The Bicycle Method: A Simple Way to Stop Anxiety From Spiraling

I used to treat anxiety like an enemy. When I felt it rising, I pushed it down. I told myself to stop worrying. I tried to think positive thoughts until the bad ones went away. It never worked. The more I resisted, the worse it got.

Then I read Alan Watts describe the Buddha’s Middle Way using a bicycle metaphor, and something clicked. The approach I had been using was exactly the wrong one. I was turning the handlebars the wrong way.

The bicycle method for anxiety: when you feel worry rising, do not push it away. Say to yourself, “All right, worry. Get with that worry.” You are turning the handlebars in the direction you are falling.

TL;DR: When anxiety pulls you one way, your instinct is to fight it. That is exactly how you fall. The bicycle method means going with the direction of the fall. When you stop resisting the feeling, it neutralizes itself. You are not encouraging the anxiety. You are stopping the second fear that makes it worse.

In this article

• The Bicycle Metaphor
• Worry Is Being Afraid of Being Afraid
• Getting With It
• The Divided Self
• How to Practice the Bicycle Method
• What Happens When You Stop Resisting
• Practical Steps
• FAQ

The Bicycle Metaphor

Watts explains that riding a bicycle is very much like following the Middle Way. To stay upright, you balance to avoid falling to either side. But the part beginners struggle with is this: when you start falling to the right, you have to turn the handlebars and the wheel to the right, into the fall. And somehow, that brings you back upright.

One would think that if you start falling to the right you should turn your wheel to the left. But if you do that, you will collapse.

The same principle applies to anxiety. When you feel worry rising, your instinct is to resist it. You tell yourself to stop. You try to push it away. But that is like turning the handlebars left when you are falling right. It guarantees you will crash.

Worry Is Being Afraid of Being Afraid

Watts is direct about the mechanism. In his essay “Tao and Wu-Wei,” he writes: “Supposing we are falling into fear and we resist fear. Then what happens? If we resist fear, we begin to be afraid of fear, and this leads to what we call worry or anxiety. After all, worry is being afraid of being afraid. And then being afraid because I am afraid I am afraid, so it goes on in a vicious circle indefinitely.”

Watts draws a clear line between two kinds of fear in The Fear of Fear: Why Avoiding Discomfort Makes Life Harder. The original fear is natural. It is the instinct that makes you pull your hand from a hot stove. The added fear is the layer you pile on top: the shame, the self-criticism, the story about what it means that you are afraid.

When you add that second layer, you are no longer dealing with fear. You are dealing with fear about fear. That is where the spiral starts.

Getting With It

The Middle Way is to get with it, and be yourself. Just as the cyclist goes with the direction of his fall and comes upright again, so the person who suffers from worry, or some interior feeling or mood that bothers them, is advised to get with that worry.

This has a curious effect: it neutralizes the feeling from which you are suffering.

This is not the same as resigning yourself to suffering. It is not wallowing in anxiety or pretending it is fine to be miserable. It is something more subtle. It is stopping the secondary suffering that comes from resisting the primary feeling.

Watts illustrates this with a simple image. This is like what happens if you take a child and put the child in the middle of the room and you say, “Now dear, play.” The child is embarrassed. When you are worried, and you say to yourself, “All right, worry. Get with that worry,” it neutralizes the worry because you are not worrying about not worrying anymore.

The embarrassment of the child is not the problem. The problem is the child’s embarrassment about being embarrassed. When you remove that second layer, the first feeling loses its charge.

The Divided Self

Watts says that somebody who is divided against themselves is like a person trying to ride off in two directions at once, and lives in contradiction.

This is exactly what anxiety feels like. Part of you wants to move forward. Part of you wants to pull back. You want to be calm, but you are panicking about panicking. You want to enjoy the moment, but you are worrying about whether you are enjoying it enough.

The bicycle method dissolves that division. You stop trying to ride in two directions at once. You pick a direction and go with it. Going somewhere is better than tearing yourself apart by trying to go everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

This connects to what I wrote about in Why Trying to Fix Yourself Is the Problem. The self that wants to fix the anxiety is the same self that is anxious. You cannot solve the problem from inside the problem. You have to step out of the contradiction.

How to Practice the Bicycle Method

The method sounds simple. Doing it is not. The first time I tried it, I felt like I was letting the anxiety win. My instinct was still to fight. It took a few attempts before I realized that “winning” was the problem, not the solution.

When you feel anxiety rising, do not push it away. Do not tell yourself to stop. Do not try to replace the worried thought with a positive one. Instead, say to yourself: “All right, worry. Get with that worry.”

You are not encouraging the anxiety. You are not feeding it. You are simply stopping the second fear that makes it worse. You are turning the handlebars in the direction you are falling.

This is similar to the principle behind Wu-Wei: Why Doing Nothing Is Harder Than It Sounds. Wu-wei is not about being passive. It is about not interfering with the natural movement of things. When you stop resisting the anxiety, it completes its arc and passes. That is not doing nothing. That is doing the hardest thing of all: nothing extra.

It also relates to Why Trying to Control Everything Makes You Miserable. The harder you try to force a particular mental state, the further it gets. Acceptance is not the same as resignation. It is working with the current instead of drowning in it.

What Happens When You Stop Resisting

The first few times you try this, it will feel wrong. Your chest will tighten. Your mind will race. It will tell you that if you accept the anxiety, it will never leave. But that is not what happens.

When you stop adding the second fear, the first fear runs its course. It rises, it peaks, and it falls. That is the natural shape of every emotion. Emotions are not permanent. They are weather. But if you keep fighting the weather, you create a storm.

Watts says the Middle Way neutralizes the feeling. I think that is true, but I would add something. It does not neutralize the feeling by killing it. It neutralizes the feeling by letting it be what it is. A feeling. Nothing more. Not a catastrophe. Not a failure. Not a sign that something is wrong with you. Just a feeling.

And feelings, even strong ones, do not last forever.

Practical Steps

Here is what helps me when anxiety spikes.

First, name the feeling without judgment. “I am anxious.” Not “I should not be anxious.” Just the fact. When you name it, you separate it from the shame. The anxiety is just a sensation. The story about the anxiety is what makes it painful.

Second, turn the handlebars in the direction you are falling. If you are worried, say: “All right, worry. Get with that worry.” You are not inviting the worry to stay. You are stopping the resistance that makes it stay.

Third, notice what happens next. Usually, the anxiety does not get worse. It peaks, and then it begins to dissolve. Not because you forced it to. But because you stopped feeding it.

FAQ

Does this mean I should not try to solve the problem causing the anxiety? No. The bicycle method is about your relationship to the feeling, not the situation. If there is a real problem, solve it. But do not add the second layer of anxiety about being anxious. That layer never helps.

What if the anxiety does not go away? Sometimes it does not go away immediately. That is fine. The goal is not to make it disappear. The goal is to stop making it worse by resisting it. Even if the feeling stays, your relationship to it changes. You are no longer at war with your own nervous system.

Is this the same as toxic positivity? No. Toxic positivity says “just think positive.” The bicycle method says “feel what you feel, and stop adding more feeling on top of it.” One denies reality. The other works with it.

How is this different from mindfulness? It is a specific application of mindfulness. Mindfulness teaches you to observe your thoughts without getting caught in them. The bicycle method applies that observation specifically to anxiety. Instead of observing from a distance, you actively go with the direction of the fall.

What if I fall off the bicycle? You will. That is not failure. That is learning. The beginner falls many times. The difference between a beginner and a rider is not that the rider never falls. It is that the rider knows how to get back on. And the first step to getting back on is to stop fighting the ground.

The wheel turns where you steer it. Stop fighting the fall.