First, let’s start with a truth. Anxiety is one of the most common and untreated conditions affecting the way in which we experience the world, and often grows undetected like an insidious weed.
By the time it’s sprouted to a detectable level, Anxiety has built a vast underground network that has taken hold. This is part of that insidious nature we mentioned earlier. We learn to live with a busy mind which often pulls us into future plans or draws us into past disappointments as we go about work, school, and everything in between. However, the focus soon pulls more to the future and focuses on the worst-case outcome as the only probable one — again, insidious.
Over time, the fear of your future failure takes up more mental space, and you, understandably, take steps to avoid this by stepping back from your own life. Our brain doesn’t have a different neural network to process imagined ‘what ifs’ from ‘happening now’ scenarios, so when we imagine catastrophes our fight-flight-freeze and faint stress responses kick into action.
This system is activated to help us fight for our lives even though we may be safe in our home only imagining disaster. Our brain is always looking to our body to determine how we’re doing, so as the brain detects stress hormones, muscle tension, and varying heart rate, it responds by sending out greater alarm signals.
The feedback loop is rapid and fierce.
Am I anxious or does everybody feel this way?
Second truth, anxious people are not irrational people.
The negative fear-based thoughts associated with anxiety are involuntary, and quite often we know they’re ‘not rational’ but the undeniable physical sensation of fear can’t be ignored.
Because it feels so inescapable, anxiety may make us avoid things that we know we love, hold back socially, have difficulty making decisions, and be unable to quiet our brains. We can feel physically nauseous, lose our appetites, have head and body aches, sleep difficulty and even develop skin conditions.
Not only does anxiety hold us back but it begins to rob us of our pleasure. We may stop noticing the neutral and positive events in our lives (happy moments and ‘meh’ moments) and become overly preferential to notice negative events or interpret neutral as negative. This is because when we’re in a survival situation it’s important we stay focused on the threat, so we don’t die.
Yes, that’s how our body is responding.
The different ways anxiety may look
Third truth. Stress and anxiety are not the same.
In our workplace, schools, and social gatherings we often normalize anxiety as though it is simply stress. Stress is more about rising to meet the challenges you face, where anxiety is feeling fear of something that is not already present.
This can take the form of a general sense of impending doom, fear of judgment by others, fear of failure, or of specific phobias to name a few. When we know how unpleasant the sensations of anxiety are, we can even begin to fear anxiety itself, which leads to panic attacks.
How to take back anxiety from your life
Fourth truth. Healing from anxiety is a journey that begins with a single step of recognition.
This isn’t how it has to be, and there is something we can do about it. For many, it is a recognition that anxiety is robbing us of the enjoyment of life, it is changing the texture or ‘felt experience’ of our life.
With recognition, we can begin to discern between thoughts that align with us genuinely as a person verses the thoughts anxiety forces on us. It’s not about learning to avoid uncomfortable feelings, it’s about learning how to relate to those feelings differently. Responding, not reacting.
Say it with me, responding, not reacting.
Through practice and self-compassion, we can turn down the stress responses in our body, placing them in context of healing from anxiety, and invite anxiety to come along with us in our lives rather than avoiding our lives for the sake of anxiety.
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Anxiety can take many forms and isn’t as simple as social media has unfortunately made it out to be. (Though we do acknowledge that social media has opened up the discussions behind anxiety).
The reasons behind anxiety can be vast and complicated, but not impossible — remember that. From the physical impact of stress on your body, the impact of stress on developing brains, and adverse childhood events, these topics do need professional guidance and it’s why we’re here.
Calgary counselling services are here to work on it together, you’ve come this far and read until the end of this article so call us and book an appointment:
