Anxiety has become a familiar emotional experience in our society as many people struggle with anxiety and its effects on their life. Anxiety does serve a purpose and is not an emotion you want to rid yourself of completely. However, there are times when anxiety can become problematic and start to dictate how you lead your life. When anxiety begins to take over, you may limit what you do to keep your anxiety at a manageable level. You no longer make choices for what you want to do, but instead choose things that will keep your anxiety from showing its presence. Not only is this limiting for you, it also helps to strengthen the anxiety and allows it to control other areas of your life.
I have discussed in other blogs the fight/flight/freeze response and how it relates to anxiety, but I will touch on it briefly again. The fight/flight/freeze is a system activated when we are in a dangerous situation. When in a dangerous situation, you can respond by fighting it, running away, or doing nothing and not responding. Your heart rate increases, your breathing gets faster and shallower, your muscles tense, adrenaline is released, and things like digestion stop. This danger situation activates the FEAR response. For example, if you open your front door and a big dog is lunging at you with its mouth open, your body will prepare by the process described above. This is fear being activated in response to an actual danger.
What anxiety is, is this same response being activated in response to a perceived danger. Perceived doesn't mean the danger isn't valid or real, it just means it isn't happening at that moment. When anxious, the same system mentioned for the fear response is turned on. The problem with anxiety is it activates a system that should be turned on rarely and is now activated several times a week or even daily. With the fight/flight/freeze system activated, your body is always on alert and looking for a danger. This can become physically and emotionally draining. You might notice the presence of low patience and low frustration tolerance because you have no resources left to deal with everyday things. It will also affect your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep because you are keeping your body alert and on guard.
When we activate the fight/flight/freeze response, our body believes there is something dangerous it needs to be aware of. Our body scans for danger and doesn't find it because there is not an actual danger present. There is nothing harmful occurring in that moment. Because the anxiety cannot find a danger situation to attach to, it "invents" it.
Let's take an example, let's say you are sitting at home and all of a sudden you start to feel anxious. Your fight/flight/freeze is activated and now your body thinks there is a dangerous situation out there. It starts to "look" for the danger so it can tackle it. However, there is no danger present. Your body's purpose is to keep you safe and it knows that this system has been activated so there MUST be something out there you need to attend to. It keeps looking but finds nothing. Then, you start to focus on a stressor in your life (perceived danger versus actual danger) and your body thinks it has found the danger situation. Because this perceived danger isn't something that is staring you in the face and needs to be handled right now (dog running at you), your worry keeps the system activated and you remain in this cycle of anxiety. Your body didn't invent the "danger" necessarily, but it did attach to whatever it could to "prove" there is a danger out there.
Now you will find yourself stuck in this cycle of worry. You are focused on that task that needs to get done, concern for how the children are, and your own financial and physical health. There is no resolution to the worry because it is constantly changing, so your fight/flight/freeze system remains activated. You find that to stop worrying is exceedingly difficult and you may bounce from one worry topic to the next.
If you find that you are always anxious and nervous, this is a likely cause. You have developed a habit of turning on the system that tells you there is a danger present, and now your body commits itself to finding the danger and keeping you safe. There may be no “cause” to the start of the anxiety, and it might appear to come out of nowhere. This makes it seem as if you are always anxious and worried for no reason. However, there is a reason and now you need to learn to stop the cycle of worry and anxiety so your body can learn to relax and not think it has to be on alert. When you can do this, you will take control of your life back from your anxiety.
At Mindset Therapy we provide mental health services in Texas and Washington from trained professionals, via telepsychology, which allows you to attend the appointment from the location most convenient for you. Visit Mindset Therapy at https://www.mindsettherapyonline.com/ to learn more about the services offered and make an appointment. Also visit our YouTube page, Mindset Therapy, PLLC, for the Mental Health Minute series that provides quick pieces of information for common mental health issues.