Defining Anxiety Helps Us Overcome It
Do you remember a time when you weren’t anxious?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got an undercurrent of nervous energy running below the surface at all times. There are definitely better days than others, when the droning buzz softens to an almost meditative hum. But anxiety is always with me.
It snuck up on me. I didn’t realize it until my early 20’s, but anxiety had been growing within me for years at that point. Like growing taller, or gradually learning a skill, my body and brain had formed an anxious system of thought patterns and emotional rhythms so subtly I hadn’t noticed until it was already there.
The Western medical model starts anxiety diagnoses as early as age 3, according to the CDC. Most people are diagnosed (or start asking questions) in their teens, 20’s or 30’s. I’d be curious how this is changing with the current generations of children being exposed to mental health talk more than ever before.
Even though anxiety is the most common and most talked about mental health experience on the Internet, I don’t see a lot of people define it… maybe because it seems so obvious? But it helps my clients when we break it down into pieces, so let’s take a moment to understand what we are actually experiencing.
In my experience as a therapist, Anxiety has 3 parts:
1) Fear-Based Behavior Changes
Feelings can be very hard to separate from actions. As a kid, I saw them as one in the same. When you were happy, you laughed and smiled. When you were sad, you cried. When you were angry, you pinched your brows and stomped your feet. As I got older, those evolved too. When you’re happy you hug your friends and do nice things for your parents. When you’re sad, you sit in your room and put your headphones on and pull the covers over your head. When you’re angry, you give people the silent treatment.
The blending of expression of emotions to conscious choices had never been made clear to me… so it didn’t exist.
And when you’re worried or afraid? You do everything you can to prevent that thing from happening. It seems so simple, so obvious. Why wouldn’t you do that? If you could prevent something scary or bad from happening, wouldn’t you at least try?
Anxiety started when we misinterpret that our behavior changes will prevent undesirable, uncomfortable, even painful things from happening. We avoid talking to people. We work harder for a toxic boss so that they will change their tone and show us approval. We wear clothes that don’t quite feel like us, but we know it is socially accepted.
2) Resistance Against Repetitive Thought Patterns
Having thoughts is a normal part of life. But everything I see on social media these days points to people feeling overwhelmed, that they’re having too many thoughts, or that the ones they have repeat over and over - and not because they want them to repeat, like someone left a horrible radio on and it won’t stop playing, even if you unplug it.
Anxiety is partly a body response, such as heightened heart rate and increased breathing pace, as well as mental resistance towards repetitive thoughts. We may not even hear them anymore because they’re repeating so often! If the ‘anxious thoughts’ radio is playing, we cover our ears, we play louder music over it, we might get so distressed and angry about it, or we try to distract or dissociate so we can’t hear it anymore. But it’s always there.
3) Losing Touch with Other Emotions
Once we’ve successfully drowned out the noise of our anxious thoughts with busy schedules and positive thinking, anxious people, we start moving through life with new vigor. We get promoted, we hang out with our friends, we do our work, we tend to our hobbies, we watch our kids or nephews and nieces and/or TV shows.
And somehow, we start to notice we feel a bit empty. Like something is missing. Like it’s hard to feel happy or our accomplishments don’t feel like enough. We tend to have difficulty with our emotions, like they surprise us - all of a sudden we are angry or sad with little warning. We might not realize that we are acting from a place of fear because we are so focused on staying busy or distracted.
Some people experience or express anxiety differently because we choose different ways to suppress our other emotions. If you’ve ever noticed someone getting easily irritable or angry while driving on the road (or…let’s be real, we were that person), this could be anxiety. If you’ve ever noticed someone silently sipping their drink in the corner of a party looking uncomfortable, this could be anxiety. If you’ve ever seen someone smiling too wide and laughing too hard during work meetings, this could be anxiety.
By taking the time to define anxiety and see its different parts, we can start to process how anxiety shows up for you. If you know someone who could use this information to help them in their healing journey, send them this link!
