Is Anxiety Sucking the Joy Out of Your Life

Explore how anxiety hijacks your joy and drains your energy—and what you can do to reclaim calm, connection, and meaning in your daily life.

When anxiety is running your life it’s time to reach out for help

Noah Buscher-unsplash

There are times in our lives when we need extra help. All of us need some help and support at some point. When it seems like anxiety is getting the upper hand, running the show, running you into the ground, intruding on your thoughts, taking you down a rabbit hole, and stealing your peace of mind and happiness, it's past time to get some support. There is real help for anxiety to help reduce your anxious experience.

Anxiety isn’t just a joy stealer—over time it can even lead to depression

Anxiety, even low levels of constant anxiety, can become a lot to deal with over time. Coping with out of control anxiety, a sense of overwhelm, burnout, or a nagging newer lack of motivation isn't just stressful and disheartening. It can lead to low mood and even depression. Most anxious folks are used to solving problems for themselves and others. When we bump into something we can't solve, it's disconcerting. And even a little alarming.

It seems like we should be able to manage anxiety on our own, like everything else. And we do, for a time. But when we can't solve something as seemingly (or deceptively) simple as anxiety, it hits us where we live. Our sense of self takes a hit. Our sense of competency is undermined. Our (false) sense of control is threatened. When exerting control is how we've coped with life and emotions up to now, we can be caught up short when we can't control our own thoughts and responses. Our own moods and irritability. Our reactivity. Depression often follows unabated anxiety. They travel together. For one thing, dealing with our out of control stress and anxiety is exhausting. It requires a tremendous amount of mental energy. It takes an increasingly physical toll, too. Anxiety and stress are expensive to finance, energetically. When we become discouraged or exhausted enough, our mood may start to falter, as well.

Christopher Lemercier

I specialize in working with highly anxious adults. A therapy incorporating depth-oriented, somatic (or body-oriented), trauma-informed, holistic approaches to reducing anxious experience can improve the overall quality of life. A big part of the work I do is supporting anxious folks on their path to reclaiming their lives. I know this gig from the inside out. When our adaptive skills tend towards anxious management of ourselves, our lives, our jobs, our favorite people, we won't always recognize our own anxiety for what it is. It's just the way we are. It's the way life is. It’s what we feel we “have to” do. We don't know another way.

The things that set us up for anxiety—our history, the situations we've gone through, the lives we've led, our current challenges, which somehow seem too big—also set us up to find it hard to allow help and support. Even therapeutic help. It can feel too vulnerable. Threatening. I get it. Relying on others may have never been possible in the past or has led to painful results and disappointment. There is a better way. A less isolated way. A more connected way. A more interdependent and rewarding way to live. We can work together to create that more satisfying way of living and relating.

Online therapy—you can work through your anxiety from home

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Online therapy and telehealth. These days, due to COVID, most therapy is taking place online or over the phone. You can do it from the comfort of your own home. You can even manage it at the office, given you have the privacy to do so. Or from your parked car. There's no commute, so it takes less time on your calendar. Us overscheduled, overfunctioning types appreciate that, don't we? Besides, I get to meet a lot of great dogs!

Therapy is now more convenient and accessible for more people than ever. I am finding it a very popular option for my clients. There's something very powerful about accessing therapy from the comfort of your own home, in your nest, with your favorite mug of something warm to drink, and surrounded by your pets. I’ll share something else with you. After 15 years in private practice as a therapist, and now one of those years fully online,

I can report online therapy works. It’s working just as well for my clients as sitting in my office and we don't have to manage masks in order to work together.

There’s room for more happiness in life

Lowering your anxious experience helps you feel closer to those you love. When we bring our anxiety and overwhelm down, we are able to live more connected and relational lives. Why would that be true? Anxiety takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of our reserves just to manage ourselves and not lose our shit. Anxious thoughts, worry, and rumination take up a lot of head space. They preoccupy us. Our thoughts will take us out of the present moment. We'll end up alone in our head rather than being with the people we are actually interacting with. They feel our absence. Our inattention. Our irritable distracted edge. And we end up feeling isolated. Isolated, unseen, and alone. There are better relationships on the other side of reducing the hold anxiety has on us today.

You can make the time to feel better now

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An investment of your time and energy now can change everything. Given some time, exploring the genesis of your experience, relearning the way you talk to yourself, exploring unreasonable self-expectations, bringing negative intrusive thoughts to heel, working through and establishing boundaries, and utilizing time-tested somatic or body-oriented approaches to relaxation, there is help with reducing anxiety and claiming or reclaiming a happier life. Personal work is a journey of sorts. Therapy and talking to a trained helper can smooth your way and provide a map for moving forward, one step at a time.

I help people who feel bad feel better. Let’s talk.

Learn about online anxiety therapy in California.