Maybe you’ve heard others tell you to stop being so anxious or to stop worrying. When they do, it only makes it worse. Only people who’ve experienced crippling anxiety have any idea how scary it is to be in the grip of an anxiety attack.

Anxiety can be so intense physically, it can feel like you are paralyzed. How does anxiety get to be so strong and scary?

As humans, we are pretty unique in our ability to be afraid of fear. Animals can get scared too, but they are afraid of things, such as bears, not of the thought of it. This kind of fear can stop us from doing all sorts of things that would be important for us. When we let anxiety stop us, life narrows down and feels drained of zest and vitality.

Thanks to our intelligence, we are not only able to send rockets to outer space, we are also able to experience as present the most horrible feelings, even when there are no raging bears in the room. Make no mistake, feeling an anxiety attack is every bit as distressing as being locked in a room with a ferocious grizzly. Of course, if you suffer from anxiety, you already know that.

Then again, because there are no bears present, others may not get what you’re experiencing. As a matter of fact, your mind may even turn on you and berate you for feeling so anxious when there is, in fact, no grizzly in the room.

First, rest assured that we get it. Anxiety is super scary. Although it can vary in intensity, it is absolutely one of the worst human experiences. The only thing that can make it worse is invalidation. As we saw, sometimes invalidation comes from our own minds. Give it half a chance and your mind will go: “You stupid so and so, there is no reason for you to feel so scared or anxious. You must be so weak or defective to feel that way,” or any number of put downs our minds seem to be so good at aiming our way.

Thanks to the fact that the grizzly bear of your anxiety is unlikely to eat you alive, there is a workable alternative. You can learn to tame that bear and even befriend it.

This won’t happen overnight and you can’t will your anxiety down. What you can do is learn to observe your anxiety as you would observe an animal you seek to tame. Instead of running away, freezing or trying to white-knuckle it, see if you can notice what it does, where it shows up in your body, what thoughts come with it and what these thoughts tell you to do. Is this what you would do?

Next time you feel anxiety coming on, see if you can give yourself time to notice what it does. How much time? However much time you’re willing to give. It could be five seconds or less. Gradually, as you become conscious of what anxiety does and less inclined to run away, you can increase this time of awareness. Eventually, you’ll notice anxiety itself starts approaching you with more curiosity. You might even come to notice its groans as being less scary. Remember that time and practice are key.

Eventually, you might notice anxiety will lose its power to stop you doing what matters most to you.