Quotes About Anxiety

I sit around too much, waiting for other people to do stuff and angsting about stuff they've done, without doing anything myself.

Oh, just you wait. I'll have, like Great Danes and pygmy goats and maybe even a baby panda living with me. That is what panic does to people if the attacks get bad enough.

Part of me doesn't want to ruin it. Doesn't want to even imagine that it isn't perfect.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

To live by worry is to live against reality

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and, therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from him like birds.

Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.

Work never killed anyone. It's worry that does the damage. And the worry would disappear if we'd just settle down and do the work.

Dr. Frankl also wrote, "Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of." Even if it only comes true in the imagination, we must experience the tortures of that which we fear—tortures that are, as often as not, worse than those that might actually come to pass in our lives. It's why the old line "A coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man dies but once" is really true.

For the parents of a Little Leaguer, a baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown into innings

A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength. —A. J. Cronin

Fear is worse than Cancer.

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

Some forms of success are indistinguishable from panic.

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.

The time when Humble Inquiry is often most needed is when we observe something that makes us angry or anxious. It is at those times that we need to slow down, to ask ourselves and others "What's really going on?" in order to check out the facts. Then we ask ourselves how valid our reactions are before we make a judgment and leap into action.

When we anticipate all of these potential difficulties, we are experiencing learning anxiety, which often accompanies any unlearning and is the primary source of resistance to change. As long as learning anxiety remains stronger than survival anxiety, we will resist change and avoid learning.

One might argue then that in order to learn, one must increase survival anxiety, yet this only increases our overall tension because the sources of learning anxiety do not go away. To facilitate new learning, we need to decrease learning anxiety. We need to feel that a new behavior or practice is worthwhile, not threatening, and possible to learn.

Slowing down is countercultural for many, and varying the pace to coordinate with others may seem a bit inefficient. This is a time to think about survival anxiety and experiment by testing learning anxiety. Is it possible to find a shared work pace that allows for the group to accomplish more? Is it worth it to take a time-out on a project to reflect on what worked and what did not? What may seem to be less efficient may turn out to be more effective.

When we don't get acknowledgment or feel that we are giving more than we are getting out of conversations or feel talked down to, we become anxious, disrespected, and humiliated. Humble

One has fear in front of a goat, in back of a mule, and on every side of a fool.