25 Quotes on Anxiety, and What We Can Do About It

25 Quotes on Anxiety, and What We Can Do About It
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Anxiety is something that all of us have experienced to some degree, many times throughout our lives. Some of us have developed coping skills to deal with anxiety, while others find it unmanageable. The most important thing is to learn to put things in perspective and to take things in small and manageable steps. The most important thing is for us to understand it, and learn to put it in perspective. Here are some sage words of advice on what anxiety is, what it isn't, and how we might deal with it. Some is from well known sources, while some might come from surprising places. Regardless, it is sure to make you think, and maybe some of the words will connect with you.

1. "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin
2. "Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic."
― Anaïs Nin
3. "After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony."
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello
4. "To hear the phrase "our only hope" always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn't work, there is nothing left."
― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book
5. "Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength."
― Corrie ten Boom
6. "If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath."
― Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
7. "The more you pray, the less you'll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You'll feel more patient and less pressured."
― Rick Warren, The Purpose of Christmas
8. "It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase."
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
9. "Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths."
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon
10. "To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one's self.... And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one's self."
― Søren Kierkegaard
11. "Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems"
― Epictetus
12. "Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it."
― Dorothy M. Neddermeyer
13. "Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far."
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home
14. "I've spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won't leave, and fearing that it's a matter of time before they figure me out and go."
― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
15. "Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis."
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
16. "Do not let your difficulties fill you with anxiety, after all it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly."
― Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
17. "Life is like a game of chess.
To win you have to make a move.
Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT
and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are
acculated along the way.

We become each and every piece within the game called life!"
― Allan Rufus, The Master's Sacred Knowledge
18. "If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief."
― Brené Brown
19. "It's OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you're about to do something really, really brave."
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
20. "But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture."
― Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
21. "It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped."
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Icehenge
22. "Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams."
― Bram Stoker, Dracula
23. "A coward talks to everyone but YOU."
― Shannon L. Alder
24. "The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder."
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
25. "How can a person deal with anxiety? You might try what one fellow did. He worried so much that he decided to hire someone to do his worrying for him. He found a man who agreed to be his hired worrier for a salary of $200,000 per year. After the man accepted the job, his first question to his boss was, "Where are you going to get $200,000 per year?" To which the man responded, "That's your worry."
― Max Lucado

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