The Obstinate Nature of Anxiety
How understanding the role of your anxiety can be the key to taking away some of its unrelenting power.
Anxiety Is Everywhere. Perceived failures, misplaced guilt, noisy self-critics, pressure to climb the social ladder, shame-based comparison to everyone around us (thanks social media), increased use of technology as a means of checking-out, social anxiety, body image issues, panic attacks, health anxiety, imposter syndrome – just to name a few. No wonder anxiety is one of the main reasons we are seeking therapy, or more commonly, relying on medication to get through anxious days and panic moments.
The National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, quotes that over 30% of Americans experience an anxiety disorder at some point in life, and more than 12% (and growing) reported annual use of benzodiazepines, such as Xanex, Ativan, and Valium.
These rates suggest a likelihood that therapy isn’t accessed enough for Americans suffering from anxiety and/or anxiety lingers despite some of our more common interventions.
Reconsidering how we treat anxiety – Anxiety may be trying to help you.
The medical model of psychiatric care posits that anxiety is a mental health disorder that we develop based on our biology, and therefore the primary symptom that needs to be cured. This model supports the use of medication for anxiety management, but is less helpful as we consider how to treat anxiety in the therapy space.
A potentially more helpful approach in therapy, is to consider anxiety as an adaptive response to certain psychological events and systems. In other words, our anxiety may be serving a particular function, and, despite creating uncomfortable sensations, may think it has a very important job to do. Thus, anxiety as a symptom, can be very “sticky” or difficult to treat, particularly if its purpose remains unknown.
Here are 5 common ways our anxiety could be trying to help us:
NOTE: just because we’re considering the vantage point that anxiety may be trying to help, doesn’t mean that we don’t want to treat it. “Trying” is the important word here, because it is actually causing true suffering and we want to offer the psyche another, more adaptive means to address whatever role anxiety is playing.
1. It’s really hypervigilance.
Your system constantly scanning the environment for threats. Your system fears something or the potential of something bad happening. This is often related to past trauma (Anxiety and PTSD often go hand in hand), and/or often related to present day stressors such as the uncertain state of the world, or the MASSIVE pressure to climb the social ladder or come out on top of the social comparison pandemic.
2. Anxiety’s main job is often to monitor and navigate the discrepancy between how you feel presently and how you think you SHOULD be.
Our brain’s fear structure, the amygdala, responds to messages of “shoulds” just like it responds to physical or emotional danger, hyperarousal. Therefore when we feel “less than” in any area, or whenever this culture has sold us on the “right” way to be – we get anxious. Some examples:
You weight 185, but think you “should” weight 130. Your anxiety may be noisiest around eating, exercise, and social media comparisons.
You started a business and have hit some normal bumps along the road. Your anxiety may be noisiest around your to-do list, rates, perceived failures, and comparisons to other entrepreneurs.
As a busy Mom you’re having trouble keeping your house as clean as you think it “should” be. You live in a state of anxiety as you focus on all the balls you think you’re dropping.
You were taught that the “right” way to be socially is to be extroverted, fun, carefree, and funny. The anxiety monitors what you say and do in social settings, OR, has you running for the door.
3. The feeling of anxiety is actually your attachment system trying to get connection/safety in the only way it was available in childhood.
Our attachment system is shaped by our early caregiving experiences and show up in our present-day relationships. Often, our adaptive response to our early environment fuels anxiety related to relationship protections - such as not being abandoned, or not getting close enough to rely on another human. Some of these early messages related to anxiety include:
Closeness is dangerous, you can’t rely on others. Anxiety will help monitor when you’re getting too close.
Avoid abandonment at all costs. Anxiety can help you seek constant reassurance, but then will spike to panic levels whenever constant reassurance is unavailable.
You are responsible for the emotional wellness of others (starting with your parents), keeping the peace, or avoiding conflict at all costs. Anxiety will drive your role as people pleaser.
You have to achieve to be worthy of love. Anxiety will drive your role as a perfectionist or over-achiever.
4. The anxiety is managing and activating our tool of dissociation, allowing us to disconnect from more painful, core emotions.
Fun fact – we are not born anxious. Anxiety often develops as a means to avoid other emotions that feel too scary or overwhelming, such as shame. Anxiety can actually serve as a tool to distract us from the unbearable and have us hyperfocus on something that despite being uncomfortable, is bearable.
5. Our Anxiety is actually an unrelenting, inner Self-Critic,
which is often a recording of messages from early caregivers or society/culture of how we (according to them) stay safe, stay relevant, belong, or avoid rejection. When we are raised in a culture or family that is critical, we realize that the best way to avoid rejection or loss of love, is to make a recording of whatever the critical messages may be, so we can adhere to the “rules” even when the critical person(s) are not physically with us. Therefore, this critic isn’t part of our true self, but the recording will play long after its initial download.
An Effective Approach – Parts Work and EMDR
Above and beyond implementing coping skills or taking medication for anxiety, is learning, with compassion, the reason(s) our anxiety is showing up in the first place. We can ask ourselves questions such as: “How is this trying to help?” or “What would my anxiety be scared of if it didn’t show up in these situations?” Based on these answers, we can potentially determine when (what age) the anxiety came to the rescue, and therefore, what earlier experiences may need to be addressed with deeper trauma work (such as EMDR).
Parts work or IFS is a tool to deepen our understanding of our inner parts of self – how they work with or against other parts of ourself, and generally how they are trying to help the system function. Parts work also benefits us from something called unblending, where we realize that we are MORE than just one part and thus can learn to negotiate with and soothe parts that carry intense feelings or intense urges to protect the self. This helps us hold the big picture in mind as we make more thoughtful decisions on how to act/respond when faced with a trigger.
Learn more about IFS or parts work here.
EMDR is a tool to help process traumatic memories of the past that continue to influence our present-day life. Unprocessed traumatic memories, if left untreated, can continue to be activated, blurring our present day experience with thoughts, feelings, sensations, and urges from the past traumatic experience(s). EMDR can work effectively with parts-work, to heal the touchstone wounds that initially created the need for protector parts to come online.