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Ally or Adversary? Changing Your Relationship With Anxiety
- Jessicah Walker Herche, PhD, HSPP
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
If there is one thing most people with anxiety can agree on, it’s this:
Being anxious feels terrible.
So, naturally, we try to make it stop.
We distract ourselves. Reassure ourselves. Analyze the situation from every possible angle. Avoid whatever triggered the anxiety. Ask someone else what they think. Try to reason our way out of the feeling.
Sometimes those strategies help.
But sometimes, the harder we work to make anxiety disappear, the more attention we give it and the more powerful it seems to become.
If you’re looking for practical strategies for moments when anxiety feels especially intense, we share several in How to Help Your Anxiety Now.
There may be another way to approach anxiety. Not by deciding that anxiety is wonderful or useful all the time. And certainly not by allowing it to run the show.
But by becoming curious about what anxiety is trying to do for you.
Anxiety Is Trying to Solve a Problem
Anxiety is fundamentally protective. It scans ahead. Anticipates problems. Notices uncertainty. Imagines what could go wrong and tries to prepare you for it.
For some people, that protective system has become especially skilled at its job.
Maybe changes in your environment once felt sudden or unpredictable, so you learned to keep your eyes on the horizon.
Maybe the adults around you struggled to regulate their own emotions, and you became exceptionally good at reading the room.
Maybe achievement brought safety, approval, or predictability, so your mind learned to anticipate every possible mistake before it happened.
Or perhaps you simply have a nervous system that notices more, processes deeply, and responds strongly to uncertainty.
There are many paths into anxiety. But underneath them, there is often some version of:
I’m trying to keep you safe.
The problem is that a protective system can become overprotective. What once helped you anticipate genuine danger may eventually start treating uncertainty itself as danger.
You Are Not Your Anxiety
One therapeutic approach that can be particularly helpful for understanding anxiety is Internal Family Systems (IFS).
Within an IFS framework, rather than thinking I am anxious, we might begin to notice:
There is a part of me that feels anxious.
It sounds like a small distinction. But, it really isn't. When anxiety is something you are, it can feel enormous and all-encompassing. When anxiety is something you are experiencing, there is suddenly a little more room around it.
Anxiety becomes one part of your internal experience rather than the sum total of who you are.
If you’d like to learn more about this approach, we’ve written about how high achievers can benefit from Internal Family Systems therapy.
Getting Curious About the Anxious Part of You
Instead of immediately trying to get rid of anxiety the next time it appears, see what happens if you get curious about it. You might ask:
What is this anxiety worried will happen?
What is it trying to prevent?
What does it believe I need to know right now?
When have I felt this way before?
You don’t have to agree with the answers. You aren’t handing anxiety the steering wheel. You’re simply trying to understand why it showed up.
And sometimes that shift from trying to make it stop to being curious about what's happening creates just enough distance to respond differently.
When Protection Becomes Exhausting
Anxiety can create the illusion that if you think long enough, plan carefully enough, or anticipate enough possibilities, you can finally make the uncertain certain. But there is no amount of analysis that can eliminate uncertainty from being human. Eventually, vigilance becomes exhausting. You spend enormous amounts of energy assessing what might happen, rehearsing conversations that haven’t occurred, preparing for outcomes that may never come, and trying to make the unexpected somehow expected.
Your protective system may be working incredibly hard. And you may be incredibly tired.
For high-achieving adults especially, anxiety can even become difficult to recognize because it looks productive from the outside. Planning, analyzing, preparing, researching, anticipating—these can all be genuine strengths.
But when anxiety is in charge, it can feel as if you must always be anticipating, planning, and preparing in order to be okay.
What We Resist Often Gets Louder
One of the ideas I appreciate about IFS is that the parts of ourselves we work hardest to silence often have something they desperately want us to hear and understand. Anxiety is no exception.
If your usual response has been:
Go away.
This is ridiculous.
Why am I like this?
I shouldn’t feel this way.
…imagine what it might be like to respond differently.
Perhaps:
“I notice you’re here. Something must feel uncertain or threatening right now. Can you tell me what you're worried about?”
That isn’t surrendering to anxiety. It’s responding to yourself with curiosity rather than hostility.
We explore this same idea in Why Meditation May Increase Your Anxiety and What to Do About It, including why anxiety can initially increase during meditation and how learning to stay with the experience can help you access the benefits of the practice.
Once you understand what anxiety is trying to protect you from, you can decide how to respond in a way that fits the situation you're in today.
Anxiety Doesn’t Have to Be Your Adversary
The goal of anxiety therapy isn’t necessarily to reach a point where anxiety becomes a distant memory. Anxiety is part of being human. At times, it is useful. It alerts us to risk, helps us prepare, and draws our attention toward things that matter.
The work is learning to recognize when anxiety is directing us toward useful information and when an old protective system is reacting to a danger that isn’t actually present. You can notice anxiety as a data point without automatically aligning with it as truth. You can appreciate why it developed without allowing it to make every decision.
You can listen to anxiety without letting it become the loudest voice in the room.
Over time, your relationship with anxiety can begin to shift. Less fighting. Less fear of the feeling itself. More curiosity. More choice. And perhaps a growing sense that when anxiety arrives, you know how to meet it.
Building a Different Relationship With Anxiety
If anxiety has been running much of your internal world, changing your relationship with it can be difficult to do alone. Anxiety therapy can help you understand the patterns underneath your anxiety, develop a different relationship with uncertainty, and respond to your nervous system with greater flexibility rather than fear.
At Cadence Psychology Studio, we work with thoughtful, high-achieving adults who often appear capable and composed on the outside while carrying a great deal internally. We offer anxiety therapy in Fishers, Indiana, and secure online therapy throughout Indiana and PSYPACT-participating states.
If you’re ready to understand your anxiety differently, we’d be glad to help. Text us at (317) 747-0574 to schedule your first session, or use our online scheduler to book a session now.
About the Author
Jessicah Walker Herche, PhD, HSPP, is a counseling psychologist and founder of Cadence Psychology Studio, a therapy practice in Indiana. She specializes in working with high-achieving adults and couples to navigate trauma, anxiety, and relationship challenges, offering care that is both clinically grounded and deeply relational.
Disclaimer: The information provided on this blog is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional psychological care, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
