Equanimity and Anxiety: The Buddhist Art Of Being With What Is (Without Giving Up)

Equanimity is not resignation. It’s stopping the fight with the reality of the moment.

Here's a question I hear, in some form, pretty regularly in my office:

"But if I stop fighting my anxiety, doesn't that mean I just give in to it?"

It's a completely understandable fear. People come to anxiety therapy because they want to feel better, not because they want to make peace with feeling bad. The idea of relaxing the fight against anxiety can sound a lot like surrender, like deciding the anxiety wins and you're done trying.

But that's not what we're talking about today. Today we're talking about equanimity, which is one of the most clinically useful concepts I've encountered in over 20 years as a Maryland anxiety therapist. It’s also one of the most consistently misunderstood.

Equanimity is not giving up. It is not indifference. It is not putting on a brave face and pretending everything is fine. If you've read the metta post in this series and worried that "being kind to yourself" just means lowering your standards, equanimity gets that exact same suspicious look from a lot of people. And just like metta, it turns out to be something quite different, and quite powerful, once you actually get to know it.

This is the final post in my series on what Buddhist psychological concepts can teach us about anxiety and anxiety therapy. You might want to start with the overview post on Buddhist psychology and anxiety, or the post on the second arrow, the impermanence post, or the one about non-self. But you can also start right here.

what equanimity actually is

The Pali word is upekkha, and it's usually translated as equanimity, though sometimes as balance, or evenness of mind. In Buddhist psychology, it's considered one of the four brahmaviharas, or divine abodes — the other three being lovingkindness (metta), compassion (karuna), and sympathetic joy (mudita). If you've read the metta post in this series, you've already met one of equanimity's close relatives.

The brahmaviharas are sometimes described as the four attitudes we can cultivate toward all experience and all beings. They all work together and also have their own special function. Equanimity is the quality of mind that can be present with what is, fully and openly, without being pulled into reactivity, resistance, or collapse.

Here's an image that might help. Imagine a mountain. Storms roll through, seasons change, wind and rain and snow come and go. The mountain doesn't fight the storms. It doesn't pretend they're not happening. It doesn't blow away. It just remains: solid, present, unchanged in its fundamental nature. That quality of stable presence in the midst of changing conditions? That's a little bit what equanimity feels like.

Or, to bring it a little closer to home: think about someone you've known who seemed genuinely okay in the middle of hard circumstances. Not brittle or in denial. Not numb or checked out. Just steady and present. Able to respond to what was actually happening rather than reacting to their fear of what was happening. That quality is equanimity.

It’s also what balances our sense of compassion, to keep us from being emotionally swamped. Compassion opens our hearts to the suffering of others, and our desire to help. Our world has a massive oversupply of suffering, as I’m sure you’ve noticed lately. All that suffering can overwhelm an open, compassionate heart. Equanimity steps in to help balance that compassion with the wisdom that we have to keep our own feet under us in order to be steady enough to continue to survive and serve. But it’s not apathy or indifference, as we’ll see below.

What Equanimity is not

Let’s clear up a few misconceptions before we go any further.

Equanimity is not detachment. Some people hear "equanimity" and picture someone floating above their life, untouched by anything, existing in a kind of pleasant, slightly glazed emotional absence. That's not it. Equanimity doesn't mean nothing affects you. It means you can be affected without being destabilized.

Equanimity is not resignation. Accepting the presence of anxiety in a given moment is not the same thing as accepting that anxiety will rule your life forever. This is one of the trickiest parts for anxious folks to hear, so let me say it again: being with what is right now is different from giving up on the possibility of things being different. Equanimity is about the present moment, not a forecast.

Equanimity is not emotional flatness. You can feel deeply and still have equanimity. In fact, equanimity is often what makes it possible to actually feel things without being overwhelmed by them. Think about it: when we fight our anxiety, we often end up layered in meta-emotions. We’re anxious about being anxious, ashamed of the anxiety, afraid it will never end. Equanimity steps back from that layering and says: what's here is here. I don't have to add to it.

Equanimity is not something you either have or don't have. It's a practice. A capacity that can be cultivated. This is good news.

Why Anxious Minds NEed This

We could just drop the rope.

Here's something I've noticed working with anxious clients for many years: anxiety feeds on resistance.

Not always in obvious ways. Sometimes the resistance looks like avoidance: staying away from the thing that provokes anxiety so you never have to feel it. Sometimes it looks like hypervigilance: scanning constantly for threats so you can head them off. Sometimes it looks like reassurance-seeking, or compulsive planning, or the endless rehearsing of every possible outcome in your head at 2am.

All of these strategies have something in common: they treat anxiety as an enemy to be defeated. And anxiety, somewhat infuriatingly, tends to thrive in exactly that kind of fight. If you've read the impermanence post in this series, you'll remember this idea: panic, like all experiences, passes on its own. But our desperate attempts to make it stop can actually extend it. The fight prolongs the storm.

What would it mean to put down the fight? Not to give up on wanting to feel better—that goal stays. But to stop treating each anxious moment as a five-alarm emergency that must be immediately resolved? That's where equanimity comes in.

When you can be with anxiety without the second layer of resistance, without the anxious about being anxious layer, without the what if this never ends layer, something interesting happens. The anxiety is still there, but it has less grip. It takes up less of the room. You are not your anxious thoughts, as we explored in the non-self post. And from that little bit of distance, you can make choices rather than just react.

the second arrow, one more time

If you've been following this series, you know about the second arrow. The first arrow is the anxiety itself. It’s the racing heart, the catastrophic thoughts, the dread. The second arrow is everything we add on top of it: Why is this happening again? I should be over this by now. What's wrong with me? Other people don't struggle like this.

Equanimity is, among other things, a direct antidote to the second arrow. It says: there is suffering here. I don't have to make it worse by fighting it.

This doesn't mean bypassing the pain or skipping over it. It means meeting it with a kind of steady, open presence. We acknowledge it fully without either drowning in it or running from it. That's genuinely different from what most anxious people do, which is oscillate between the two extremes: white-knuckling through, or falling apart.

The difference between equanimity and white-knuckling

I want to pause here, because this distinction matters a lot.

White-knuckling is when you endure something by forcing your way through it. Jaw clenched, teeth set, holding your breath, just trying to survive until it's over. From the outside, it can look a lot like equanimity. From the inside, it feels nothing like it. White-knuckling is exhausting. It requires massive effort. And it often leaves people feeling depleted and braced for the next hit, rather than genuinely settled.

Equanimity has an entirely different quality. It's more like letting go of the rope in a tug of war. Not falling down. Just releasing the pull. There's an ease to it that white-knuckling simply doesn't have.

The physical difference is real and recognizable. When you're white-knuckling, your body is braced. Shoulders up, jaw tight, breath shallow. When you touch even a little equanimity, something settles. The breath lengthens. The shoulders drop slightly. You're still in the difficult experience, but you're not fighting it (OR YOURSELF).

This is one of the reasons I often work with clients on the body when we're building this skill , because the body often finds equanimity before the mind does.

how equanimity is cultivated: Three Practices from an Anxiety therapist

‍ All emotional experiences are weather passing through. You are the sky.

1. The RAIN Practice

RAIN is a mindfulness-based practice developed by teachers including Michele McDonald and later expanded by Tara Brach (Maryland folks, did you know she’s local?!?!). It's one of the most practically useful tools I share with anxious clients, and it maps almost perfectly onto what equanimity in action looks like.

R — Recognize what is happening. Name the experience: anxiety is here. Fear is here. My chest is tight. My thoughts are going to a dark place.

A — Allow it to be there, just as it is. Not to like it or want it, just to stop fighting its existence in this moment. This is here. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

I — Investigate with gentle curiosity. Where do you feel it in your body? Can you go directly into the very center of it? What is the texture of it? Is there something underneath the anxiety: a fear, a need, a grief? This isn't analysis; it's more like careful, kind attention.

N — Non-identify (or Nurture or Need). Step back slightly from the experience and recognize: I am the one noticing this. I am not the anxiety itself. And then, from that slightly wider place, you can ask yourself what you need and then offer yourself some care. It might be a hand on the heart, a breath, a quiet wish for ease.

RAIN doesn't make anxiety disappear. But it interrupts the reactive spiral and creates the conditions for equanimity to arise. That's exactly what we're going for.

2. The "Weather" Frame

This is a simple reframe, but don't let the simplicity fool you into thinking it's not useful. Begin to think of your emotional states the way you might think of weather.

Weather is real. A rainstorm is wet and cold and genuinely uncomfortable. You don't have to pretend it isn't. But weather is also passing. No storm lasts forever. And you are not the storm. You are the sky it moves through.

When an anxious episode arrives, try: anxiety is here right now, like a storm. Not: I am an anxious person and this proves it and it will probably always be this way. The first framing creates a little space. The second collapses all of that space and merges you with the anxiety completely.

If you've been reading this series, you might notice this connects to both the impermanence post (the storm will pass) and the non-self post (you are not the storm). Equanimity is the place where those two insights land and become livable.

3. Arriving in the Body

Equanimity often starts in the body before the mind catches up. This is something I work on with clients using somatic and mindfulness-based approaches, gently shifting attention from the anxious thoughts to the physical sensations of the present moment.

When anxiety spirals, the mind tends to leave the present completely and take up residence in an imaginary (usually terrible) future. The body, however, is always in the present. Coming back to the breath, the feeling of your feet on the floor, the weight of your body in the chair. These aren't distractions from the anxiety; they're anchors to now. And now is usually more manageable than wherever the mind was heading.

You don't have to do this perfectly. Even a few seconds of genuine present-moment contact (real attention to a real sensation, right now) can interrupt the anxiety spiral long enough to take a breath. That's equanimity working in real time.

equanimity does not mean you stop caring about getting better

I want to come back to the fear I named at the beginning, because I've seen it come up enough that I think it deserves a direct answer.

Equanimity is a present-moment practice. It asks: can you be with what's here, right now, without adding struggle to it? It does not ask: can you accept that this is how things will always be?

Wanting things to be different (wanting to suffer less, to have more ease, to not be gripped by anxiety in the ways you have been) is not at odds with equanimity. It's actually what motivates seeking anxiety therapy in the first place. Equanimity is about how you hold the current moment, not about abandoning hope for a different future.

In fact, one of the things I've observed repeatedly in clinical practice is that the people who make the most progress with anxiety are often those who can, paradoxically, loosen the grip on needing the anxiety to be gone right now. The fierce urgency of make this stop immediately often makes everything worse. It keeps the nervous system in emergency mode and makes it harder to actually work with the anxiety effectively. A little equanimity about the process of getting better often speeds the process of getting better up.

Wrapping up this series

If you've been reading this series from the beginning, here's a quick recap of where we've been:

Buddhist Psychology and Anxiety: The overview on why 2,500 years of wisdom about the human mind is still remarkably relevant to anxiety today.

The Second Arrow: The self-criticism that piles on top of the original anxiety, and why pulling that arrow out matters.

Impermanence: The radical, relief-inducing truth that this moment (including the panic) will pass.

Non-Self: You are not your anxious thoughts, and loosening that identification can bring invaluable breathing space inside.

Metta: Lovingkindness as a practical antidote to the self-critical voice that makes anxiety so exhausting.

And finally, Equanimity :the stable ground from which all of the above becomes possible.

In some ways, equanimity is where the other concepts land. Impermanence is more accessible when you're not fighting the present moment. Non-self is easier to contact when you're not merged with your anxiety in panic. Metta flows more naturally from a place of steadiness than from a place of desperation. These ideas really do travel in a pack.

None of them requires you to be a Buddhist, or a meditator, or a particularly spiritual person. They require only that you be a person who is suffering and who is willing to try relating to that suffering a little differently.

The quiet triumph of not making it worse

One last thought before we wrap this whole series up.

For a lot of people, the first major breakthrough in anxiety treatment isn't some dramatic moment of insight. It's the quieter experience of discovering that they can be with their anxiety, even briefly, even imperfectly, without adding all the usual layers on top of it. Without the what if this never ends. Without the what's wrong with me. Without the exhausting scramble to make it stop immediately.

Just a clear recognition of: This is here. I can be with this. It will pass. I will go on.

That's equanimity. Small, humble, but potentially life-changing when it starts to become available. Not the end of suffering (if you make that happen, drop me a line and tell me how you did it!), but a fundamentally different relationship with it, one where you are no longer quite so much at its mercy.

That's what we work toward in anxiety therapy. And it turns out that an old Buddhist concept describes it about as well as anything I've found.

ready to work with a maryland anxiety therapist?

If this series has resonated with you, the pain of the second arrow, the impermanence, the exhausting fight against your own mind. I'd love to talk. Anxiety therapy with me isn't just about techniques and coping strategies (though we do work on those too). It's about changing the fundamental relationship you have with your anxiety, so it’s no longer running the show.

I offer specialized anxiety therapy in College Park, MD, and online throughout Maryland. If you’d like to find out more about kindly supporting your anxious mind, I’d love to connect. You can contact me to set up a free 15-minute consultation call to see if we’d be a good fit to work together.

Other services I offer include hypnotherapy, mindfulness-based therapy, life coaching, and support for LGBTQIA+ clients. Additional information is available on my home page.

About the author:

Beth Charbonneau, LCSW-C, is a Maryland therapist, specializing in anxiety therapy and treatment. With over 20 years of experience, she brings a holistic approach to calming the mind and body, and encourages her clients to feel empowered to find more joy in life. More information about her practice can be found on her website.