Anxiety is tricky because it wears your face. It knows your voice, your memories, your thoughts. When an irrational fear creeps in, you can’t just argue it away. Logic, clever words, reason, they all fail. Anxiety anticipates them, counters them, and leaves you feeling trapped.
I used to marvel at people who could play chess against themselves. How do you win, or even deceive, someone who knows every move you’ll make? Anxiety is like that. It knows your strategies and can dismantle them, piece by piece.
For years, I battled it. Some days I won, other days I lost. It wasn’t until therapy and CBT that I learned a key truth: the fight itself wasn’t the solution.
Like in Wargames, sometimes the only way to win is not to play.
The trick is to give that inner voice a boundary. To say, “Not right now. We’ll come back to this later.” That pause, brief as it may be, creates space. Space for something else. Space for life to continue. And often, when you return later, the worry has faded.
I share this not as a substitute for professional help, you should always reach out if anxiety overwhelms, but as a small reminder: you don’t have to let anxiety rule your life. A little distance, a little patience, and a bit of strategy can quiet that other voice enough to let you breathe.
