Lessons in Virtue: Your Character Strengths in Facing Anxiety Well

INTRODUCTION

Taking up the responsibility to manage anxiety is not merely a psychological skill but also a reflection of your character virtues. In the face of life's inevitable stresses and uncertainties, those who willingly face anxiety instead of unhelpfully avoiding it exhibit important qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage. These are not inborn traits but cultivated attributes that are regularly practiced through the difficult endeavor of addressing anxiety.

By understanding the virtues that are developed through this commitment, you are better quipped to consciously embody these qualities. The following sections outline nine specific virtues that you may already be demonstrating as you continue to address the challenges of anxiety in your life.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Virtues of character are demonstrated in the willingness to face anxiety and manage it well.
There are nine specific virtues that are developed in the practice of managing anxiety.
Look for ways to continue embodying these qualities as you address the challenges in your life.

GETTING STARTED

What Are Virtues of Character?

A virtue is an admirable trait that you demonstrate through action and practice to the point of becoming a habit of character.

It’s not something done once and then forgotten, nor is it something done by accident. Virtues are like skills in that they must be developed over time.

A Midpoint Between Extremes

To Aristotle, who developed an ethical philosophy on the foundation of virtues in the 4th century B.C., a virtue is the balanced midpoint between two extremes or vices.

Kindness, for example, would be the virtuous midpoint between being excessively ingratiating (a vice of too much kindness) and being harsh or cruel (a vice of not enough kindness).

This isn’t prescriptive as a rule for how you must behave in every aspect of your life, but rather is used to help you understand and live a life of good character through dedicated practice.

Three Types of Virtue

While there are many types of virtue, there are three distinct categories with three qualities each that you cultivate - or seek to cultivate - when taking up the task of managing and responding to anxiety well. They may not yet have become habitual in response to uncertain or threatening situations, but your awareness makes it easier to use them as guides for what to continue practicing.

When you seek to maintain a healthy perspective on a difficult situation, strengthen your capacity to tolerate difficult sensations, and assert your growing power and influence in your life, you are appropriately and virtuously demonstrating these nine qualities.

HUMANITY: Compassion | Honesty | Generosity

WISDOM: Curiosity | Open-mindedness | Intellectual Humility

COURAGE: Self-control | Bravery | Perseverance

CATEGORY 1

Virtues of Humanity

Also known as moral virtues, qualities of humanity are about doing the right thing because it’s considered right and not because there’s a personal gain to be achieved.

They form the foundation of how you should treat yourself and others, particularly when anxiety pulls you into undesirable and unhelpful impulses.

The three virtues of humanity are:

Compassion
Honesty
Generosity

Compassion

Compassion, or more specifically self-compassion, lies in the gentleness and empathy you cultivate toward yourself in the midst of your struggles with anxiety.

Compassion is an an appropriate expression of care that’s neither excessively indulgent in pity (a vice of excess), nor excessively unfeeling in apathy toward your struggles (a vice of deficiency).

It’s the acknowledgement that anxious distress, whether due to biological factors or social learning, is part of the shared human experience. When it’s most difficult, compassion allows you to acknowledge that “this is really difficult right now and it’s important to care for myself.”

Honesty

The virtue of honesty is demonstrated in your efforts to understand anxiety, where it comes from, and what it wants for you. It helps you communicate the truth about your growing abilities to make new and healthier decisions in your life.

Honesty is what you practice in response to anxious thinking in order to avoid fearful and biased interpretations in times of uncertainty. When you seek honest appraisals of situations and in the way you talk to yourself, you’re better equipped to do the right thing even when you’re afraid.

You mindfully avoid the vice of excess honesty to the point of becoming tactless at the expense of your feelings, just as you’re also mindful to avoid the vice of deficient honesty where you withhold or ignore the truth. You seek and act from a place of truth to the extent that you’re able to demonstrate this admirable quality of character.

Generosity

Last of these virtues, generosity is demonstrated when you give liberally as an act of free will and not being forced out of obligation. Your practice of openly listening to your body and giving it what it needs in the pursuit of health and wellness ultimately cultivates a habit of healthy generosity needed for a flourishing life.

You aren’t extravagantly generous as a vice of excess, as too much of a good thing may bring an unnecessary drain on your resources. Neither are you stingy as a vice of deficiency, ignoring messages from the body and withholding care when you need time to rest, sleep, play, be alone, or enjoy time with others.

CATEGORY 2

Virtues of Wisdom

Also known as intellectual virtues, qualities of wisdom support a love of knowledge and disdain for falsehood.

The intellectually virtuous person makes regular use of their advanced cognitive abilities to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom as signs of excellent character. You should see right away how this pursuit for wisdom supports a core goal of evaluating potential risks appropriately and maintaining a healthy perspective in anxious situations.

The three virtues of wisdom are:

Curiosity
Open-mindedness
Intellectual Humility

Curiosity

Curiosity prevents anxiety from moving from practical to problematic. If you’re not curious, then you are closed off to the potential for new discoveries, insights, and ways of being. This curious attitude, however, isn’t boundless and unfocused. You set your sights specifically on the areas of life that you want to test against the influences of anxiety without becoming overwhelmed.

You ask questions, do background research, construct hypotheses, and then test them with behavioral experiments in different domains of your life. This helps you avoid unhelpful and rigid critical judgments in order to support effective problem solving and action planning.

Open-mindedness

Open-mindedness means acting in ways that are open to how events may unfold rather than rigidly needing to assure a particular outcome. It supports your willingness to wade through ambiguous situations and uncertain futures without resorting to unhelpful over-controlling strategies.

You demonstrate open-mindedness through statements like: “It’s hard to know for sure what will happen and I can carry on anyway” and, “I’m going to treat this as though it’s just anxiety and see what happens.” Open-mindedness allows you to freely gather new evidence that will either reinforce or change your actions in the future.

This is balanced against deficient openness where you’ve prematurely made up your mind about things and aren’t interested in new possibilities. It’s also balanced against excessive openness where you lack appropriate judgement and discernment, undervaluing information you already have for sensible action. You may keep in mind the saying here that “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”

Intellectual Humility

Last of these virtues, intellectual humility is the balance between overconfidence and diffidence in seeking truth.

Overconfidence claims truth, either from self-centered motives to appear correct or simple overestimations of knowledge, without an openness to correction. This demonstrates how anxiety can lead you to draw conclusions from ambiguous situations with no clear answer in an attempt to simply relieve the discomfort by having “figured it out.”

On the other hand, an excess of humility leads to a lack of confidence in the knowledge that you already have. It defers holding opinions or taking a stance on anything due to the possibility of being wrong. This leads to endlessly over-analyzing, weighing probabilities, pros and cons, and seeking reassurance.

Targeting anxiety well means reigning in adventuresome desires for truth and balancing them with appropriate caution and thoroughness so that you don’t assert truth rashly and overestimate your intellect. This can be demonstrated with statements like, “It’s hard to know for sure and I can carry on anyway. It’s important for me to be the type of person who can carry on with uncertainty.”

CATEGORY 3

Virtues of Courage

Also called executive virtues, qualities of courage are related to the willpower that helps you overcome adversity and not become discouraged by the pursuit of your goals.

They reflect your deliberate efforts to manage urges and impulses, willingly face your fears, and persevere through difficult moments.

The three virtues of courage are:

Self-control
Bravery
Perseverance

Self-control

As with all virtues, you’re not born with self-control and develop it through the application of your advanced cognitive abilities. We also take into consideration factors like age and other neurological conditions. It would, for example, be inappropriate to say that children simply need to try harder to have the self-control that adults have. Nor would we say that people with executive dysfunctions simply lack willpower. But the responsibility still exists to engage with these qualities and practice as we would any skill to the extent we’re able.

Self-control in particular is what you demonstrate by willingly facing the physical and mental discomforts of anxiety. Coping skills and other efforts to expand your window of tolerance for staying emotionally grounded are virtuous demonstrations of self-control. It appropriately allows for the experience of thoughts, feelings, and sensations without rigid suppression on one end and not allowing yourself to become overwhelmed on the other.

Bravery

The application of all virtues in managing anxiety well demonstrates a clear and growing habit of bravery.

This is the quality that allows you to overcome obstacles for the sake of your cherished values. The brave person takes risks in this pursuit because there is value in facing adversity for the sake of good character, but isn’t reckless or impulsive.

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 path. You don’t seek bravery for the elimination of anxiety, but rather seize anxious moments for the greater virtue of courage.

Perseverance

Without bravery, there would also be no value in developing a habit of perseverance. You demonstrate perseverance in concert with all the preceding virtues as you move through the moments of life you would rather not face.

You aren’t unrealistically zealous in your approach to the anxious condition, but neither do you submit yourself to inaction. Without perseverance, there’s no learning or mastery of skill. There is also no pleasure or fulfillment in doing the difficult things needed for the development of good character without a strong persevering mindset to guide you through.

Conclusion

Each of these 9 virtuous qualities are what ultimately support a growth mindset that orients you forward. They support you in new healthy actions and protect you against the undesirable urges to withdraw into avoidance and abandon your desires for a good, healthy, and enjoyable life.