The Slow Way Out Of Anxiety
Three Steps Forward, Two Back
I move forward slowly these days. Three steps forward, two back. Sometimes the opposite.
Progress is painfully slow, almost ridiculous at times. Occasionally I notice that I have finally moved a little ahead, and just when I begin feeling proud of myself, something drags me backward again. Then I stop and think: "What pushed me back this time?"
Usually the answer is not very mysterious. Exhaustion. Overthinking. Isolation. Bad sleep. Too much sitting. Too much thinking. Too little movement. And somewhere behind all of it, anxiety quietly waiting like an old tax collector who never fully leaves town.
I know now that I was deeply anxious for years. At the time I did not fully understand it, I thought I was simply tired, stressed, perhaps too thoughtful, maybe even more intelligent than average. Anxious people often secretly flatter themselves this way: “I think deeply.”
No. Usually they simply think continuously. There is a difference.
My mind worked day and night. Problems, responsibilities, future scenarios, regrets, endless analysis. Sleep became shallow, thoughts became louder. The body tightened itself slowly, year after year, until one day it finally protested.
That is the strange thing about anxiety. It hides. A broken leg announces itself immediately. Fever announces itself. Tooth pain announces itself very convincingly at three in the morning.
Anxiety does not. It works quietly for years underground like water slowly rotting wooden beams beneath a house. You only notice it when something finally collapses.
For me it arrived as chest pain, panic, exhaustion and the feeling that my nervous system had become an electrical installation designed by drunk electricians.
The Great Collapse
By then I was already trying to survive in all the wrong ways.
Alcohol helped for a while. At least it seemed to. A few drinks slowed the machinery inside my head. Thoughts softened. Fear retreated slightly. Sleep came easier. Of course the next morning everything returned slightly worse than before, but anxious people are experts at negotiating with temporary relief.
We say things like: “I just need a little help tonight.” Then “tonight” quietly becomes a lifestyle.
What finally shocked me was not one dramatic catastrophe. There was no cinematic collapse with ambulances, thunder and emotional music in the background. It was simply the realization: “This is going nowhere good.”
Sometimes you only become sober — emotionally or literally — when you finally hit bottom. And the strange thing about bottom is that it does not feel dramatic. It feels tired. Very tired.
That is when rebuilding begins. Not from zero, but from the basement.
The Doctors And The Tablets
Like most people, I first went to doctors. And honestly, doctors are often placed in an impossible situation with anxious people. Because by the time someone arrives saying: “I cannot sleep, my chest hurts, I feel terrible and my thoughts are destroying me,” the problem has usually been developing silently for ten or twenty years.
The doctor examines you, asks questions, sends you to tests, checks the heart, blood pressure, blood tests and eventually says something very reasonable: “You need to reduce stress.” Which is absolutely correct.
The problem is that severely anxious people cannot simply “reduce stress” because the stress is no longer only outside them. It moved inside. The body itself became stressed. The nervous system became addicted to alarm. So you leave the clinic with tablets, advice and perhaps some hope.
Walk more. Rest. Meditate. Reduce responsibility. Spend time in nature. Theoretically excellent advice.
Practically very difficult. Because when anxious people return home, they usually do not feel like walking peacefully through forests while listening to birds. They feel like collapsing into a chair and searching desperately for psychological anesthesia. So one person scrolls endlessly through the internet. Another drinks. Another watches football in a bar with five beers. Another sits drinking coffee while talking for three hours about politics, neighbors or weather because silence is dangerous.
Anything except quietly sitting alone with the mind.
The Crocodile Brain
I eventually realized something important. Anxiety lies.
Or more precisely: the survival part of the brain lies. I call it The Crocodile. The Crocodile wants one thing: save energy and survive.
So when you become anxious and exhausted, the Crocodile whispers: “Sit down. Do not move. Think more. Search for solutions. Stay safe.” And so you sit. You think, you analyze, you consume information, you search for answers. But you do not move.
The truly absurd thing is that movement is often exactly what the nervous system desperately needs. Not because walking magically cures trauma or depression but because the anxious brain slowly traps itself in passivity.
The body stops participating in reality and the mind takes over completely. And the mind alone is a terrible place to live full time.
Then Come The Shamans
At some point many desperate people stop trusting ordinary medicine. Not because doctors are useless, but because tablets reduce symptoms while life itself often remains unchanged.
And then appear the saviors. The healers, the gurus, the energy masters, the spiritual guides.
The emotionally overconfident men wearing linen trousers and speaking slowly about “vibrations.”
They look directly into your eyes and say: “Doctors could not help you because they do not understand the real cause.” And the anxious person immediately feels hope because finally somebody sounds certain.
So you go. You sit in some workshop smelling mysterious smoke while drums play softly in the background. Somebody waves hands around your body explaining blocked energies while another participant cries emotionally beside a Himalayan salt lamp.
And honestly? Sometimes it genuinely feels helpful. Not because magic happened but because somebody finally listened, somebody gave attention, somebody confidently explained your suffering, and for a few hours you felt understood.
Humans are surprisingly easy to calm temporarily, especially when desperate.
The problem comes later. The next night insomnia returns, the chest tightens again and the mind starts spinning again. So you attend another workshop. And another. And another. After several years you may possess lots of spiritual bracelets, breathing techniques, expensive crystals, seventeen notebooks full of affirmations, and still wake up anxious at four in the morning.
Meanwhile the one thing you still avoid is often the simplest: actually changing your daily life physically.
The Smallest Possible Step
This is the part nobody likes hearing.
Recovery is usually boring. Not dramatic, mystical or cinematic. You do not suddenly climb Triglav while orchestral music plays and your trauma dissolves into mountain air.
Recovery often begins ridiculously small. Turning off the phone. Sitting outside quietly. Walking around the block. Looking at trees. Listening to birds instead of thoughts. That is all.
At first it feels stupid. The anxious brain immediately protests:
“This is pointless.”
“You should solve your life.”
“You are wasting time.”
“You still feel anxious.”
Yes. Of course. You trained the nervous system for years, possibly decades.
If I spent ten thousand evenings sitting inside staring into screens, drinking, overthinking and feeding anxiety, then perhaps I should not expect one peaceful walk to repair everything immediately.
Maybe now I simply need ten thousand moments moving in the opposite direction. Not huge heroic changes. Small repetitions. A walk. A bicycle ride. Silence. Nature. Breathing. Movement. Attention directed outward instead of endlessly inward.
Very slowly the nervous system learns: “Not everything is danger.”
Looking Up Instead Of Down
One thing helped me especially.
When anxiety tightens my chest and thoughts begin spinning, I no longer sit staring at the floor inside my own mind. I go outside. Not always enthusiastically. Usually quite unwillingly.
And instead of rehearsing my problems for the nine-thousandth time, I deliberately look around. Birds, trees, clouds, light, wind, some strange plant growing through concrete. Anything real.
Because anxious people slowly stop living in reality. They begin living entirely inside mental simulations.
Reality is often much calmer than the mind pretending to protect us.
Slowly Becoming Human Again
I still move slowly. Three steps forward, two back. Sometimes two forward, three back. But there is one important difference now.
I finally understand that recovery is not waiting somewhere in a magical workshop, hidden inside a pill or locked inside another night of overthinking. Recovery begins the moment the body starts participating in life again. Not perfectly, not heroically, just honestly. One small movement at a time. And maybe that is enough for now.
Today I still have a choice.
I can sit inside with chest pain, staring into a glowing screen while my mind searches endlessly for rescue.
Or I can step outside, sit quietly beneath a tree and listen to birds for ten minutes.
Strangely enough, one of those things slowly destroys me, and the other slowly brings me back.
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