The Struggle Switch: Why Fighting Pain, Anxiety, and Depression Can Make Things Worse
Imagine falling into quicksand.
Your instinct is immediate and completely understandable: panic and fight your way out. You thrash, you push, you struggle with every bit of strength you have. But the cruel truth about quicksand is this: the more you struggle, the faster you sink.
What begins as a frightening situation quickly becomes terrifying. Your heart races. Your breath shortens. Fear takes over. And with every desperate movement, you go down a little further.
This is exactly how many people experience chronic pain, anxiety, and depression.
When Struggle Becomes the Problem
Pain shows up.
Anxiety whispers, “This is dangerous.”
Fear responds, “What if this never stops?”
Naturally, you try to get rid of it. You tense your body. You scan for symptoms. You worry, analyse, avoid, push through, brace yourself.
And yet… the pain gets louder.
The anxiety grows stronger.
The exhaustion deepens.
You may notice a vicious cycle forming:
Pain increases → anxiety rises
Anxiety rises → the body tightens
The body tightens → pain intensifies
Round and round it goes.
At some point, something even scarier can creep in:
“What if this is slowly killing me?”
If you are living with this, let me say this clearly: your fear makes sense. You are not weak. You are not failing. You are responding exactly as a human nervous system is designed to respond to threat.
But just like quicksand, struggle is not the way out.
The Struggle Switch
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we talk about something called the struggle switch.
When the struggle switch is on, we are fighting our inner experiences:
Fighting pain
Fighting anxiety
Fighting sadness, fear, and discomfort
This struggle is exhausting — and paradoxically, it often amplifies the very thing we’re trying to escape.
Turning the struggle switch off does not mean:
Giving up
Liking your pain
Pretending everything is fine
It means something much more radical and much more difficult: stopping the fight with what is already here.
How Do You Get Out of Quicksand?
If you have watched any of the greatest 80’s action movies, you will know, that the only way to escape quicksand, is to stop struggling.
You have to slow your movements.
Lean back.
Float.
It feels completely wrong at first. Everything in your body screams, “Move! Do something!”
And yet, calm is the only thing that prevents you from sinking further.
The same is true for pain and anxiety.
“But Letting Go Feels Terrifying”
Here’s the part that often gets missed.
Not struggling is hard.
And in its own way, it can be scary — especially if you’ve never done it before.
When pain has been running the show for a long time, struggle can feel like the only thing keeping you safe. Letting go may feel like stepping into the unknown.
That fear deserves compassion.
ACT doesn’t ask you to leap into acceptance overnight. Instead, it gently invites you to become curious.
What might it feel like to soften your resistance — just a little?
What happens if you allow the sensation to be there without tightening around it?
What becomes possible when you stop fighting your own body?
A Gentle Invitation
What would life look like if you no longer had to wrestle with your pain every moment of the day?
What energy might become available if the struggle eased — even slightly?
What values, relationships, or moments might re-emerge if you were no longer sinking in the fight?
You don’t have to answer these questions today.
But perhaps you can allow yourself to be curious.
Because just like quicksand, the way out is not more effort — it is a different relationship with what is already there.
And sometimes, that shift is the beginning of finally finding solid ground again.
By Dr Michelle Beukes-King
