety & Panic Toolkit? Check it out at www.cbtschool.com/overcominganixety
Transcription: 3 Attitude Shifts for Anxiety & Panic (That Help YOU Thrive at Work, Relationships, and Health)
Over the last 10 to 15 years as I’ve grown my family, grown my marriage, grown my business, and my career Anxiety has come along every step of the way. I am someone who has had multiple different anxiety disorders over the years, including an eating disorder, but the one thing that has been constant and consistent has been that voice of anxiety in my head.
And sometimes I even wonder if it’s ever going to go away. But these three attitude shifts I have made it so that I could thrive in my marriage. I could thrive in my career. And as a parent, a lot of these attitude shifts I have had to learn as I’ve coached my kids through their own fears and anxiety.
And so it’s not just helping me, it’s helping them.
So it’s not just helping me, it’s helping them. So, attitude shifts. So, attitude shift number one, that I think has probably been the most powerful, is that anxiety is actually not a problem. When I first had anxiety, I didn’t know any of these skills, and I would ap I would ex I would experience them as if they were actually real threats, real emergencies, imminent danger.
And I would be doing all kinds of safety behaviors and compulsions to try and eliminate them. I actually felt like it was the right thing to do. And I’m sure you resonate with that. But once I landed on the idea and the attitude shift that Anxiety’s not a problem. Everything changed. Instead of being tense and hypervigilant and all, uh, stressed all the time and trying to avoid being triggered, I sort of shifted to like, I’m going to let this be here and it’s not a problem.
Often I’ll even say to my clients when they say, well, I’ve just had the most anxious week, I’ll say, So what’s the problem with that? Tell me how you’re perceiving that. What are you taking? What meaning are you making? Because we could just say that anxiety, it is uncomfortable. I’m not going to lie, but it’s no different to having Pain, or annoying things happening, that’s a part of life and we tend to deal with other annoying things pretty well.
When there is an emergency, people with anxiety are the best people to have around because they can handle these stresses so well. So why don’t we not make anxiety the problem? The thing, so why do we make anxiety the problem? The problem. I want us to move into an attitude shift where we’re like, so what, who cares?
Anxiety is here. What has it got to say? Oh, bad things are going to happen. The sky is falling. Terrible bad things are going to happen tomorrow or today. All right, let’s observe it as anxiety. Even our thoughts, our intrusive thoughts, and say, this isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed. This is just my brain doing what my brain does.
My daughter always says my brain’s just braining today, which I think is an amazing attitude shift because it just normalizes the fact that our brains are primed to come up with some drama and we don’t have to make it a problem. So that’s the first attitude shift I want you to make. The way it has helped me is when real stressors do show up, I can address the real stressor, but without engaging in the drama that my brain adds to it, the catastrophizing, the dramatic over the top black and white thinking.
I can just acknowledge anxiety and I can go, of course anxiety is going to be here. That’s not a problem. Um, what needs to be done? Let’s take a look and let’s get to work. It has helped me in my marriage because a lot of the time I used to sort of project this anxiety onto him. I’d come to him and be like, but these bad things might happen and what will we do and how will we handle it?
And he’d always be like, I don’t even think there’s a problem. And it allowed me to go, Oh, okay. Okay. My brain is braining. But let’s actually not make all of the noise a problem anymore and that’s been so, so helpful for me. The second attitude shift was that having anxiety does not, and let me repeat, does not mean that I am broken or bad or wrong or weak.
When we experience anxiety. So let’s say our brain has interpreted. that there is a threat. There’s not a threat, but our brain has set off the fire alarm that there is a threat. What we often then do is we either respond as if there is danger, like we just talked about with hypervigilance and, you know, we’re over correcting to try and prevent bad things from happening or prevent ourselves from being triggered or prevent from having thoughts or emotions.
And that’s one way we handle it. But then sometimes when we acknowledge that our brain’s made a mistake, then we go into beating ourselves up. What’s wrong with me? Why does my brain do this? My brain’s broken. Something must be wrong. Why is it doing this again? This is so messed up. I’m terrible. I’m the worst.
We move into a shame spiral. And we just treat the presence of anxiety as if it’s Something wrong with us, that we are innately broken and unworthy. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. That attitude keeps us stuck. Well, maybe you’re not engaging in the anxiety, but now you’re just engaging in another story, which is that this makes you inherently bad.
Here’s the thing, and I think about this all the time. Every time I get hungry, which is uncomfortable, right? I hate being hungry. It’s actually a very uncomfortable feeling for me. I don’t know if that’s because I restricted for so many years and I kind of have an association to it as being hungry is like when I used to suffer the most.
And I used to push myself through being hungry so much, um, around the whole day that it kind of like, that it kind of used to make me feel like I was being punished because I was punishing myself. When I’m hungry, I don’t get mad at myself for being hungry. Like, Oh, you’re hungry again. Why does this keep happening? What’s wrong with you? You know, we’ve got to fix this. I don’t do that.
Oh my God.
No, when I’m hungry, I go, Oh, my brain is telling me I’m hungry, my body’s doing what it does naturally, and I’m going to do the next appropriate rational thing, which is to eat. Now, when my body is anxious and my brain sets off anxiety, even though it might be a mistake, my job is to just again say, this is just what my brain does.
And the truth is, I am genetically set up to have anxiety. Of course my brain is going to be anxious. And I’m going to practice responding rationally and in a way that’s compassionate and just work with it. Again, not make it a problem. We don’t want to have the attitude that there’s something wrong with us and your most important shift here is to just say, yeah.
It’s just a thing I experience, like an itch, or like pain, or like hunger, or like we get a headache when we’ve been around too much noise, or we’ve been, you know, we get overheated when we’ve ran too fast. That’s just our body doing what our body does to regulate, and sometimes it’s gonna send out some anxiety, but that’s not An innate problem in me.
So I can first work at not making it a problem and then I can also not make the presence of anxiety mean anything about me as a person. That’s attitude number two. That’s attitude shift number two. Okay. So let’s move to attitude shift number three. And you guys have heard me talk about this so much, but let me share with you how this has changed.
everything for me in all areas of my life. The attitude shift I want you to make is the bring it on approach. So again, first we don’t make anxiety a problem. That’s attitude shift number one. Attitude shift number two is.
Attitude shift number two is that we also don’t make it mean anything about us, that we’re not the problem. Attitude shift number three is where we go, bring it, let’s have it. What am I afraid of? And this is where I want you to get really clear. What are the things you’re afraid of? And how can you say, bring it on?
And this is where it can help you in not just your day to day, but in your relationships, in your career, in your family, in your health. This is where it can be so important. Identify, Oh, I’m anxious about driving. Bring it on. Let’s go. My kids and my family would love for us all to go to the beach on the weekend.
Bring it. Let me face my fear while also honoring what I value as a family member in my family as a mother, as a wife. Oh, I have the fear of being judged. And, and um, you know, let’s say abandoned in your relationship, bring it on. I’m going to show up as authentically as I can, as compassionately as I can, so that I can then connect with my partner.
Because when I’m closed off and jaded and, and hiding and faking, there might be a connection, but it’s not that deep vulnerable connection that we all crave and want.
If I have anxiety at work about what if I don’t do a great job, what if I make a mistake, I’m going to only work at about 50%. I’m not fully showing up. I’m not being vulnerable. I’m not showing my boss what I could do if I was willing to fail. So much of my career, this podcast has been about being willing to fail, being willing to make a fool of myself, being willing to be wrong, to be willing to be judged.
And when I said, bring it on, let’s go, it allowed me to grow this incredible award winning podcast. Right? So when we actually have that bring it on approach, it can touch every area of your life in the most beautiful way. For those people who have generalized anxiety, they may be worrying about health or money or their career or their relationships.
The bring it on approach allows us to show up in complete alignment with our values. Or you’re worried about money. Absolutely. Things can be financially strapped. That is so overwhelmingly scary, especially in these economic times, right? If we’re sitting there just ruminating, not wanting to have anxiety, we don’t move to finding actual solutions.
So let’s say, bring it on. The anxiety is not a problem. It’s not going to kill me. It’s not going to damage me. It’s not going to harm me. It doesn’t mean I’m bad or wrong. Bring it. What do I need to do? How can I move forward? Unconditionally, with an attitude shift where I’m saying, it’s okay that you’re here, Anxiety.
You cannot Drive the car, but you can ride shotgun. Let’s go. What can I do to solve this problem? It’s so important to these attitude shifts when it comes to making decisions. So many of my clients and my students and listeners report about the difficulty of making a decision in the fear that they experience.
In the fear that they experience that something will go wrong, that they will fail, that they’ll make a mistake, they’ll make the wrong decision. And I want to say, when you’re making a decision, all you have is choices. It’s never the perfect choice because you would have already made the decision if it was a perfect choice.
The options are all imperfect. It’s a matter of whether you’re going to move forward in the face of imperfection and be willing to bring the anxiety with you. Let’s go bring it on. And with that compassion that even when things don’t go perfectly. You will radically show up for yourself and support yourself and troubleshoot the problems as you go.
When you have that attitude shift, failing is not a problem. It’s just something we then address at the time and we make the best decision we can and we move forward. Our value and worth is never on the line. Again, I’ll say that. Our value and worth is never on the line. Who we are is Uh, making a bad decision doesn’t push us over the cliff.
Making a bad decision doesn’t push us over the cliff into being a bad person. There is no cliff of being a bad person. People often say like, Oh, that might push me off the cliff and I’ll be never able to reach redeem myself. No, no, that’s all stories. What we want to do is sit down, identify what’s going on.
What would I do if anxiety wasn’t here? What would I do if I knew I wouldn’t fail? And go try those things, see, try them on, see if they will work and again, attitude shift number one, don’t make them a problem. Attitude shift number two, Anxiety doesn’t mean anything about you as a person. And three, bring it.
Let’s go. I have talked about my personal experience with having generalized anxiety and OCD is it’s about How can I make this my bravest day? How can I be the bravest me? That’s the work here. That’s the attitude shift we’re looking for. That means that anxiety isn’t Calling the shots. You are. And if you fall, it’s a soft landing.
Right. Then we’re not going to beat ourselves up. And anyone who does criticize and judge us, okay, they’re not our people. Like we don’t need to take that into consideration all the time. Don’t worry about that so much. Let them, let them judge us. Okay, so much beauty has come in my life for just letting people be in their lane and I focus on my lane.
That’s our work. So these three attitude shifts, if practiced even in their order, you don’t have to do them in the order, but I just feel like it’s the natural flow. If you can do this, you will start to see all the areas of your life expand. How has this helped my health? I have found, as somebody who has postural orthostatic tachycardic syndrome, POTS for short, is the more I’m stressed and the more I’m anxious, the more that condition shows up.
It’s crazy to me how my stress management is a huge part of my management of that condition. When I’m able to do these attitude shifts, I tend to manage stress so much better. When I’m able to manage my stress and anxiety, I tend to be less exhausted, I sleep better, I tend to eat better too because I’m not sort of just anxious eating or I’m not of like, sometimes I don’t get hungry and I forget to eat.
These These, these small shifts can set a building blocks so that I am feeling healthier. It’s actually recently. You know, I’m kind of going into this middle age season of my life, where my body’s starting to change. And I knew I had to get back in the gym and start weight training, but like, oh my gosh, going to the gym, what are the kids gonna do, where will they be, who will they be with, like, how will they get ready for school if I’m gonna do this, it’s so many, I, so many excuses I made.
In my mind. Instead, I just sat down and wrote, Okay, what are my fears? What am I afraid of here? That I’ll be tired? That I will feel terrible? That it’ll hurt? That it is too much? And then what did I do? I said, Okay.
And then what did I do? I said, Okay. I’m gonna let all that be there. That’s not a problem. The fact that it’s hard doesn’t mean there’s a problem. Doing hard things is important. We know that. It’s a beautiful day to do hard things. Number two, the fact that I’m having struggles with this doesn’t mean I’m bad.
And number three is bring it. Let’s do it imperfectly. Let’s just whack it together. You guys know about my theory of whack it together. Whack it together has allowed me to achieve things I never thought possible. And that’s because I let go of perfectionism. And I just whacked it together. I imagine like an IKEA shelf.
Right? Now, you could spend hours trying to get it all lined up, but life isn’t really like that, right? IKEA cabinets aren’t like that. They don’t line up perfectly. They’re perfect, perfect metaphor for life. And so sometimes you do just have to whack it together and let it be imperfect. And that’s what I want for you.
I want us to be the kindest. Messiest humans we can be, but we are going after what we want. We are going after what matters to us and we’re not letting fear get in the way. So there you have it. There are the three. Attitude shifts that I want you to make in your day to day experience of anxiety so that you can squeeze the goodness out of your relationships, out of your family life, your career, your school, your health, your general day to day.
These shifts aren’t just for anxiety, they’re for life and I hope that they bring you All the happiness and joy in your life because that’s what your anxiety toolkit is all about as always It is a beautiful day to do hard things Do not forget that if you love this episode and you want to share it, I would love if you would that’s how our podcast grows and Also, if you would please leave us a review the reviews help us To grow this show so that we can show we can show and share this with as many people as possible Have a wonderful day, everybody.
I’ll see you next week.
