thanks, anxiety

listen to what it is trying to tell you, then turn your alarm into action

Welcome to every thing changes, a newsletter with tools to help guide you through non-linear journeys. I’m Aja. By day I’m deep in environmental work. By night I coach, read tarot, and am training to be a psychedelics facilitator because the world needs more different kinds of people who can hold space for hard stuff. This post is about reframing healthy amounts of anxiety as a helpful, adaptive response.

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Despite a personal commitment to moderate my attention to current events for my own sanity, the world’s impressive chaos since January 1 made it difficult. I’m grateful for my health and safety, but I’m walking around with a simmering anxiety that I know I share with a lot of my community.

If your system is also overloaded, you are not alone. The American Psychiatric Association’s 2025 Healthy Minds poll reports Americans “feeling anxious about personal finances (59%), uncertainty about the next year (53%), and current events (49%).” That is a lot for a nation the government tells us is doing better than ever.

You are likely using all of the tools in your arsenal, your chamomiles and slow deep breaths, to soothe your frazzled system. And that all may not be enough because the load is great right now.

Don’t stop the soothing techniques. Whatever you’re doing is important to nourish your heart. In addition, I want to offer a different framing. It has helped me to stop trying to smudge my anxiety away and to embrace some of it. We evolved emotions for a reason; they are information to help us respond to our world. In Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You, Ethan Kross reminds us that unchecked anxiety is bad, but that anxiety “has a fundamental adaptive function that helps us marshall a helpful response to either approach or avoid the threat that we’re dealing with so that we can handle it.”

Not all of your anxiety is helpful or even reasonable. But some anxiety is spot on. What happens when you reframe some of it as beneficial? For example, I thank my anxiety for keeping me vigilant for bears in the woods while I’m on a hike, for keeping me alarmed about the slow walk towards authoritarianism, and for reminding me that billionaires are trying to deepen how we collude with capitalism with free fast shipping and high-speed, wide-spread wireless coverage.

I like Kross’ words – approach and avoid. This week, when you’re feeling anxious:

• Slow down and soothe yourself.

• Identify 2-3 concrete things that you’re anxious about.

• Thank your anxiety for identifying those things.

• For items on the list that are within your power to approach or avoid, plan one action that will ease your anxiety. For example, if your health has been nagging you, make an appointment to see (approach!) a doctor. Or if you’ve been dragged into doom scrolling, make a plan to avoid social media and shift towards consciously consuming the news.

  I named the naggy b*tch in my head Michelle

• Some of the items on your list may be outside of your power to effectively approach or avoid as an individual. For collective issues like climate change, I remind you of the power of community. You can use your agency to engage in collective response about these issues, which may re-contextualize your individual experience of anxiety. Maya Shankar, author of The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans, also suggests zooming out through: 1) studying history as a reminder of the human ability to both endure horror and radically shift society; and 2) experiencing awe through love and nature.

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Your anxiety is not a flaw; it is information. This week, stop fighting the feeling. Listen to what it is trying to tell you, then turn your alarm into action. Approach what you can change, avoid what drains you. For the great, shared anxieties of our time, remember the ultimate power of connection and community. Your job is not to be unafraid, but to recognize you’re afraid and move forward anyway.