At one point or another, we have all been there. Research shows that 19.1% of United States adults have had an anxiety disorder in the past year. You made plans that sounded fun and exciting but, now, the nerves are starting to set in. Maybe it is a date with a potential love interest. Perhaps it is attending a party where you do not know many people. Suddenly, the idea of going out and staying true to your commitment feels overwhelming. Whether you are just generally looking to avoid discomfort or you have a fear of social situations, anxiety can make you feel like pressing send on the “Sorry I can’t make it tonight” text message and hiding under your blanket.
However, consider this- what if you did not let anxiety dictate your life? If you struggle with wanting to cancel plans last minute due to anxiety, rest assured that there are practical tips available to help you navigate your anxious emotions and stay committed to your plans without feeling overwhelmed. From mindset shifts to healthy coping skills, you can show up for yourself and other people.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with mental health therapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, life transitions, and more. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and teletherapy sessions to residents of New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Why do I always bail on plans?
If you find yourself always bailing on plans, anxiety can be a major factor driving this behavior.
Here are some signs that anxiety might be the reason you keep bailing on plans:
Overthinking every detail
Feeling overwhelmed before events
Making excuses to cancel (View our blog “Why Do We Cancel Plans When We’re Anxious?”)
Physical symptoms (Our blog “3 Ways to Manage Your Physical Anxiety Symptoms” is a must-read)
Feeling immediate relief after canceling
Constant “what-if” thinking
Worrying about what other people think
Avoiding specific triggers
Negative self-talk (Read our blog “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Negative Self-Talk”)
Difficulty committing to plans (Check out our blog “How to Overcome Your Fear of Commitment” to learn more)
To find out if you are struggling with anxiety, take our Anxiety Quiz by viewing our blog “Do I Have Anxiety? Take The Quiz and Learn 5 Instant Calming Tips.”
For many people struggling with anxiety, you know the terror that is accompanied with making plans. Anxiety often stems from the unknown and when making plans for future events, you may experience anxiety about what could go wrong or being in a situation where you feel out of control. The ambiguity about what could happen could trigger major anxiety. To learn more, read our blog “How Psychodynamic Therapy Can Help You Overcome Anticipatory Anxiety.”
Even the mere concept of commitment can feel overwhelming because it implies a need to follow through. This can make you feel “locked in” and implies a certain level of responsibility. Feeling like you cannot get out of a plan or have any options can cause feelings of failure and discomfort to increase.
For those with social anxiety, making plans likely always feels nerve-wracking. You may feel worried about being judged, making mistakes, or just generally feeling uncomfortable in a situation where you feel socially vulnerable. For support, check out our blog “6 Helpful Tips for Living with Social Anxiety.”
Oftentimes, people with anxiety also tend to have perfectionistic tendencies. You may overthink how well your plans will go. Will everyone enjoy the event? Will every detail go exactly as you imagined it? The pressure to make everything “picture perfect” can feel like an immense burden. Instead of being present with your loved ones, you may be in your head trying to convey an image of pure perfection. To learn more, read our blog “Is Perfectionism A Coping Skill?”.
With anxiety, even the smallest decision can feel monumental. If you are making a plan with a friend, you may overthink choosing a place, time, or activity because you fear making the “wrong” choice. This can lead to a lot of self-doubt and hesitation. For guidance, read our blog “How Mental Health Counseling Can Help Your Decision Fatigue.”
Anxiety also tends to breed a lot of avoidant behaviors. In other words, you actively avoid situations that make you feel uncomfortable. Making plans comes along with engaging with others socially and exposing yourself to uncertainty. Therefore, you may feel tempted to avoid social interactions altogether to escape potential anxiety.
Here are some common examples of avoidant behavior related to canceling plans due to anxiety:
Making excuses to cancel
Procrastinating on responses
Overcommitting and then backing out of plans
Pretending to forget
Going radio silent
Hoping for a cancellation
Suddenly becoming “busy”
Constantly changing the details
Faking an emergency
Self-sabotaging (Check out our blog “How to Stop Self-Sabotaging for Good”)
For more information on this topic, our top blog “Why People With Anxiety Cancel Plans Last Minute” is a must-read.
Is it bad to cancel plans because of anxiety?
In the long run, canceling plans because of your anxiety can be extremely harmful. In the moment, you may feel immediate relief but, to your brain, you are only reinforcing your fears.
When you cancel plans because of anxiety, you are essentially just avoiding something that makes you uncomfortable. This avoidance will make you feel better in the moment, but it reinforces the idea that the situation was dangerous or mentally unmanageable. Over time, your brain will begin to associate similar situations with fear. This makes it more likely that, when a similar situation comes up again in the future, you will feel anxious.
When you cancel plans due to anxiety, it often increases the fear of similar future situations. Instead of learning to feel more comfortable, you may feel more anxious about future commitments since you have not had the chance to prove to yourself that you could do it.
By canceling plans, you miss the chance to face and cope with your anxiety. Learning coping skills is great, but it is hard to know what will work for you when you are feeling anxious at the moment. Are you going to lean on breathwork? Do you want to dabble with meditation?
Exposure to your feared situation- whether it is socializing or dealing with uncertainty- will help you build resilience. Every time you avoid a situation, you miss a chance to develop skills that could help you manage your anxiety more effectively in the future.
When you do cancel plans due to your anxiety, it often leads to regret, feelings of disappointment, and guilt. Over time, your loved ones may begin to feel hurt by your cancellations, causing a strain on the relationships in your life. You may begin to feel isolated as you withdraw from many meaningful experiences and from your social connections. For support on this issue, check out our blogs “The Impact of the Friendship Recession on Mental Well-Being” and “How To Battle The Loneliness Epidemic.”
The more you avoid situations that make you feel anxious, the more you will become dependent on avoidance as a coping technique. This may limit your ability to engage in everyday activities, making your world feel smaller and adding fuel to the metaphoric fire of your anxiety.
How do I stop never ending anxiety?
Sometimes, anxiety can feel constant. Every day you feel like you are in an unrelenting loop- worry causes more worry which leads to anxious thoughts and feelings. If you have ever wondered “How do I stop this never-ending anxiety?”, the answer might surprise. In part, the answer is counterintuitive but the relief of anxiety comes from accepting it, not fighting it or trying to make it disappear right away.
Acceptance may seem like the last thing you want to do when you are feeling anxious. To get some support with this, attending Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, also known as ACT therapy for anxiety near you, can be a good option.
One of the most common ways that people try to deal with anxiety is by trying to fix it or get rid of it as soon as possible. However, as you may have noticed, the more you try to push your anxiety away the stronger your anxious feelings get. Resisting anxiety backfires because anxiety is a normal human emotion. Everyone has felt anxious at one point or another, but some people experience it more often than others. Viewing your anxious emotions as something to be fearful of can leave you feeling hyper-focused on the anxiety itself and worrying about how to make it stop which only magnifies the issue at hand.
Having a constant internal battle with your anxiety can feel exhausting because you are giving your anxiety more attention and power. The key here is acceptance. Anxiety may be part of your experience, but it does not have to dictate your behaviors.
How do I accept being anxious?
Acceptance does not mean that you have to like or welcome your anxiety. What it does mean is that you will begin to recognize anxiety as a normal part of your life, and you will acknowledge that it is not realistic or helpful to try to eliminate it.
Even though you may not like feeling anxious, anxiety is your body’s way of trying to protect you from something that it views as dangerous. Anxiety stems from our brain’s attempt to protect us by scanning for danger or uncertainty. With that being said, it can go into overdrive, making you feel unnecessarily stressed and anxious.
When you practice acceptance, you make space for your anxiety but you do not let it dictate who you are. Instead, you can acknowledge your anxious thoughts or feelings when they arise with zero judgment attached and without attempting to suppress them. This change can be empowering because you are no longer stuck in a cycle of resistance. Anxiety does not have to be your best friend but it also does not have to ruin your life.
ACT for anxiety combines mindfulness, acceptance, and behavioral tactics to help you see that the problem at hand is not with your anxiety, it is with how you view your anxiety. ACT will teach you to stop fighting your feelings so you can take meaningful actions that align with your values, even when you are feeling anxious!
ACT for anxiety
The first step of working with an ACT therapist for anxiety at Anchor Therapy is learning to accept uncomfortable thoughts and emotions rather than avoiding or fighting them off. A thought like “I am anxious” will come up and you do not have to argue with it. You can just recognize it as a part of your life, not a truth that controls your behavior.
For example, let us say that you are feeling anxious before a date. You can have an internal dialogue that accepts this feeling. You may think “I am feeling anxious right now, and that is okay. It is normal to feel this way, but it does not have to stop me from going on this date.”
ACT also introduces the concept of cognitive defusion. This is a tactic to create distance between you and your anxious thoughts. Instead of seeing your anxiety-related thoughts as absolute truths, you can just view them as a mental event that is occurring. It is merely a word or image that pops into your mind- not a fact you have to obey.
For instance, let us say that you are having the thought “I am going to say something wrong at this work event.” Instead, you could say “I am having the thought that I am going to say something wrong at this work event.” This small shift can weaken the power of the thought and lessen its emotional and behavioral impact.
The final main piece of ACT therapy for anxiety is commitment. Even with anxiety present, you can choose to take meaningful actions. Rather than just sitting around and waiting for your anxiety to disappear, you can commit to living life in accordance with your values.
ACT can help break the cycle of never-ending anxiety because it changes your relationship with anxiety. Anxiety can become something you hold within you, not something that controls you. The goal is not to be completely anxiety-free because that will never be fully possible, but it is about being able to live a fulfilling life even when anxiety shows up.
Victoria Scala
is the Social Media Manager, Intake Coordinator, and Community Engagement Director at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Honors College of Rutgers University-Newark and is currently studying Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the graduate level. In her roles, Victoria is committed to managing the office’s social media/community presence and prioritizing clients' needs.
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