Anxiety Can Be Your Superpower. Therapy Can Help You Harness It

I’ve had some version of the same conversation with clients many times.

I’m sitting across from someone who is doing well by almost all measures. He’s usually a founder, an executive, a lawyer, or someone working his way up in a demanding career. He’s capable, ambitious, and accustomed to holding himself to a high standard.

He’s also very, very anxious.

And when we start talking about what it would mean for him to feel less anxious, I sometimes get resistance.

“I don’t know if I want to get rid of my anxiety.”

Then comes the explanation.

“My anxiety is part of why I’m successful.”

I know what he means. For many of the high-achievers I work with, anxiety isn’t simply something that gets in their way. It’s also the thing that gets them out of bed, keeps them moving forward when others have stopped, pushes them to anticipate problems, and makes phoning it in an unacceptable option.

They worry about dropping the ball, so they rarely do. They think about what could go wrong, so they’re often prepared when something does. And they feel uneasy about falling behind, so they keep moving.

If anxiety has helped you build a successful life, the idea of getting rid of it doesn’t necessarily sound appealing. It actually sounds a little irresponsible.

And I don’t think therapy for anxiety needs to begin with the assumption that anxiety is something we should eliminate.

Anxiety Exists for a Reason

Anxiety gets talked about so negatively that it’s easy to forget something basic: we have it for a reason.

Imagine one of your distant ancestors walking around and they run into a predator. The person whose nervous system responded with some version of, This is dangerous. Pay attention. Do something, had an advantage.

Anxiety prepares us to respond to potential threats. Most of us aren’t running from saber-toothed tigers anymore, but our brains still need the ability to anticipate problems.

A little anxiety before a presentation might encourage you to prepare or thinking about an upcoming deadline can get you moving. Worrying about a problem in your business can lead you to notice something that needs your attention. Anxiety can make us alert, conscientious, thoughtful, and responsive.

In the right amount, it can be incredibly useful.

The problem is that your nervous system isn’t always particularly good at knowing when enough is enough.

When Anxiety Helps You Perform

I work with a lot of people who are extremely good at solving problems and staying several steps ahead. Sometimes anxiety is part of that equation.

Think about the difference between preparing for an important meeting and walking into it having barely considered what you’re going to say.

Some anticipatory anxiety can help so you walk into the room ready to go.

From the outside, people might call you conscientious, driven, detail-oriented, or prepared, and they’re probably right.

But internally, your fuel is likely anxiety. That’s why telling an anxious professional that the goal is simply to “stop worrying” can miss something important.

Worrying has worked for them, until it doesn’t.

The Problem Is When the Volume Gets Too High

There’s a point at which anxiety stops helping you solve the problem and starts becoming another problem you have to solve.

Preparing for tomorrow’s presentation is useful, but putting off sleep so you can mentally rehearse it at 2:30am isn’t.

This is where anxiety gets tricky. The same system that helps you anticipate problems can become so activated that it starts interfering with your ability to respond to them.

Instead of sharpening your focus, anxiety scatters it. Anxiety can make every decision seem dangerous or incredibly high-stakes. Anxiety can convince you that you can never be prepared enough.

At that point, more anxiety doesn’t produce better performance, it just produces more anxiety.

Worry Can Feel a Lot Like Problem-Solving

This is something I see frequently in people who are highly analytical. They’re used to thinking their way through problems. When something goes wrong at work, they analyze it. When they need to make an important decision, they gather information. When there’s an obstacle, they look for a solution.

Of course, those are useful skills.

But anxiety can hijack them and take control.

You can spend an hour thinking about something and feel as though you’ve been actively working on the problem, when really you’ve been cycling through slightly different versions of the same fear.

What if this happens?

Okay, but what if that happens?

And what would I do if this other thing happens?

Eventually, you’re no longer generating useful information. You’re trying to think your way into certainty, and that’s a very different task.

And as we all know, life rarely gives us certainty. Part of managing anxiety is learning to recognize the point where thinking has stopped being productive.

That distinction is usually difficult for smart people because overthinking often feels intelligent. It feels responsible. It feels like preparation. That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?

Sometimes the more useful move is to recognize: I have enough information. I’m anxious because there is uncertainty here, not because I haven’t thought about this enough.

“If I Stop Worrying, Will I Stop Being Successful?”

This is the question underneath many of the conversations I have with high-achievers about anxiety.

If anxiety has accompanied you through good grades, competitive schools, promotions, career milestones, or building a business, it makes sense that you might credit it for some of your success.

Over time, anxiety and achievement can become tangled together. You start believing that if you were less anxious, you might also become less driven, less careful, less ambitious. Dare I say, even lazy?

So when someone suggests that you should “let go” of your anxiety, part of you thinks: Why would I get rid of the thing that got me here?

That’s not an unreasonable question. I just think there’s another question worth asking:

How much anxiety do you actually need to keep your edge?

Therapy for Anxiety Isn’t Necessarily About Getting Rid of Anxiety

When I work with someone who feels this way, my goal isn’t to convince them that anxiety is bad.

I’m much more interested in helping them understand his anxiety well enough that he can use what’s useful without being controlled by the rest of it.

That means learning to recognize when anxiety contains information and when it’s just making noise.

For example, when preparation has turned into perfectionism, or when careful thinking has become rumination, or when anticipating a problem has turned into repeatedly experiencing a problem that hasn’t even happened.

Therapy can also help you get better at regulating the physical experience of anxiety, tolerating uncertainty, challenging predictions that don’t hold up, and taking action without waiting until you feel completely sure.

You may still prepare for the meeting. You just might not need to spend the entire night thinking about it.

You may still care deeply about doing excellent work. You just might not need every mistake to feel like evidence that you’re failing.

You can keep the parts of anxiety that make you attentive, thoughtful, and motivated without giving anxiety unlimited authority over your life.

Your Anxiety Doesn’t Need to Run the Show

I don’t think the goal is to become fearless. Fear and anxiety are part of being human. They give us information, get our attention, and sometimes push us to do things that matter.

The goal is to develop a better relationship with the part of your brain that is constantly scanning for what could go wrong. You want to be able to hear the alarm without assuming there must be a fire. You want to recognize when anxiety deserves your attention and when you can acknowledge it and keep it moving.

For many of the men and high-achievers I work with in New York, this is the shift we’re working toward in therapy. We’re not trying to take away the ambition, preparation, or drive that helped them become successful. We’re working on making sure anxiety doesn’t get to dictate how they work, make decisions, sleep, or experience the life they’ve worked so hard to build.

If you’re in New York and recognize yourself in this, therapy can help you understand where your anxiety is helping you and where it’s starting to cost you.

You don’t necessarily need less ambition. You may just need anxiety to stop being the only thing fueling it.

Reach out to learn more about therapy for anxiety in New York and how we can work together.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can anxiety actually be helpful?

Yes. In manageable amounts, anxiety can increase alertness, encourage preparation, draw attention to potential problems, and motivate action. The issue is usually not whether you experience anxiety at all, but whether its intensity and frequency are helping you respond effectively or interfering with your ability to function.

Can anxiety make you more successful?

Anxiety can contribute to behaviors associated with achievement, such as preparation, conscientiousness, anticipating problems, and working hard. That doesn’t mean anxiety is required for success. One goal of therapy can be separating the useful qualities you’ve developed from the excessive anxiety you may have come to believe is necessary to maintain them.

Will therapy make me less ambitious?

Good therapy doesn’t require giving up ambition. If anxiety has been one of your primary sources of motivation, however, learning to manage it may require discovering other ways to motivate yourself. You can care about excellence without needing fear to constantly push you toward it.

How do I know when anxiety has become unhealthy?

Consider what your anxiety is actually producing. Is it helping you prepare and then move forward? Or are you repeatedly checking, avoiding, losing sleep, second-guessing decisions, struggling to concentrate, or spending significant amounts of time worrying without arriving at anything new? When anxiety begins interfering with work, relationships, sleep, decision-making, or your ability to enjoy your life, it may be worth addressing.

What does therapy for anxiety actually do?

Therapy can help you understand what triggers your anxiety, identify the patterns that keep it going, regulate your response to it, evaluate anxious predictions more accurately, tolerate uncertainty, and change behaviors that reinforce the cycle. The goal doesn’t have to be never feeling anxious again. It can be learning how to experience anxiety without automatically letting it determine what you do next.