Whac-A-Mole Anxiety: Why “Hitting Down” Your Thoughts and Feelings Keeps You Stuck

If you’ve ever played the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, you know the drill: little moles pop up unexpectedly, and your job is to smack them down as fast as possible. The faster you hit, the faster they seem to appear. Just when you think you’ve gotten them under control—pop!—another one springs up.

Anxiety can feel a lot like that game.

Uncomfortable thoughts, worries, and physical sensations pop up suddenly:

What if I embarrass myself?

What if something goes wrong?

Why is my heart racing?

And instinctively, we reach for the mallet.

We try to knock the thoughts down. Push the feelings away. Do whatever we can to make the discomfort stop.

But here’s the paradox: the more we “whack” our anxiety, the longer the game keeps going. In anxiety treatment, we often call these attempts to control or eliminate anxiety - safety behaviors.

Safety behaviors can be obvious, like avoiding social situations, repeatedly checking for reassurance, or leaving places when anxiety spikes. Or they can be more subtle, like mentally arguing with anxious thoughts, distracting yourself every time discomfort arises, or replaying conversations to make sure you didn’t mess up. 

Although these safety behaviors bring relief in the moment, we end up continuing to get stuck in this cycle, what we call the “anxiety loop”. Over time, our brains learn that “Those moles really are dangerous. Good thing you knocked them down.”

So the brain keeps sending more. The safety behaviors reinforce the anxiety (it keeps the anxiety around for the long term even though it provides relief in the short term).

Imagine if, while playing Whac-A-Mole, you could only end the game by putting the mallet down.

At first, that would feel wrong. The moles would pop up and just… sit there. You’d feel the urge to act. Your hands might even twitch toward the mallet.

But if you didn’t hit them?

Eventually, the machine would slow. The popping would become less frequent. And finally, the game would stop.

Anxiety works in a very similar way.

When you stop escaping and/or fighting against your anxiety, but rather allow for it to be there without knocking it down, you give yourself an opportunity to learn that these feelings are not dangerous, the likelihood of my fears happening are low, and that I can tolerate the possibility of my feared outcome happening. Through tons of practice, the anxiety becomes lower in intensity and frequency and we free ourselves up to living more of the life we want.

Instead of hitting the moles, you can challenge yourself to have them pop up here and there, which ultimately ends the game sooner! It is about practicing to ride it out rather than fighting it. This can look like letting anxious thoughts be present without debating them, allowing physical sensations (racing heart, tight chest) to rise and fall, staying in the situation rather than escaping it, not seeking reassurance, and not distracting from the situation. You can even practice saying  “Hi anxiety, I see you there. You can come, you can go, you can do your thing. I’m going to keep focusing my attention on what I want to be doing right now!” This is hard work, but with continued practice, the anxiety becomes less intense and less frequent.