You Are More

Anxiety affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, about 4.4% of the global population. And still, it often feels like something you’re carrying alone.

Today’s expert explores what happens when anxiety shifts from “something I have” to “who I am.” We’re looking at how small changes in language can create space between you and the hardest parts of your experience, all without minimizing what’s real.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬 Science Spotlight: Anxiety and depression distort self-assessment...
🛠️ Tool of the Week: The “Also Me” Check...
🗣️ Therapist Corner: Living with anxiety without becoming it…
🙏 Daily Practice: Rewriting identity stories with gentler language…

Let's practice naming what you're experiencing without judgment:

What would change if you named what you're experiencing without judgment? Not "I'm a mess" but "I'm overwhelmed." Not "I'm broken" but "I'm struggling." The words you use to describe yourself shape how you treat yourself. Kinder language creates kinder responses.

When things are hard, do you describe yourself with harsh judgment or neutral observation, and does that language affect how you feel?

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The version of you who's been quietly waiting — give them this. They've waited long enough. 💛

I Am More Than This Worksheet

Hard moments have a way of making themselves feel like your whole identity. This free I Am More Than This worksheet helps you separate what you're experiencing from who you actually are. Print it out, fill it in, and keep it somewhere you can find it when you need it most.

Living with Anxiety: Identity Beyond Diagnosis

Kendall Ceban, LMHC, LPC, LCPC

It's not uncommon for people with anxiety disorders to struggle with overidentification with the diagnosis. People can become dependent on the diagnosis and struggle to separate their own identity from the part of them that struggles with anxiety.

When Diagnosis Feels Validating

If you've struggled with anxiety, being officially diagnosed can feel validating and empowering, creating a space to reinforce that what you've been struggling with is real. It can be incredibly freeing to know that there's something bigger at play, and to start to work through what that means.

If you have a diagnosis, providers can form a treatment plan, gain insight into how your mind works, and you can begin to gain coping skills and strategies to make your life a bit easier. It opens doors to get you the support that you need.

For many, the diagnosis helps with understanding that you aren't alone in this, that there are many people who "get" you and all of the different aspects of anxiety that you experience in a day. There is beauty in community and in not feeling isolated in your struggles.

When Validation Becomes Enmeshment

Feeling less isolated and more seen can make it easy to run with the diagnosis and become somewhat enmeshed with the anxiety. This makes sense! The anxiety for many can be constant and ever-present, so it is very much literally always on your mind. It can be difficult to remember that there is much more to a person than their diagnosis.

Separating from the Diagnosis

A small, but powerful way to create some space between you and the anxiety is changing the way you talk to yourself and others about it. Notice how you label your anxiety the next time it comes up. Do you own it as if it's all encompassing of your identity? Or do you have some space and recognize it's a feeling and experience that will eventually pass?

Saying or thinking "I have anxiety" or "I have an anxiety disorder" gives you a bit of a buffer. We aren't enveloped in anxiety, it isn't our identity.

On the other hand, "I'm anxious" reinforces the feeling/thought that you are not more than your diagnosis. This may seem counterintuitive when we're always seeing people say how important it is to identify and name your feelings. Identifying feelings are vital, but when you say "I am anxious," you're assigning that feeling/experience as if it's an attribute.

This common phrase reinforces to yourself not that you have anxiety but you are your anxiety. And where does anxiety stop and you begin? Instead, saying "I'm feeling anxious" or "I'm experiencing anxiety" gives you a healthy separation from that anxiety in terms of its attachment to your identity.

You aren't ignoring the feeling or pretending it doesn't exist, you are acknowledging it in a way that makes it feel more temporary. That reframe helps you to remember that the feeling is going to pass at some point, and you create a healthy detachment.

You Are More Than Your Diagnosis

There are several parts of your identity. There are characteristics, hobbies, passions, skills, relationships…a whole person. The anxiety isn't 100 percent of who you are as a person; it's a piece. When you focus on anxiety as your core identifier, you miss out on the countless other parts that make you, you.

Your anxiety diagnosis is a part of you. It may even feel like a huge part of you. But it is not the only part, and it doesn't define you. You are a person with anxiety, you aren't anxiety. That diagnosis is just a piece of the glorious, ever-changing puzzle that is you!

Kendall Ceban, LMHC, LPC, LCPC is a private practice therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders, self-esteem, and trauma. Kendall works with women to identify tangible steps towards their goals, set firm boundaries, and develop their coping skills to deal with stress and anxiety. Connect with Kendall through her links below:

Personal Website | Psychology Today.

The "Also Me" Check

What it is: The "Also Me" Check is widening the frame when anxiety (or any difficult emotion or diagnosis) starts to feel like your entire identity.

Why it works: When something is consuming a lot of space, whether that's anxiety, grief, burnout, a diagnosis, or just a really hard stretch, everything else about you becomes harder to access.

You might know you're more than this, but in the moment, it can feel like the entire truth. This tool interrupts that by reconnecting you with other parts of yourself that are also real. It helps you hold the hard thing with a little more room around it.

How to practice it: When you catch yourself thinking "I am [the hard thing]" or feeling like one struggle defines you right now, pause and ask: "What else is also me?"

Maybe: "I'm going through something really hard, and I'm also someone who shows up for people." Or: "This is genuinely difficult, and I'm also still curious, still capable, still here." You don't need perfect qualities, just other things that are true.

When to use it:

Pro tip: This isn't about minimizing what you're going through. Whatever is hard can be genuinely present and difficult, and you're still more than that one experience. Both things can be true at once.

Anxiety and Depression Create a Distorted Self-Assessment That Ignores Success

Read the Study

The Research: Researchers at UCL had participants complete tasks and rate their confidence after each one, then rate their overall self-belief at the end.

People with stronger anxiety and depression symptoms performed just as well as everyone else and received similar feedback, but still had lower overall self-belief.

They tended to ignore the tasks where they felt confident and focus on the ones where they felt uncertain.

Why It Matters: When someone with anxiety or depression believes they're failing or incompetent, the assumption is usually that they must have evidence for that belief.

This research suggests they don't. They perform just as well, get similar positive feedback, and still feel inadequate because their brain is filtering out evidence of competence. It's not a conscious choice.

It's how self-belief gets built when anxiety or depression is present. This also explains imposter syndrome: the external world sees the achievements, but the internal self-assessment has already discounted most of them.

Try It Today: If you struggle with persistent low self-belief, your internal self-assessment is likely less reliable than you think. After completing tasks, try explicitly listing what went well before you allow yourself to examine what didn't.

And when colleagues or supervisors give you positive feedback that conflicts with how you feel about your performance, their read is probably more accurate than yours. External observers see what your brain is filtering out.

I can choose today who I am becoming, not as a rejection of everything I've been through, but as a declaration that my past is part of my story and not the whole of it.

Think of one way you have already grown beyond something that once defined or limited you, and what it took to quietly become someone your past self couldn't yet see.

It's okay to outgrow the version of yourself that was shaped by hard things. Becoming someone new doesn't erase what happened. It just means you've decided that what happened doesn't get the final word.

Write down one story you've been telling yourself about who you are that originated in something painful, a label, a loss, a pattern that formed in survival mode. Then write this underneath it: this is where I came from, not where I'm going. You don't have to be free of it today. Just notice that you are the one holding the pen now.

Evening Reset: Notice, Write, Settle

Picture a river that begins in a storm, churning and dark and carrying everything the rain threw into it. But the river doesn't stay that way. It moves, it settles, it widens, it finds its way to calmer ground. What it carries changes. What it becomes downstream looks nothing like where it started. You are that river. The storm that fed you at the source does not have to determine what you look like as you move forward. Tonight, picture yourself downstream, quieter, clearer, still moving.

Spend three minutes writing: What is one thing that happened to me that I have been allowing to define me, and what would it mean to carry it differently, as something that shaped me rather than something that owns me?

Close your notebook and ask yourself: Where did I let something from my past speak louder than my present choices today? What did I do today, however small, that reflected who I am choosing to become rather than who I was shaped to be? What would tomorrow look like if I held my history as context rather than conclusion?

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become." — Carl Jung

Your history is the starting point of your story. You are still the one writing it.

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Coming Tuesday: What to say when family doesn't understand mental health vs. just being sad or stressed, drawing the distinction between clinical conditions and temporary emotions when they minimize your experience as something you should think your way out of.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.