How to Stop Being Anxious

It's time to get rid of your anxiety for good

When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I was out in the yard with my dog and for whatever reason, he tried to bite a teenage girl and her little brother riding by on their bike. She stopped the bike, grabbed a stick, and walked over to hit my dog with it. She was twice my size and almost an adult, while I was a child. She told me to move so she could hit my dog. Despite the fact that I had absolutely zero chance against her, I said, “no” and didn’t move an inch while my dog cowered behind me. That was my dog. It didn’t matter what happened to me, no one was hitting my dog. After a few moments of me absolutely refusing to move, she turned around, got on her bike, and left. I remember the incident, but you know what I don’t remember? Feeling scared, feeling traumatized, or being worried that she might come back. I wasn’t anxious about it. So, you might say, “Ok, you’re just built differently.” You’re just not an anxious person.

Except by the time I was a teenager, I was. There were two reasons for that.

The first was that my father was a very driven, combative man, who could be extremely hard on me. Don’t get me wrong, he genuinely meant well, but when you’re a child and you’re faced with someone like that, you will typically either push back and become extremely difficult or you could wilt a bit and become conflict-averse.

I became conflict-averse, which eventually became a problem in school for me because it led to me being bullied. Why did I get picked on in high school? I was quiet, didn’t want any trouble, and liked to read. In other words, I was an easy target. I particularly remember three bullies that I lived in fear of at one time or another. I would see them at school, on the bus, at the local Boy’s Club and yes, I felt anxious about it. Because of those guys, almost everywhere I went as a kid, I had to worry about being picked on. At one point, my parents even complained to the school because I was bruised up. Of course, it didn’t really fix anything.

So, what did? Fighting them – and eventually, after getting a little older and harder, I fought all three of them.

One of them walked up behind me on the basketball court and grabbed me from behind. When he let go, I immediately turned around and punched him in his startled face five times. I got paddled for that one, but it was worth it, and believe it or not, that guy tried to be my friend after that. No thanks.

The worst of the bunch flicked my ear on the bus. I immediately turned around, punched him in the mouth, busted his lip, and took some licks in return. An older, bigger guy he couldn’t push around actually congratulated me right in front of him for doing that. That was pretty much it from him, too.

The most satisfying one was at the Boy’s Club. The bully walked up to us and told me and the people I was playing with to get off the court so he could use it. Everyone else left because they were scared of him. I said, “No.” He then bounced the basketball off my head, cocked his fist back, and ran at me full speed. I quickly bent down, flipped him over my back and he landed wrong. The next day he showed up at school in a cast.

By the time I got to my senior year of high school, I didn’t take sh*t off of anyone. If anything, I was a little too eager to prove myself in a fight. Taking martial arts in college and getting more confidence in my ability to physically hurt people shaved off that rough edge, as well.

Knowing I could handle myself made it so I didn’t feel the need to “prove” myself over the least little thing. It’s a bit reminiscent of that old Chuck Knoll quote:

This ties into anxiety as well. Anxiety is what you feel when you don’t know what’s going on or how to handle it.

With some people, there’s a genetic component to anxiety. Also, it’s beyond the scope of my expertise, but there’s some extremely interesting work being done that ties anxiety problems to issues with the Vagus Nerve. If I were still an anxious person, especially if I had anything traumatic happen to me, that would be something I would put time and resources into addressing before getting on anxiety drugs, which can have can some very weird and offputting side effects.

However, I’m not an anxious person anymore. In fact, at this point, very little makes me nervous. Just to give some examples, I’m comfortable with fighting and getting punched in the face. I’ve spent hundreds of hours as a guest on the radio. I’ve talked in front of large crowds. Once, at a Newt Gingrich rally, they grabbed me on the way to the bathroom (I didn’t even get to pee first) and asked me to go on stage and kill time until he got there. I’ve been in plays, I did a stand-up comedy show with all original material for a group of friends and I was briefly in a comedy skit group. I’ve had a gun pointed at me, have been in the middle of large police actions against the Occupy movement, and have done advanced firearms training. I’ve been lost in foreign cities and the middle of the woods. I’ve dealt with Internet mobs, had countless death threats, have had people try to get me fired, and lawsuit threats – it just goes on and on and on. I feel pretty comfortable with all of it. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel a twinge before I walk on a stage or wouldn’t be extremely intimidated by say getting into an alligator pit, but I don’t remember the last time I truly felt anxious.

Why?

Well, it goes back to one of my favorite books ever. “Will” by the late, great G. Gordon Liddy. Someone said the book was good, I read it in high school, and I learned from Liddy’s approach to life. Liddy said that as a child, he was afraid of a lot of things and the way he fixed that problem was to do whatever he was afraid of doing. Liddy, being Liddy, took it to maniacal extremes:

(Liddy) recounted the event to NPR's Fresh Air in 1980, telling host Terry Gross how he beat his childhood fear.

"First thing I did—this, again, when I was a child—I would go down underneath the piers on the waterfront and try to confront the rats. And this didn't work very well because first of all, rats swim very well," Liddy said.

"And they would just jump off and swim away. And I remained fearful of them—less and less, to be sure, but still, I had residual dread.

"And finally, when my sister's cat killed one freshly, I recalled the fact that certain American Indian tribes used to consume the heart of an enemy, that they consider to be courageous, to overcome the fear of that tribe."

"The African Zulus I just learned in another program on this - in this city used to consume the heart, the brains and the genitalia for the same reason. It's apparently a multiracial thing. And so I cooked and consumed part of the rat. And thereafter, I had no fear of rats," Liddy said.

Gross asked if that had worked, to which Liddy simply replied: "Oh, yeah."

Although happily, it didn’t lead to me eating any rats, adopting the philosophy, “If it’s something I should do and I’m afraid of it, then I have to do it,” radically transformed my life. I didn’t know it at first, but this is closely tied to the idea of “exposure therapy”:

Exposure therapy is a mental health treatment used to help people confront their fears. Through the use of various systematic techniques, a person is gradually exposed to the situation that causes them distress.

The goal of exposure therapy is to create a safe environment in which a person can reduce anxiety, decrease avoidance of dreaded situations, and improve one's quality of life.

Guess what happens when you do thing after thing after thing that you were once afraid to do and usually find it’s no big deal after it happens? You start to realize that you can handle anything. That doesn’t mean you have to do anything foolish or put yourself in bad situations, but it does mean that when you get in uncomfortable situations, you have built up a level of confidence that you can handle them because you have done it over and over again.

Just to give you one example that all men will be able to relate to, it can be nerve-wracking to ask a woman out. Will it be a blow to your self-image if she says “no?” What if it goes beyond saying “no” and she laughs in your face? What if it gets even worse and she creates a scene? Do you know how you get over that fear? You ask women out, you get told “no” enough times, you see that nothing bad really happens and you realize it’s not a big deal. I still remember the first time I asked a woman out, was turned down because she had a boyfriend, and I walked out feeling GOOD about myself when I realized it hadn’t even impacted my mood.

You may say, “So, are you saying that I can get rid of my anxiety by doing things I’m afraid of?” Yes, not just you, but this even works on dogs.

Do you know what happens if my dog is afraid of something like a vacuum cleaner or a massage gun? I grab them by the collar and move them right next to it while they desperately try to get away. Guess what happens after I hold them there for a minute or two? They lose their fear of it. In fact, my last dog, Jackson, became so fearless it was a little dangerous. He would walk toward slow-moving cars because he assumed the people in them would want to stop and pet him. My current dog Boudica hasn’t gone that far, but she just doesn’t flip out over loud machinery because she realizes she’s still safe.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Ok, it works for you and for a dog, but would it work for other people?”

Yes – and I can tell you that definitively because I have done it. I have helped someone get over their fear of talking on the phone, driving a car on strange roads, and eating in public. How did I do that? By pushing them into talking on the phone, driving a car on strange roads, and eating in public. Was that person afraid to do it? Yes. Was a little crying and pushback involved at times? Yes. But guess what? That person’s not afraid to do any of those things today and their world is a lot bigger now because of it.

So, am I telling you that everyone should do things that they fear? That they should get outside of their comfort zones? That they should become used to adversity? Yes – and that goes double for kids and people with anxiety problems. You are a sleeping giant, and your fear is a paper tiger. Act like it, get your anxiety under control, and live the life you deserve.

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