How Anxiety is Trying to Be Your Best Friend.

Anxiety feels terrible. It can range from jittery skittishness all the way through to a full-on panic attack that makes us think we’re going to die, suffocate, do something outlandish/wrong or have a heart attack/stroke. We can also get stuck in loops of self-criticism as we tell ourselves we should be able to control our anxiety, then find ourselves getting anxious about being anxious and spiralling from there in an endless, fretful, hall of mirrors.

In this blog post I’ll explain the purpose of anxiety, why it’s actually trying to protect us, and why we need to learn to make friends with it and play with anxiety, rather than let it rob us of the life we want to lead.

A common definition of anxiety is that it involves an overestimation of danger and an underestimation of our ability to cope.  It’s the fear of a situation rather than the situation itself that can be the problem. It’s not the supermarket (or social situation, or that person you’ve always wanted to talk to) that’s causing the problem but the thought of going to the supermarket (or social situation, or that person you’ve always wanted to talk to) and what we might find when we get there.

The brain is programmed to always be on the lookout for danger; actual danger from say speeding cars, drunk people or out of control bicycle couriers but also imagined danger such as we’re going to die, be humiliated, do something outlandish/wrong, or have a heart attack etc. The brain struggles to tell the difference between the two, so it reacts in the same way whether the threat is an external one (something out there in the world), or an internal one (a worrying thought about what might happen, which makes us feel anxious in the body, and then confirms to the brain that the danger is real so it ramps up the alarm system even more).

Our modern lives (in the West and depending on our proximity to Whiteness) are relatively safe, but the things that supposedly make us safe (news cycle updates, social media, surveillance systems, endless coffee combinations at Starbucks, auto checkouts, chip and pin) interact with systemic pressures -  such as racism, sexism, poverty, queerphobia, environmental degradation, precarious employment conditions - to create a perfect storm of uncertainty and easily triggerable background anxiety which the brain sees as super dangerous all the time.

Both types of danger, actual or imagined, trigger the same stress reaction in the body and this is known as the fight-or-flight response. You may have come across this before; the fight/flight response is hotwired into our nervous system and its purpose is help us deal with potentially life-threatening situations by powering us up using stress hormones to fight our way out, or if that’s not possible, to speed us up using adrenaline and other chemicals, to take flight and get the heck out of there.

In the worst-case scenario we may also go into freeze mode (think of the way a mouse plays dead when it’s captured by a cat), flop mode (dropping to the ground until the danger passes) or fawn mode (we try to befriend the bully or placate that out of control drunk).

Anxiety then, is the danger signal the brain sends to the body and nervous system to let us know it’s trying to look after us, and for many centuries it did a pretty good job.

However, times have changed, but the anxiety response hasn’t. This means big trouble for those of us who, thanks to the lottery of genetics, are more sensitive to or wired for danger. Our brain responds in the same way to Starbucks-coffee-choice-overwhelm as it would to a tiger running towards us.

We can easily get stuck in the stress response which then massively impacts on the body leading to ill health,  the adoption of repetitive behaviours to soothe the stress, or suboptimal energy levels and avoidance, which lowers our quality of life. 

In my therapy practice anxiety shows up a lot in the people I work with. The therapy we do together involves a combination of psychoeducation about anxiety, stress, and how it plays out in the body and nervous system.

We then try out some compassionate nervous system hacks to soothe the brain and turn down the threat response. Everyone experiences anxiety to some extent, it’s just how we’re wired as a species, and knowing this can make us feel less alone, and more aware of how other people around us are also struggling with their over-zealous protector brains in a world that constantly freaks us out. We’re all doing the best we can with the tricky brain we’ve inherited and a life we didn’t ask for. It’s not your fault.

The final piece of the anxiety challenge involves testing out and tolerating anxiety, using experiments in the real world, to see what happens when we face that fear of the situation instead of avoiding it, and whether our worst predictions come true or not.

The secret here is that anxiety will wear off quite quickly if you know how to deal with it rather than feed it, and this can feel quite liberating. It doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious again or that you’ll “get rid” of your anxiety, but it does mean you’ll be able to feel the fear and do it anyway, rather than feel the fear and run the other way.

Research has shown that anxious people have more empathy and understanding towards others experiencing similar issues because they’ve already been there. Anxious people have also been shown to be better leaders and better friends as they are more able to put themselves in other people’s shoes…

…dare I say it that once we know what anxiety is, and how to handle it, it can be our superpower.

Of course, you may be a long way from feeling like this. And that’s OK. But if you’re ready to reclaim your life from debilitating anxiety, whether that’s showing up as panic, trauma responses, unwanted intrusive thoughts, social or health anxiety, OCD or persistent worrying, why not get in touch with us at Rhizome Practice to see how we might be able to help.

Maybe it’s time to harness that superpower and turn anxiety from an avoidant frenemy into your new BFF!