Oct 20, 2025
Building Courage Through Anxiety: How Challenges Strengthen Character
Anxiety has a way of pulling us toward quick fixes. We avoid situations, over-control outcomes, and try our best to escape uncomfortable feelings. But it's important to recognize that while anxiety may at times make us feel powerless, there are ways we can still turn toward actions that support growing habits of courage.
While previous posts have explored virtues of wisdom and compassion when dealing with anxiety, the core virtues of courage may be most important. They help you hold steady, face your fears, and keep going when you’d rather give up.
key takeaways
Courage as a Virtue: Facing anxiety with self-control, bravery, and perseverance builds resilience, self-respect, and a strong character aligned with your values.
Growth Through Perseverance: Perseverance helps you overcome avoidance, enabling learning, mastery, and fulfillment in the pursuit of a healthy, meaningful life.
Virtues Require Practice: Virtues are developed through deliberate action over time, especially in challenging moments.
VIRTUES OF COURAGE
Courageous Qualities in Anxious Moments
It's worth clarifying what a virtue actually is.
A virtue is...
An admirable quality
Formed through consistent action
Practiced until becoming a habit of your character
Virtues are not done once and then forgotten, nor are they done by accident. Virtues are life skills in that they must be developed over time.
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER
Aristotle
Aristotle, writing in the 4th century, developed a philosophy for how to live a good life of moral character on the foundation of virtues.
He defined virtue as:
A balanced midpoint between two extremes — a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency.
Kindness, for example, lies between being overly ingratiating on one end and being harsh or cruel on the other.
These aren’t rigid rules for how you must behave in every situation, but flexible principles meant to guide thoughtful action and support a full life of wellbeing.
So in anxious and uncertain moments — when you’re working to maintain a healthy perspective, tolerate difficult sensations, and assert your growing power and influence — you’re practicing the virtues of courage.
Courage is made up of three core qualities:
Self-control
Bravery
Perseverance
Each reflects a deliberate effort:
To manage urges and impulses
To willingly face your fears
To stay engaged even when things are difficult
MANAGING UNHELPFUL IMPULSES
Self-Control in the Face of Anxiety
Self-control, like any virtue, isn’t something you’re born with. It’s developed through repeated practice and the use of your higher cognitive abilities. Of course, individual factors such as age, development, and neurological conditions influence how this virtue takes shape. It would be misguided, for example, to expect a child to exercise the same level of self-control as an adult, or to assume that someone with executive dysfunctions simply lacks willpower. Still, the responsibility to practice self-control within one’s own capacities remains.
Self-control is what allows you to willingly face physical and emotional discomfort instead of reacting unhelpfully.
When used well, practices like grounding techniques or mindful exposures can be expressions of self-control. They make room for difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations without rigidly suppressing them or becoming overwhelmed.
✶ Heads Up! To understand how fear can override thoughtful action and what it takes to slow it down, read React First, Think Later: Understanding Your Brain's Instant Alarm System.
APPROACHING WHAT YOU FEAR
Bravery in the Face of Anxiety
Bravery, as the second quality, is what runs through all virtuous responses to anxiety. It’s the quality that allows you to overcome obstacles for the sake of your cherished values.
In anxious moments, ask:
What good are you pursuing that makes this fear worth facing?
The brave person takes risks in this pursuit because there’s value in facing adversity for the sake of good character and desirable accomplishments.
This stance of courageously leaning into anxious moments actively builds confidence and self-respect by demonstrating that what you value in life is more important than the fear that stands in your way.
You don’t seek bravery for the elimination of anxiety, but rather seize anxious moments for the greater virtue of courage.
✷ Don't Miss: For encouragement to keep going even when anxiety is still present, read The Growth Mindset for Anxiety: Turning Struggle Into Strength.
CONTINUING TO SHOW UP
Perseverance in the Face of Anxiety
And lastly, without bravery, there would be no value in developing a habit of perseverance.
You demonstrate this quality by continuing to show up in moments you’d rather avoid — holding to your values, practicing self-control, and facing your fears even when progress feels slow or uncertain. It’s not about pushing yourself with unrealistic intensity, nor is it about giving in to avoidance. Instead, it’s about remaining engaged, steadily, over time.
There is no learning or mastery of skill without perseverance.
It’s the mindset that allows you to carry on intentionally through discomfort, uncertainty, and the sometimes long process of change.
BUILDING ENDURING TRAITS
Practicing the Virtues that Strengthen You
Each of these qualities — self-control, bravery, and perseverance — works together to support a growth mindset that orients you forward. They help you move toward challenges rather than away from them, making it possible to enjoy a good and healthy life even in the presence of anxiety.
These virtues encourage you to take reasonable risks, stay grounded through discomfort, and resist the pull toward avoidance. Without them, it becomes easy to lose sight of your goals and what you value. If you find that you’re lacking in any of them, resist the temptation to get hard on yourself. Each is available to pick up and start practicing at any time.
Jason Peruchini, LMFT
Jason Peruchini is a licensed psychotherapist and anxiety treatment professional who helps people address issues in mental health to live better lives.
