You feel your heart pound during a job interview, quarterly review or presentation to colleagues. Butterflies swirl in your stomach before confronting the coworker who talks over you in meetings. And there’s that knot in your chest and booming critical voice, lurking over your shoulder, making sure you get it right, as you pitch ideas to your team. Modern-day mental health experts advise that if you start to respond to your anxiety as a friend, instead of reacting to it as an enemy, it relaxes. Although this perspective is a hard sell, it’s possible to reduce anxiety in three simple steps.
Step 1: Change Your Perspective On Anxiety
If you’re like most people, you consider anxiety to be an enemy infiltrator that invades your mind and body. Its stern warnings are scary and uncomfortable–the headaches, indigestion, muscle spasms, body aches, clenched teeth or knots in your chest.
But the perspective that anxiety is bad or something to get rid of exacerbates anxiety, causing reactions like fighting, ignoring or trying to stampede over it. These reactions are like fighting the fire department when your house is on fire. They add insult to injury, activate the sympathetic nervous system (your fight-or-flight response) and intensify the emotion. Plus, they don’t work, leaving you exhausted.
The perspective less taken–that anxiety is your friend, not your enemy–is a hard pill to swallow because it’s counterintuitive, but it’s the best medicine to manage and reduce it, according to experts. “Why would I be friends with something that makes me feel bad?” you ask.
I spoke with stress physiologist Dr. Rebecca Heiss, author of the groundbreaking new book SPRINGBOARD: Transform Stress to Work For You. Heiss calls anxiety your Superpower, challenging conventional wisdom and suggesting that you frame stress and anxiety, not as an enemy, but as a powerful ally. She teaches that everybody is hardwired for anxiety and stress, and the only people who don’t have it are dead.
I also spoke with psychotherapist Britt Frank, author of the new book, Align Your Mind. She advises against thinking of anxiety as a disorder. She describes it as “a finely tuned survival mechanism that’s been keeping you alive since birth” It’s job is to keep you alert and aware, acting as your bodyguard, your first responder when you’re threatened. She insists that it has probably saved your life more times than you can count, and you probably don’t even realize it.
Frank describes anxiety as your brain’s way of scanning for threats and preparing you to act. “That heightened awareness, fast-beating heart and mental alertness?” she asks. “Those are signs of a body ready to perform. When harnessed skillfully, anxiety can sharpen your focus, energize your body and give you the edge you need to rise to a challenge. Instead of seeing anxiety as a malfunction, see it as a superpower—one that needs guidance, not rejection.”
Step 2: Accept Anxiety As Your First Responder
Accepting your anxiety, even welcoming it, is counterintuitive, but it’s simple physics. Consider someone caught in a riptide. The life saving phrase “Float Don’t fight” was created to help swimmers survive rip currents. Fighting seems like the natural reaction, but it exhausts you and eventually drowns you. Floating parallel to the shore—going with the flow—brings you into dry land.
Similarly, kayakers claim the best way to escape if you’re trapped in a hydraulic—a turbulent funnel-shaped current—is to relax, and it will spit you out. But the tendency is to fight against the current, and that can keep you stuck, even drown you. A similar course of action–accepting rather than resisting anxiety. Going with it, instead of against it, softens the knee-jerk reaction so that you can respond to it.
“Anxiety isn’t the enemy—it’s your internal smoke alarm,” Frank explains. “Loud? Yes. But it’s trying to keep you alive. We don’t need to fight anxiety—that’s like taking a jackhammer to your smoke alarm. The alarm isn’t the problem—it’s a signal pointing toward a problem.”
Not to mention that anxiety makes us feel alive and thrive. Without anxiety, you wouldn’t have as much fun. It gives you that thrill when you watch a suspenseful movie or root for your favorite Superbowl team. It provides excitement when you’re on a roller coaster, bungee jumping, taking a safari, going to your first prom, getting married, buying your first house, delivering your firstborn, going through the haunted house at Halloween. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Step 3: Befriend And Channel Your Anxiety
Misunderstanding and rejecting anxiety has given it a bum rap, leaving many of us with negative reactions to it. Frank argues that the goal isn’t to banish anxiety; it’s to turn it into a high performance coach. You don’t achieve by banning anxiety; you succeed when you harness it. That’s how Simone Biles won Olympic gold, the Kansas City Chiefs triumphed in the 2025 Superbowl and Meryl Streep snagged her string of Oscars.
Without it, you might not be as successful in your career or your intimate and professional relationships could crumble. You would be more susceptible to danger, and your life could fall apart. And one thing’s for sure: you wouldn’t be alive right now.
The next time anxiety comes knocking, remind yourself that its function is to shield you. Then observe the emotion by self-distancing, much like inspecting a blemish on your hand. From a bird’s-eye view, notice it’s doing its natural job, protecting you as it comes and goes. Frank suggests that, instead of reacting, that you respond to anxiety like you’re the leader. Listen to it without letting it take the wheel, and when you feel it rising, pause and name it—“Here’s my inner smoke alarm.”
Once you name it, neuroscience shows that self-talk can help you regulate it. Frank suggests, for example, that you engage in silent conversations with the anxious voice. When you hear it, say to that voice, “I hear you. I’ve got this. I’ll take it from here” to develop a non-combative relationship with it.
If possible, Frank recommends thanking your anxiety for trying to protect you, then take the lead with it. “Shift your mindset from ‘How do I get rid of this?’ to ‘How can I use this energy?’ Channel it into small, focused action—a ‘Micro Yes’ like writing one sentence, stretching or sending an email. This turns anxious energy into momentum. Over time, your brain learns: stress isn’t the enemy; it’s fuel. And with practice, you become the one steering the car, not the alarm in the passenger seat.”