Anxiety: Managing Fear of the Unknown

Anxiety: Managing Fear of the Unknown

Life is full of uncertainties. Whether it’s waiting for medical results, starting a new job, or adjusting to a changing world, the unknown can feel like a vast, dark void. This natural discomfort often stems from our brain’s innate desire for control and predictability. But for those prone to anxiety, the fear of the unknown can feel overwhelming, leading to cycles of worry and avoidance that interfere with daily life. Understanding and addressing this fear is essential for finding peace in an uncertain world.

Why We Fear the Unknown

Fear of the unknown is rooted in our survival instincts. Thousands of years ago, uncertainty often signaled danger—a rustling in the bushes could mean a predator was nearby. Today, while the threats we face are less immediate, our brains still perceive unpredictability as a potential risk. This triggers the body’s stress response, flooding us with adrenaline and prompting a fight-or-flight reaction.

For individuals with anxiety, this response can be exaggerated, as the brain overestimates risks and underestimates coping abilities. The result? Avoidance, overthinking, and a sense of paralysis when faced with ambiguity.

How Anxiety Amplifies Fear of the Unknown

People with anxiety often engage in behaviors that reinforce their fear of uncertainty. These can include:

1. Overthinking: Trying to anticipate every possible outcome to feel prepared, which paradoxically increases stress.

2. Avoidance: Steering clear of situations that seem unpredictable, limiting experiences and opportunities.

3. Perfectionism: Attempting to control every detail to reduce unpredictability, often leading to burnout.

4. Seeking constant reassurance: Continuously asking others for validation, which can create dependency and prevent self-trust.

Practical Strategies for Managing Fear of the Unknown

1. Practice Mindfulness Mindfulness encourages us to focus on the present moment without judgment. By grounding yourself in the “now,” you can break free from cycles of worry about what “might” happen. Activities like deep breathing, meditation, or simply observing your surroundings can help regulate your nervous system and reduce anxiety.

2. Challenge Negative Thoughts Our minds often jump to worst-case scenarios when we’re anxious. To counter this, practice cognitive restructuring:

• Identify the thought (e.g., "What if I fail at this?").

• Challenge its validity (e.g., "Have I failed before? If so, what did I learn?").

• Replace it with a balanced perspective (e.g., "Even if things don’t go as planned, I can adapt and learn.").

1. Focus on What You Can Control While you can’t predict every outcome, you can influence certain aspects of your life. Create a list of actionable steps to address what’s within your power. For example, if you’re nervous about a job interview, preparing questions and practicing responses can boost your confidence.

2. Build Resilience Through Exposure Avoiding uncertainty only strengthens the fear. Gradually exposing yourself to unpredictable situations can desensitize your anxiety. Start small—perhaps trying a new food or striking up a conversation with a stranger. Over time, this builds confidence in handling the unknown.

3. Seek Professional Support If fear of the unknown significantly disrupts your life, consider working with a therapist. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is particularly effective for anxiety, helping you recognize and shift unhelpful thought patterns.

Finding Growth in Uncertainty

While uncertainty can be unsettling, it also provides an opportunity for growth. Many of life’s most rewarding experiences—falling in love, pursuing a passion, or starting a family—involve stepping into the unknown. Embracing uncertainty can help you cultivate resilience, flexibility, and a deeper trust in yourself.

Final Thoughts

Managing anxiety about the unknown isn’t about eliminating uncertainty but learning to navigate it with grace. By reframing how you perceive and respond to ambiguity, you can reduce your fear and build a more fulfilling life. Remember: It’s okay not to have all the answers. Sometimes, the most beautiful chapters of life are written in the spaces we least expect.

If you're struggling with anxiety or navigating life’s uncertainties, Niyyah Counseling is here to help. Our team of experienced therapists provides personalized support to guide you toward a more peaceful and empowered life. Reach out to us today and take the first step toward healing.

Coping with Relationship Anxiety

Anxiety has a tendency to touch a lot of areas of our lives. Anxiety tends to pop up in school with worry about tests and social friendships. Anxiety can lurk around work with fears of not doing well enough or worry about getting along with co-workers. So is it really any wonder that anxiety can impact our relationships?

Relationship anxiety can exist in many ways. Whether it’s anxiety about forming a relationship, or the start of a relationship or anxiety about continuing a relationship or anxiety experienced in the context of a relationship, many of these feelings are in fact quite common! Some people experience relationship anxiety during the start of a relationship, before they know their partner has an equal interest in them. Or, they might be unsure if they even want a relationship.

But these feelings can also come up in committed, long-term relationships. Most people feel a little insecure about their relationship at some point, especially in the early stages of dating and forming a commitment. This isn’t unusual. 

Relationship anxiety can look like

1. Wondering if you matter to your partner

2. Doubting your partner’s feelings for you

3. Worrying they want to break up

4. Doubting long-term compatibility

5. Sabotaging the relationship

6. Reading too deep into their words and actions

7. Missing out on the good times due to worry

So what do we do if we are experiencing relationship anxiety?

Start with open and honest communication. Anxiety often has us doubting our thoughts, our partner’s thoughts and even their words and actions. One way to combat this is to encourage open communication. Even if our brain doesn’t necessarily believe the communication at first, being open and honest can lead to a reduction in worry over time once our brain trusts that we are safe. 

Another great way to cope with relationship anxiety is practice mindfulness. Being aware of our thoughts and feelings and creating space between those thoughts and our actions can help lessen the control our thoughts have on us. When those impulsive thoughts pop up, try to distract yourself with some deep breathing, a walk or jog, or a quick phone call to a close friend.

Finally another way to combat these relationship anxieties is to contact a therapist. Here at Niyyah, we have a team of wonderful therapists that can help guide you through your relationship anxieties and help you capture that version of yourself that is confident and secure in your relationships. If you or a loved one are struggling with relationship anxiety, reach out to us today! Learn more and connect with us here at our site! https://www.niyyahcounselingpllc.com/contactus 

Coping with Back to School Stress

School can be stressful. Whether it is college, high school, middle school, elementary school or even graduate school (I can definitely validate that stress) school is simply stressful. We tend to put a lot of energy into school. This energy can be mental, emotional and physical in nature. No matter our age or grade level, school has a tendency to become all encompassing. Our whole lives can feel like they revolve around school. Our social relationships are strongly influenced by our schooling, our job outlooks often feel dependent on how we handle school, and we simply spend a lot of time at school or thinking about school. So it’s no wonder that we feel stress as we return to school. All this stress and that’s not even considering the pandemic stress on top of the usual school stress. 

So what do we do about that stress? Well luckily there are many ways we can combat school stressors. 

Step 1: Examine Our Stress. Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War that “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” While we may not be literally meeting our stress on a battlefield, it can certainly feel like it from time to time. The key part of any coping strategy is to understand what we are up against and know what we want to be on the other side of coping. Take some time to ask yourself where the stress comes from and what you want the stress to look like.

Step 2: Battle Plan! So we figured out the stressful parts of returning to school. Now it’s time to plan to combat the stress. Maybe you find deadlines for homework to be stressful, or maybe keeping up with assignments is causing stress. Try using sticky notes or other forms of reminders to help you stay on top of tasks. No matter what your source of stress is when it comes to school, creating a plan to address it can be extremely helpful.

Step 3: Adjust The Plan. The next important step is to adjust our plan. At times our stressors may shift or grow and shrink in intensity. To keep up with the changes it can be helpful to continually assess our plan along the way. Adjusting the plan is also important as it allows us to gauge whether our plan still serves its purpose.

Step 4: Reach out to a Niyyah Therapist. Sometimes school stress can be overwhelming. It can feel like no matter how much we plan, the stress does not seem to go away. That’s when an outside source would be super helpful! At Niyyah we can help you learn how to better handle school related stress. If you would like to have your very own Niyyah therapist. Contact us below today! https://www.niyyahcounselingpllc.com/contactus

Can Apps Actually Help You With Anxiety?

Anxiety: there’s an app for that…well, actually there are several! In today’s day and age, there seems to be an app for everything. Need a taxi? There’s an app! Ordering groceries? There’s an app. Dating? Guess what! Another app. It’s no wonder that apps are now attempting to tackle our mental health and anxiety. But do they work?

Yes* (you’ll notice the asterisk there). Not all apps are created equal! Headspace, Calm, and Moodkit can do wonders for our anxiety and mental health. However, it is important to know when to use these apps and when to speak to a professional. According to a 2018 study, mental health apps may help improve monitoring and management of various mental health conditions. Further research showed that the ease of use, and accessibility, allowed for increased engagement with treatment plans. 

I view apps as a supplement you may take, like vitamin C. Vitamins don’t replace the food that we eat, just like these apps are not designed to replace professional help from therapists. Apps are wonderful at introducing people to concepts, like anxiety, and even acting as helpful tools to utilize on your mental health journey. An app is very different from having a mental health professional in your corner. Apps are designed be very broad in order to cast a wide enough net to connect with the most amount of people. Oftentimes, apps can feel so broad, that some parts may not resonate with us. Others may feel as though the focus is so narrow, that we may not be able to relate to how it’s trying to help our mental health and anxiety. 

This is where mental health professionals come in. We have the unique ability to take our experience and professional knowledge and funnel it in such a way that speaks to you and your anxiety directly. While these apps are helpful, they don’t replace being able to process our thoughts and feelings out loud with a trained professional. If you or a loved one are struggling with anxiety, it may be time to seek professional help. Niyyah Counseling is here to help! Our therapists are trained to help guide you through the various anxieties that life throws at us. Click here to find your new therapist today! Click Here To Find Your Therapist

If you enjoyed this blog, you can even schedule with me directly. You can find my page here. I specialize in helping my clients on their own unique journey with anxiety. While chronic anxiety can often feel like a lifelong sentence, therapy can help guide you through a variety of techniques to address and reduce your anxiety symptoms! By utilizing an eclectic approach that pulls from scientific and evidence-based practices, therapy can help guide you from a fear of “what if” to an actualization of what can be!

Coping With Anxiety About Returning Diseases Like Polio By Connor Cohen, LMSW

In 2022 it can certainly feel like another day, another problem or another thing to be worried about. Each day as we turn on the news there seems to be more and more to worry about.  Global pandemics, climate change, inflation, recession the list seems to go on and on. And now the news says that polio is on the rise. 

No one would blame you if you're worried about polio,  the name alone elicits a response with the images of small children needing assistance to walk and visions of the iron lung helping keep people alive in the 1950's. While these are potential outcomes of polio, they don't quite tell the whole story. According to the CDC "About 1 out of 4 people (or 25 out of 100) with poliovirus infection will have flu-like symptoms." CDC (2022). These symptoms include sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, and stomach pain. Also according to the CDC, those stereotypical symptoms of polio are rarer than some may think. "A smaller proportion of people with poliovirus infection will develop other, more serious symptoms that affect the brain and spinal cord" (CDC 2022). The most recent statistics as of the writing of this blog are as follows, meningitis occurs in about 5 out of 100 and paralysis occurs  in about 1 out of 200 people to 1 in 2000 people, depending on virus type. 

So what can we do if we're still anxious and worried about polio? 

Step one is to get informed. It may sound cliche but knowledge is in fact power and oftentimes the more we can understand the situation the less we tend to fear it. 

Step two:  Talk to your loved ones or doctor about your medical records.  If you were born after 1955 there's a good chance that you've already been vaccinated against polio.  If you have not received the vaccine,  start up a conversation with your health care professional about obtaining the vaccine.

Step three:  Now that you have gathered the needed information and potentially made a plan to get vaccinated,  it can be helpful to unplug from the news.  This doesn't mean sticking our head in the sand and avoiding completely.  What it means is being purposeful with the news that we are taking in.  A helpful tip would be to pick a specific news source that you trust and select a time that you would like to view each day.  In today's day and age it can be so easy to become overwhelmed by the massive amount of news so by limiting our intake strategically,  we can still be informed and limit our feelings of being overwhelmed.

Step four:  Take some time to relax.  Life in 2022 tends to be more on the stressful side. While taking time away from the news, practice self care! That could be physical exercise, eating well or a nice book that you've been meaning to read. 

Step five: Engage with your feelings and examine how you feel. Anxiety can make it feel like life is overwhelming and life can certainly present us with reasons to feel anxious. If you or a loved one are struggling with anxiety, it may be time to seek professional help. Niyyah Counseling is here to help! Our therapists are trained to help guide you through the various anxieties that life throws at us. Click here to find your new therapist today! Click Here To Find Your Therapist

If you enjoyed this blog, you can even schedule with me directly. You can find my page here. I specialize in helping my clients on their own unique journey with anxiety. While chronic anxiety can often feel like a lifelong sentence, therapy can help guide you through a variety of techniques to address and reduce your anxiety symptoms! By utilizing an eclectic approach that pulls from scientific and evidence-based practices, therapy can help guide you from a fear of “what if” to an actualization of what can be!

Coping with Anxiety About the Predicted Recession

Money. It’s pretty important. We sell things for it, we trade hours of our time for it. It is used to secure food and water, it is used to house our loved ones. Our society is run on money. So it’s no wonder that we would feel an emotional response to money. Money is often said to be the root of all evil, but could it also be a root of anxiety?

With all of the importance we tend to place on money, it’s no wonder that it takes up a lot of space in our collective consciousness. We can often find ourselves worrying about not having enough money, worrying about our next paycheck, worrying about our bills that come due each month time and time again. But what if our anxiety is broader than our own personal accounts? 

What if we find ourselves worried about a recession? The state of the economy can be the cause of a lot of stress and anxiety even if we don’t work on wall street. A recession can bring about concerns of our wellbeing and create a general sense of uneasiness. Here are some steps to help cope with anxiety about a predicted recession. 

Step 1: Remember that recessions are cyclical. 

While recessions can be scary. They are completely natural. On average a recession occurs in the United States every 6 or so years. 

Step 2: Examine your fears.

Talk about your fears, such as “I’m worried about a recession,” and then ask yourself, “Then what would happen?” Continue on from there, so if the answer to the first question was “I may lose my job,” ask yourself “Then what would happen?” Keep running all the scenarios from there. The more we understand our fears, the more we can create a plan to address them. 

Step 3: Make a plan

Anxiety lives and dwells in the what-if. Anxiety grows with the unknown. So naturally, a great way to reduce anxiety can be to create a plan so that the unknown becomes known. 

Anxiety is difficult, and let’s face it, in today’s day and age a lot of our anxiety tends to be justified and make sense. It is completely normal to worry about your financial future, but it is also completely normal to seek out help. 

If you or a loved one are struggling with anxiety during these times of economic uncertainty, Niyyah Counseling can help! Our therapists can help guide you through your anxious thoughts and teach you strategies to reduce the impact of those anxious thoughts.

How To Manage Dating Anxiety By Connor Cohen, LMSW

Dating can be scary.  There's a lot of pressure nowadays to date and hopefully find the right person.  We can definitely feel overwhelmed. Anxiety can pop up in the dating scene any number of ways. Maybe we worry if this person sitting across from us at the table likes us, or maybe we worry about saying the wrong thing or not knowing what the right thing is to say.  Maybe we are worried about how we look and how this person thinks about us.  Or maybe we are worried that we won't find someone,  maybe anxiety lives in us  in such a way our worry is that all of our friends are coupling up and finding their loved ones, creating families, and moving on in life.  Maybe our dating anxiety is about feeling left behind so we feel this immense pressure internally to find someone.  Maybe that pressure is external, maybe our anxieties are rooted from family members asking "when are you going to find someone?"  "When will you finally settle down?".  There can be a lot of different pressures with dating both internal and external. So how do we cope with this anxiety of dating? 

I would say that step one is to focus on you.  Really look inward and examine what it is you want.  What do you want out of a relationship, what do you want out of a partner?  Asking yourself key questions can help us figure out which way to go and what exactly we're looking for.  Questions like, what is a good partner?  What is a healthy relationship? 

Step two  is simple on paper but often forgotten about.  Step two is to remember that you and any person you decide to date are human.  With dating and trying to find a wife or a husband or even just a long-term partner,  it is easy to get caught up in this idea that we have to be perfect.  It's easy to fall into the trap of “I have to be perfect for this person to love me”.  When we chase perfection we forget our humanity.  To be human is to be imperfect. 

Step 3 is also difficult at times.  And that's to be open and honest. Open honesty is  not only for prospective partners but ourselves. Not only do we owe it to them to be honest, we owe it to ourselves.  If you're not clicking with an individual,  be honest,  if you are intimidated by an upcoming date,  again be honest.  A lot of anxiety lives in the feeling that we can't let other people see our anxiety, it will scare them away. But by being honest about our feelings, we can gain back a sense of control over our emotions and feelings and ultimately our anxiety. 

Overall dating can be scary,  it can cause a lot of anxiety.  At the end of the day one key thing to remember is that if you want a relationship to work, you're going to want your partner to see the real you.  So always remember to be yourself.  If you are a loved one struggling with anxiety we are here to help.  Your friendly neighborhood therapist can help guide you through these anxieties.

How Does Control Impact Our Life? By Connor Cohen, LMSW

Control is difficult. Control is something that we want. It is something that we often crave. Control helps us make sense of the world. Control helps us understand. When we have it things are not as scary. The unknown becomes the known. Questions have answers and the world seems to make sense when we are in control. And we are faced with so many situations where we have no control or very little control. That's kind of the way life is. We spend so much effort and time exerting control we have over a situation only to be met with a situation that is utterly outside our control. We stress about control, when we are in control, we don't want to let go. When we let go we are at the mercy of the universe, at the mercy of our higher power and of the wind and the moment. Letting go is scary. Letting go is that free fall out of the plane, jumping out feeling the wind and deciding to just be. And yet when we fall or rather right before we do, we want to steer the winds, we want to steer our body, we want to ensure that we have a safe landing. We fight so much and we hold on so tight then just the thought of letting go terrifies us. So what do we do? We are controlled beings in an uncontrollable universe. We are logical beings surrounded by moments of irrationality. Do we just let go? I would argue that there is control in allowing for the uncontrollable. The ultimate form of control is to accept that we do not have control. If we accept that we do not have control then that which we're afraid of, meaning a loss of control, no longer controls our fear or our anger or frustration. At times it can feel like we're all this walking around with clenched fists, holding on to that which we do not want to lose. Acceptance is hard. It's in our nature to want to try and control things because control keeps us safe. And to some degree, letting go of that control means welcome in danger, welcoming a threat to our safety. In life, there are dangers we can avoid. That is where control lives. In life, there are dangers that we cannot avoid. That is where control wants to live. The hard part is where does our autonomy begin? How do we know what is in our control and thus what is within our power to avoid, and what is outside of our scope? One way to help answer this question is to write it out. Take a piece of paper and write out two columns. On one side we write what is within our direct control. Some examples may be our attitude, our behaviors, and in some part our outlook and thought process. On the other hand, write out things that are outside of our control. This may look like other people's opinions, what others have to say about us, this can also be health conditions and even mortality. Now, I understand that it's not comfortable to look at something which we cannot control, it's flat out scary. By taking a moment and looking at that which we cannot control and that which we can can help us determine where to put our effort and our time. Even though it would be great to change the things that we cannot control, no matter how much effort we put in those are simply areas that are outside of our control. The bright side is we can take that same effort and put into the side of things that we can control. If you or a loved one is struggling with the idea of control or even just feeling out of control, please don't hesitate to contact our therapists. We are more than happy to help you on your journey.

Can Stress Cause Bad Dreams? By Connor Cohen, LMSW

Anxiety is difficult. It can turn our days into moments of panic, you can turn our nights into tossing and turning worried about tomorrow.  It can wrap our brain in ruminating thoughts, it can have us thinking about the worst case scenario on the worst day at the worst time. Anxiety creates stress and stress creates anxiety. This endless loop can take over our day and make it so that we have a difficult time functioning. You can feel as though our only reprieve from this endless loop is a good night's rest. But does this stress in this anxiety impact us even while we sleep? Does stress cause bad dreams?

Sleep is our body's time to recharge,  it is a time when we rest and recuperate.  Rest is when we heal.  If you sprain your ankle, the best way to heal it is to stay off it.  This means that the best way to heal still at the muscles rest in a way it's to let them sleep.  But just like how we can dream of a bug bite and we wake up and we realize that maybe your arm is being pinched. Our brain and our body are deeply connected.  So what does this mean for stress and dreams? Well, it means that stress in our waking world can create stress in our sleeping world.  Our body uses sleep to process things, to get things in order. If we are stressed during the day, maybe by bills or work assignments or school work,  our brain is going to react to that stress even after we try to sleep.  It is going to try to process that stress.  Almost like a boat in the ocean, stress is the water.  At times it may find a small hole to leak into the boat with,  and other times it may feel like a huge tidal wave feels like it'll knock the boat over.  We spend so much energy and time during the day to move the sails,  adjust our heading,  maybe even row a bit.  But at night our boat is still on the water.  Our brain is still trying to keep us afloat.  In times of stress our brain is less able to rest. The waters are choppy and those bad dreams are the brain's attempt to navigate that choppy water while we're asleep. 

So what do we do about these bad dreams and the stress?  Well, that's where coping skills come in.  That's where relaxation comes in.  Stress is not easy if it was, it probably wouldn't be  stressful.  By doing things during the day that reduce our levels of stress our brain can navigate calmer waters at night.  If you find yourself stressed during the day and impacted by bad dreams, try writing down all of your thoughts before bed. The act of writing them out can help us better organize our thoughts, it also gives us a place to put these thoughts before bed. Meaning that we don't necessarily have to take them to sleep with us. It's almost like writing out our thoughts allows us to put them away for the moment. Put them away for the night and detach from the stress even if it's just for a night.

If you or a loved one are struggling with stress,  know that you are not alone.  Stress unfortunately is one thing that makes us all human.  It can be difficult to navigate stress but our therapists are here to help.  Reach out today and schedule an appointment and maybe you'll find that you sleep a little better tonight. 

The Role of Anxiety in Eating Disorders By Kara N Bradford, BS, LCDC, LMSW

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The same can be said for anxiety and eating disorders (ED). Numerous studies have shown that in most cases of ED, people developed an anxiety disorder in childhood before onset; additionally, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reported that as many as 65% of ED cases also met criteria for an anxiety disorder. The most common anxiety disorder that co-exists with ED is obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which can create unhealthy and compulsive rituals around eating habits. 

Anxiety may exist with most ED, but may manifest itself differently based on specific behaviors exhibited by different types of ED. Let’s explore this…

Anorexia nervosa (AN) can be described as a pattern of disordered eating that revolves around distorted body image that influences excessive restrictive behaviors that lead to excessive weight loss and inability to gain weight. Recent studies have shown that co-occurring anxiety disorders are highest among the AN population than the general population. Anxiety typically derives from the excessive need to count calories or being hyper-focused on only consuming a certain food or certain type of food. Additionally, AN is often the only known ED by the general population due to the visible signs of excessive weight loss, which can generate anxiety due to feeling more noticed and unable to hide the fact that they are struggling.

Bulimia nervosa (BN) can be described as a cycle of binge eating and purging that revolves around over-evaluation of body weight and shape that is fueled by shame and guilt and breeds in secrecy. Most experts believe that anxiety and BN “go hand-in-hand” due to the excessive need to correct their binges by participating in compensatory behaviors; which include self-induced vomiting, abusing laxatives, excessively exercising, or restricting for two weeks or more after the binge episode. Typically, anxiety is present before a binge episode when someone is hyper-focused on certain parts of their body; then, anxiety typically dissipates and positive emotions emerge during a binge episode (which can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days) due to increased serotonin and dopamine levels from consuming food; finally, anxiety typically returns after a binge episode when the guilt and shame from binging behaviors return, fueling compensatory behaviors, starting the cycle over.

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) can be described as frequent episodes of consuming large amounts of food past the point of satiation due to heightened anxiety being present and using food as a coping mechanism. It is common for people who frequently binge to have almost immediate relief from anxiety symptoms, like BN, due to increased serotonin and dopamine levels from food consumption. Unfortunately, shortly after a binge, people who struggle with BED may experience embarrassment from feeling out of control during their binge, which can fuel shame and guilt, creating increased anxiety, and starting the cycle of their ED all over again.

In general, anxiety disorders can exacerbate symptoms of ED, making treatment more difficult. Due to this fact, it is important to treat the co-occurring disorders at the same time. Persistent monitoring of symptoms for both disorders is important for each clinician to consider as well as keeping themselves informed on updated evidence-based treatment to address symptoms. Our therapists at Niyyah are equipped to address these symptoms and walk with you through managing your presenting symptoms with the ultimate goal of eliminating them. Recovery from your ED is possible, you are not your ED, it does not define you. Reach out today!