Is Your Anxiety Protecting You?
What do most people want when they’re anxious? To find the quickest way to make it stop. The problem with treatment approaches that try to pre-maturely decrease or suppress anxiety is that they overlook one of its key functions: protection.
When we become anxious, our bodies and minds are often trying to tell us something in order to keep us emotionally or physically safe. Effective treatment for anxiety will help you understand what your anxiety is trying to communicate. From there, that understanding can guide next steps, including how to make bottom up changes to shift the anxiety or ways to calm and cope with it.
The messages behind our anxiety are not always easy to decode. For example, a high school freshman started to have panic attacks before leaving for summer camp. These reactions were puzzling to him, as he was a long time camper and had always enjoyed it. At face value, it seemed that his anxiety might relate to hesitation about attending camp: a newfound self-consciousness in adolescence or fear of missing out on summer activities with his new high school friends. Through exploration in therapy it became clear that the anxiety was actually stemming from fear of leaving his mom at home by herself. At times the boy’s Dad would say cruel comments to his mom, who would subsequently become depressed and overwhelmed. Unbeknownst to him or his mom, this boy was feeling responsible for helping his mom manage her feelings. This client did not need help quelling his anxiety in order to attend camp. Instead, through recognizing this pattern, making changes in his relationship with his mom, as well as within himself, his anxiety began to naturally decrease and he could leave home for extended amounts of time without panicking.
Had the approach been to work directly on decreasing anxiety so that he could attend camp, the anxiety may have never changed, as the root cause would have been completely overlooked.
In fact, it may have actually increased to serve as an additional warning signal that “something doesn’t feel right.” Because our nervous systems are so focused on self-protection, often anxiety will not subside until enough internal or external safety has been established.
However, in many instances learning ways to directly cope with and soothe anxiety in real time is essential. For example, a woman in her 30s experienced multiple childhood traumas related to death (e.g., severe car accidents and her mother being terminally ill). As a new mother, she experienced another trauma in which her baby needed to be on life support. During this time the woman began experiencing paralyzing anxiety. Not only was the experience of having a child on life support putting her nervous system into a survival state (e.g., fight, flight or freeze), it was triggering past experiences in which she did not feel physically and emotionally safe. While healing the prior trauma will be an important future step in helping with anxiety, at the moment her nervous system needs support soothing the anxiety so that she can get through this extremely difficult time and be available for her daughter.
These two examples highlight the importance of tailoring anxiety treatment to each individual, based on an understanding of their history and current circumstances, as well as their temperament and biological factors.
Whichever direction treatment takes, it is crucial to understand the protective function of anxiety. Even if it is no longer serving a function (e.g., Someone who used to have widespread psoriasis on their skin who is socially anxious years after their skin has cleared up), sometimes recognizing and honoring the function it used to serve can be an important step in healing.
Interested in learning more about what anxiety treatment could look like for you? SageWell Health specializes in helping people heal anxiety. Panic and anxiety do not have to be lifelong conditions. Call or click below to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.