Game Of Thrones Can Help You Be Less Anxious

I do apologise that this is my second blog post in a week which features Game of Thrones and specifically Daenerys. But um, she’s awesome so #sorrynotsorry.

I’m quite an anxious person. I hesitate to label myself with having the capitalised, “Anxiety”, not because I’m ashamed but basically because I have no actual diagnosis to speak of. I just know that sometimes the level of panic and fear I feel about things is irrational for the situation that I am in.

The other day, I was watching Game of Thrones Season 7 Episode 3 and there was a scene which I have already written about where Daenerys Targaryen shows strength and leadership and a whole lot of badass-ness.

In the scene, Daenerys is meeting Jon Snow for the first time, they are both powerful leaders and want to prove this to each other so that they can get what they want. To do this Daenerys gives a long speech about all the hardships she has faced to get to the powerful position she is in, and even just to survive. She finishes by saying:

"Do you know what kept me standing through all those years in exile? Faith. Not in any Gods, not in myths and legends, in myself"

LIGHTBULB MOMENT

I think I must be very unused to hearing people say openly and with confidence that they trust themselves and that that is what gives them strength to succeed. For some reason it seems wrong to admit that you believe that you will achieve your goals. Often at my stage of life a lot of adults who have been through the graduating and working out what you want to do thing, tell you about how hard everything is and how you need to be realistic. But for people like me, my mind is already telling me I won’t succeed. To some extent you need to be risky and naïve and have faith that you will succeed or you won’t have the confidence to try.

Perhaps that is why Daenerys struck such a cord with me. 

I started to think about how my anxious feelings were linked to a lack of faith in myself.

When I text someone something which I’m not sure how they will respond to and then turn my phone on do not disturb because I am unsure of the response; when a train is cancelled and I worry about what to do; when I refuse to go to a party because for some reason it fills me with panic; these reactions are the result of a lack of confidence in myself to deal with the situation.

What my body is telling me when I react this way is:

You have just done something/about to do something, uh oh likelihood is that it will have bad consequences, TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES, HORRIBLE THINGS ARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN...

I don’t have FAITH that the text will probably be fine and that my friends are reasonable people who are unlikely to yell at me for one text.

I don’t have FAITH that I will be able to solve a problem and find another train.

You don’t know what will happen at this event and can’t prepare, therefore you know that bad things will happen.

I don’t have FAITH that if by some chance bad things do happen and someone makes me feel uncomfortable, that I can deal with it.

Usually my anxiety is anticipation anxiety, as you see in the examples. By having faith in myself I can create a better mental outlook and more helpful rational thoughts which help me go into situations with confidence and maintain that confidence.

The Oxford English Dictionary Definition of Confidence:

The mental attitude of trusting in or relying on a person or thing; firm trust, reliance, faith. Const. in (†to, on, upon).

I think we usually imagine confidence as loud, confidence is quiet and comes from within. 

So what does faith look like in our mind?

It’s changing your thoughts in the middle of panic from 

“OH GOD I FEEL AWFUL AND I CAN’T DO THIS AND I’M A BAD PERSON AND NOONE WILL TALK TO ME AND IT’S ALL GOING TO GO WRONG”

To saying to yourself

"We’ve got this, I have Faith that you will be able to deal with the unexpected things that come your way one step at a time."

Obviously, this is not an easy thing to do. Faith is a small word but involves a massive leap, changing thought patterns and being quite brave when your body is yelling at you telling you not to do something. And yes, faith is not a sure thing, it is a leap.

“If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.” Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love.

But, surely going into a situation telling yourself that you can deal with whatever comes your way is going to be much more helpful than doing the opposite. Even if 9 times out of 10 you have previously panicked and had to get someone to pick you up from miles away when your train got cancelled, head off to catch that train knowing that you will be able to deal with that situation this time if it happens. Using your energy to have faith in yourself is more likely to be successful in solving the problem than in using it worrying that the train will be cancelled. 
Especially if you are using Southern Rail.

In her speech Daenerys is saying that outside forces weren’t reliable enough for her to trust in and so she chose to trust herself. I can see the applications here to our world, it’s not exactly the political climate that a lot of us have much faith in at the moment.

So although we may not have to deal with some of the horrors that Daenerys did, and though the stakes for us are not necessarily about ruling 7 kingdoms (I mean they might be, I don’t know your life), do what Blair Waldorf, another strong ruler, advises, Have A little Faith, And If That Doesn’t Work, Have A Lot of Mimosas.