Are You Anxious About Being Anxious?

Mitch Arnold • October 23, 2023

Last week, one of my clients invited me to visit her office, and my reaction, like always whenever I consider going someplace new, was immediate anxiety. I’m not anxious about how she will react to my obvious handicap – I got over that fear decades ago. Now, I just worry if I can navigate the terrain.


Anxiety like that is something that I experience almost daily. Because I’m prone to falls, I must be cautious, and avoid unnecessary risks, but, because I need to experience life, I also must be courageous enough to accept some risk. It’s that fine line that creates the anxiety, and it’s something that all of us face to some degree. The greater challenge is not becoming anxious about being anxious.


There is risk any time we leave our comfort zones. When we apply for a job, ask someone out for a date or try something new, we expose ourselves to risk, and that creates anxiety. Leaving our comfort zones is also necessary to living a full and rewarding life, so we must be willing to accept some risk. Unfortunately, we often choose to avoid risk at any cost, because we know that anxiety comes with any risk, and we don’t want to be anxious.


When we become anxious about being anxious, we slowly strangle the joy out of our lives. The pandemic we lived through a few years back was a stark reminder of that. During that weird time, “experts” recommended, and actually enforced, anxiety. Don’t leave your home unless absolutely necessary, they told us, and if you do leave your home, limit your contact with other people. Some of us heeded that warning, while others accepted whatever risk they were comfortable with, and continued to live their lives. Though I tended toward the latter, I eventually quit looking forward to travel and other outings, as I didn’t want to expose myself to worrying about something getting in the way of those plans. I had become anxious about being anxious.


I experienced something similar with a goal I have had for some time. For the past couple of years, I have wanted to publish a book that I have written once and revised countless times, but publishing a book brings enormous risk and anxiety. It’s much easier to nurture the dream of writing a successful novel than it is to actually put the work out there and see how others react, so I have procrastinated with that final step while obsessively editing the manuscript. I became anxious about being anxious, and that has held me back for far too long.


Inspired by a friend who published his first novel last year, I recently changed my thinking and took the next step by hiring a professional to help me finally put my work into print. Now, I’m not only risking my ego, I’m also risking a significant financial investment. With my money, time and ego tied up in the project, I’m anxious, but no longer anxious about being anxious, and that’s liberating. If all goes according to plan, my book, Marginal, should be available for purchase by the end of the year. It might not win me a Pulitzer or land on a best sellers list, but it wouldn’t even have a chance if I didn’t risk the anxiety that is coming my way.


Our time on this earth is limited, and we shouldn’t limit our enjoyment of that time with unnecessary anxiety. Take that trip. Apply for that dream job. Try a new hobby. Share a hidden talent. Start that business. Things might not work out the way you want, but then again, they might! You’ll never know unless you try. Don’t let anxiety about being anxious keep you from trying.

The Power of Post-Traumatic Growth

By Mitch Arnold • October 19, 2025
A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself smiling and nodding, as tears of sadness ran down my cheeks. I was among friends I hadn’t seen for a long time, and I had a beer and a Philly cheesesteak in front of me, yet I was engrossed in stories of incomprehensible agony and triumph. It was a powerful juxtaposition, the kind you don’t easily forget. Lynda and I were at a charity event that we attend almost every year. The event is called Glow Gold, and its intent is to raise money for childhood cancer research. It’s one of many events held by Sammy’s Superheroes, an organization founded by one of my former students whose son Sammy is the namesake. For most of the event, the mood is joyful, with music playing and children running around in bounce houses and having their faces painted, while adults enjoy conversation, music, and good food and drink. The vibes are so casual that it’s easy to forget the purpose behind the event, until the speakers take the stage. These brave souls are typically parents, and they are there to share their stories of going through a cancer battle with their children. As a parent, and now grandparent, I don’t even want to think about childhood cancer and what these families have experienced. I imagine that the speakers feel the same way, and would rather be sitting in the crowd with me, and not reliving their pain in front of strangers. Yet, there they were. The first speaker was a young father with several children who only briefly attended the event, as he was busy with his children’s activities that night. He reminded me of myself several years ago, when I was busy with my own young children, except that I didn’t have a four-year-old in a fight for his life, a fight that had already cost him one of his legs. Next on stage was a mother who had struggled to have children, only to have her two-year-old die in her arms as she sat outside with him on a sunny summer morning. Her description of the experience was so vivid that it was easy to imagine – too easy. While both stories were sad and incredibly heart-wrenching, they were also oddly uplifting. Both parents spoke of how their children inspired them to become better people. They shared how their experiences, though they wished that they hadn’t had them, enhanced their appreciation of life, love and family. They no longer take time for granted, and they’ve learned that the trivial things that challenge us really aren’t that important. They have managed to grow, despite suffering from trauma that few of us will ever experience. These families are prime examples of something I have recently begun studying, Post-Traumatic Growth. Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) is a theory, developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, that suggests that not all reactions to trauma are negative. In fact, they conclude that mild to moderate trauma often leads to positive psychological changes, such as stronger resilience, heightened empathy, renewed appreciation for life and more meaningful relationships. No one wants to experience trauma, yet despite our best efforts to avoid it, trauma can still find us and impart devastating effects, some of which we may never recover from. Still, like these parents who have experienced the unthinkable, we can come out on the other side as better people. PTG gives us hope that this is possible. Focused on the social aspect of the event, I hadn’t readied myself for the emotional labyrinth that my mind was suddenly navigating that Saturday night. The smiles and nodding happened, when my thoughts finally caught up with my emotions. For all of the agony and despair we might encounter throughout our lives, there’s often a silver lining in the clouds, if we’re willing to look hard enough.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.