Building Motivation and Taking Committed Action
Guest Blog by Jen Moyer, LPC
In the previous blog, you learned how the cycle of anxiety works and how to recognize it when it shows up in your life. Now it’s important to build insight and skills to break the cycle by doing something different than what anxiety wants you to do…
✨Replace avoidance with a new experience.
✨Give yourself an opportunity to do the thing that anxiety fears.
✨Give your teen an opportunity to confront what makes them uncomfortable.
✨In the words of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) take committed action: purposeful actions that align with what you ultimately want out of life rather than what anxiety is urging you to do
When I was a teen I started realizing that my fear of rejection was holding me back in social situations. I avoided going to social events, yet craved connection. When I started seeking out more opportunities to build friendships, I gradually learned that I was capable of navigating a lot of different social situations. With trial and error, I found my tribe and built some genuine and meaningful connections. My confidence grew.
Taking committed action can feel daunting at first. Even though it’s absolutely worth it in the end and it does get easier with practice, using motivational skills can make a huge impact in starting the process of breaking anxiety’s cycle. They can also provide helpful insight into what doable action steps to take.
Let’s start with a little biology about why committed actions work to break the cycle of anxiety….
Our brains are neuroplastic, meaning that they are capable of physically changing. Whenever you experience something new, your brain takes in this information and forms new connections and pathways.
When you avoid something that makes you feel anxious, the connections in the brain that essentially tell the amygdala “keep sounding the threat alarm!” are strengthened. Your brain keeps learning the same lesson: “This was dangerous. You can’t handle it. If you try it will turn out very bad.”
When you take committed action to gradually confront the things that make you anxious because doing so helps you create the life you ultimately want, it provides the perfect opportunity for your brain to learn another lesson which in turn forms new connections that tell the amygdala “I’m okay. This situation is actually manageable; I can handle it.” These lessons literally change the wiring of your brain.
Because stepping outside of your comfort zone can feel intimidating and scary, one helpful motivational skill is to remember why committed action works. Pick one or two facts to keep in mind like:
“My brain learns best from experience, and new experiences will give me a chance to learn new helpful beliefs”
“Avoiding makes my amygdala (and therefore my anxiety) more sensitive to triggers over time”
“My amygdala will learn to quiet down and turn off the more I practice confronting my fears”
Another way to build motivation is to get clear about your values.
Values are descriptions of how you want to act as a person if you were following what you truly wanted. They describe how you want to treat yourself and others, and what is ultimately important to you in life.
For teens - consider what kind of person you want to be, how you would want others to describe you, and what your future self would want you to do.
For parents - consider what you’d like to instill in your teens, what kind of parent you want to be, and what you need for yourself.
Use these additional prompts to gain clarity:
What does the future you want?
What does your perfect week look like? What actions would you be doing and not doing to live out that kind of week.
If you had a magic wand that could take away all anxiety, what would you start doing? What would you want to be able to do if it weren’t for anxiety?
Do an online search for lists of values and see which words you identify with.
Write down your insights: type them in your phone, post them on sticky notes where you can see them, write them in places where you will see them.
Remind yourself of your values regularly.
If anxiety is preventing you from living out those values in some way you are not alone! Anxiety is often at odds with our values; it is very common for anxiety’s avoidant urges to pose a barrier. Give yourself grace. There is no perfect way to completely line up with your values at all times; you are human after all.
When I was a teen my values were very much at odds with anxiety’s urge to avoid. I valued connection with others and wanted to be the kind of friend that was reliable. On the other hand, anxiety urged me to isolate and turn down situations that it feared could lead to rejection even if there was no evidence that it would.
The good news is there is no way to fail at your values. With any action or inaction there is only getting closer or further from your values. In this way, they serve as a compass to guide you in taking action steps that are closer and closer in line with what matters to you most, even when anxiety’s priority is to avoid. Research shows that taking intentional time to identify your values and to bring them to mind regularly increases your likelihood to experience life satisfaction and to reach your goals.
Using values as a compass, you can then start to take committed action closer toward them even when you feel anxious.
Identify and take one committed action at a time.
You don’t have to confront all of your triggers at once. Identify one way avoidant anxiety is pulling you away from your values and what a value-based action would look like instead. Commit to taking one step closer to your values, and plan specifically what that action will be.
For example, when I started practicing committed action to address anxiety about being rejected, my first action was to attend the birthday party of a friend I wanted to become closer to in service of my value for connection. It was just a matter of taking one step toward what matters to me most and seeing how it goes.
Now as a parent I hold a value of instilling resilience in my child. A committed action I do in service of this value is to pause before deciding whether or not to jump in and “fix” a situation.
As you break the cycle of anxiety using committed anxiety, just remember progress (no matter how big or small) is better than perfection. With every motivational and committed action skill you use you are actively rewiring your brain, breaking the cycle of anxiety, and getting one step closer to your values.
Stay tuned for an additional skill to break the cycle of anxiety in part 3!