Video on Tug-of-War With Anxiety

This video covers the video on tug-of-war with anxiety. Anna Keyter explains the tug of war analogy simply.

Opening Story: The Workday Spiral

Imagine this: it’s a regular Tuesday morning, and you’re already a little behind before the day even starts. You’ve got emails piling up, a meeting in fifteen minutes, and that one message from your boss sitting in your inbox with the subject line: “Can we talk later?”

Nothing catastrophic has happened yet, but your mind is already racing. Maybe you start replaying recent conversations.
Maybe you assume you’ve done something wrong.

Maybe your chest tightens, your stomach drops, and suddenly it feels like the whole day has been taken over by a single thought: What if I’m in trouble?

For a lot of people, that’s what anxiety feels like — not one big dramatic event, but a quiet, constant tug on your attention that makes everything feel heavier.

The Tug-of-War with Anxiety

A useful way to think about this comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. It uses a simple image: anxiety as a monster, or dragon, sitting on the other side of a deep abyss. You’re holding a rope tied between you and it, and you spend all your energy pulling.

You pull because you want the anxiety to go away. You pull because you want control. You pull because you believe that if you can just fight hard enough, somehow you’ll win. But the dragon pulls back. And the more you struggle, the more exhausted you become. That’s what anxiety often does to us in real life. We fight it by trying to suppress it, reason with it, outwork it, ignore it, or prove it wrong. But instead of freeing us, that struggle can keep us stuck in place.

A Relatable Example

Take someone named Sarah. Sarah is good at her job. She’s responsible and thoughtful, and she cares deeply about doing things well. But she’s also been under a lot of pressure lately. One morning, she gets feedback from her manager that a presentation could have been clearer. It’s not a disaster. It’s not even harsh. But for Sarah, it lands hard. By lunchtime, her mind has turned one piece of feedback into a whole story:

• I’m not good enough.
• They’re losing confidence in me.
• I’m probably going to mess up again.
• Everyone else seems to handle this better than I do.

Now anxiety is no longer just a feeling. It’s become a full-time mental battle.

Sarah starts gripping the rope. She replays the conversation over and over, trying to figure out what she should have said. She drafts and redrafts an apology email. She tells herself to “calm down”, which somehow makes her feel even worse. She keeps checking her inbox for signs that something is wrong. And all the while, she’s exhausted. Not because anything terrible has actually happened, but because she’s using all her energy fighting the fear (trapped in a tug of war with anxiety).

Tug Of War With Anxiety: What Dropping the Rope Means

Then comes the shift. Dropping the rope does not mean the dragon disappears. It does not mean anxiety is fake. It does not mean the stress was never real. It means you stop wrestling with it.

You stop trying to defeat anxiety before you can live your life. You notice it. You name it. And then instead of giving it the driver’s seat, you put your energy somewhere else. Sarah still feels nervous. Her body still has stress in it. The worry thoughts may still show up. But she stops treating those thoughts like commands. She realises, I don’t have to solve every fear before I continue with my day.

So instead of spending the afternoon mentally fighting herself, she closes the inbox, takes a breath, and gets back to the task in front of her. She prepares for the next meeting. She finishes her work. She goes for a walk after lunch. She texts a friend. The dragon is still in the pit. But Sarah is no longer standing there in a tug-of-war with anxiety.

The Real Freedom

That’s the real power of the metaphor. Freedom doesn’t always come from eliminating anxiety. Sometimes it comes from changing your relationship to it. When you drop the rope, you stop handing anxiety so much power over your choices. You may still feel stress. You may still have anxious thoughts.

You may still notice fear in your body. But now those experiences are happening in the background — not running the whole show. And that gives you something much more valuable than perfect calm: the ability to move toward the life you want. Toward your work. T oward your relationships. Toward your values. Toward the things that matter most, even when anxiety is riding along in the back seat.

Closing Thought on Tug-of-War With Anxiety

So if you’re caught in a battle with anxiety right now, ask yourself: What would it look like to drop the rope? Not to give up on yourself. Not to pretend the fear isn’t there. But to stop wasting all your energy fighting a tug of war with anxiety that you cannot fully control. Because sometimes the path forward isn’t beating anxiety. Sometimes it’s learning to let it be there – without letting it lead.

If this message resonates with you, consider liking and subscribing to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss future episodes. And if you know someone who’s been stuck in their own tug-of-war with anxiety, send this link their way — it may just be the reminder they need.

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References:

Beyond The Monster – Tug Of War

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