Written by Dr. Veronica Johnson
September 2025
We all know what anxiety is: a sense of worry or unease that something is going to go wrong, hurt, or destroy everything. This sense is not unusual or problematic in and of itself; we all need a little anxiety to get to work on time, to study for the test, or to not blow off a friend…again. But when anxiety grows, it starts to take more and more control of our life through avoidance. Avoidance always accompanies anxiety
Who doesn’t love avoidance? Has anyone else been excited to have texting capabilities so we didn’t have to make a phone call and actually talk to a person? Ahh. So. Much. Better. When parent teacher conferences roll around, and I’ll have to, you know, talk to teachers – I’ll ask my child, “Did you really want me to go to conferences?” (The punks always say, “Yes.”) 🙄 We avoid things when we are anxious because it immediately makes the anxiety go away. Blessed peace…kind of.
It’s only kind of peace because we inherently know that anxiety will roll around again. [Except middle school; I’m 100% certain I won’t be in middle school again.] And we find ourselves in a situation in which we again feel anxious and again need to find a way out. In cases where the anxiety rises to clinical levels, we avoid more and more and our lives get smaller and smaller.
Here’s the rub at this point: when we avoid more and more, we need other people to help us out. If we feel anxious about going to the grocery store (and avoid it), we have to ask our spouse or roommate to go to Kroger each time the fridge is empty. If we feel anxious about driving, we have to get someone else to drive us. We end up in a situation in which we have to control others to maintain that kind of peace we have clawed our way into.
And who doesn’t love control?? Control is my favorite! I love the sense that I don’t have to do something I don’t want to do. In order to keep this sense of control, I come up with really rational arguments as to why I shouldn’t do the things I’m avoiding. (Try to get me to do a colonoscopy – I’ll show you what I mean.)
The anxiety – avoidance – control pathway is strong and self-perpetuating. The more we avoid what makes us anxious, the more we get others to “help us out,” the more we feel anxious and have to avoid, and therefore control. The draw to this path gets stronger and stronger the more we take it. It can be very hard at this point to label all this as anxiety. To say that anxiety keeps me from the doctor seems invalidating to all my “sound” reasoning. (Hey – it really is sound reasoning!) To say that anxiety is behind my careful parenting takes away any sense of control I might have in this unpredictable world.
The way out of anxiety – the way to actual peace – is so counterintuitive, few people stumble upon it themselves. Believe it or not, the way to peace is to face anxiety; we have to move toward the thing that is causing us so much discomfort. (It sounds like insanity!) Facing anxiety takes courage, it takes strength, but most of all, it takes the presence of someone who will be with us through it all.
There are numerous psychological “tricks” that help us face anxiety. Some tricks make it so you imagine doing the anxious thing in your mind so that you get comfortable getting closer to it (so to speak). Some tricks have us get a little closer over time until we are actually doing what makes us anxious. Some focus on getting control over our breathing and our thoughts so that we don’t spin out (use all our great arguments) when we are doing the thing that makes us anxious. It can also be helpful to get family members involved so they stop “helping” in ways that increase anxiety. These are all techniques Envision therapists are trained in and can teach you how to use in your specific situation.
But what makes Envision therapists important – what the research talks about as being the most important part of therapy – is the presence of a trustworthy person as you face what you fear. So whether it’s an Envision therapist, your mom, your best friend, the Holy Spirit, or a coach – face the anxiety. There’s no other way to peace.
