Anxiety!!! It’s a BIG word. We hear it and we know it’s all around us, but do we really know what it is and how it affects us?
The first thing I need you to know is that anxiety is normal! It’s a natural and normal response that our bodies have to help us stay safe and away from any potential threat. It’s our human, built-in alarm system.
There will be people out there that will say ‘I have never been anxious in my life’, and to those people I say “I’m sure you have, you just haven’t recognised it in yourself”. At some point in our lives all of us will have experienced the uncertainty of the future, worries, fears, doubts, the up-and-coming social event, a forthcoming exam, covid, losing a job or something dreadful happening to us, a friend or a family member. Whatever it is to you, anxiety can have a seriously debilitating effect on your life and your ability to cope. While a little anxiety can be normal and even helpful in certain situations, excessive or chronic anxiety can have a negative effect on your mental and emotional well-being.
So, ‘What is it’? In a simple explanation, anxiety is the brains way of anticipating and self-predicting the future, future events or situations as trouble or potential danger. It sees this as going wrong, becoming a disaster or foretells difficulties and therefore it helps to keep us safe and away from the potential threat. Anxiety is an ‘Emotion’ and it’s this emotion that causes us to feel, think and act differently around our thought process and up-and-coming events. Like all emotions, anxiety only becomes a problem when it becomes excessive, overwhelming and takes control of your ability to respond to these thoughts, forthcoming events, or situations in a positive way; instead it dominates and overtakes your thought process in a negative way, causing avoidance.
Anxiety almost has the same resemblance as a panic attack or phobia, but there is a slight difference. If we think of it like this. Anxiety is like a dimmer switch, it slowly becomes more intense and powerful the more you think about the situation or thought, just like a light bulb does the more you turn the dimmer switch up. Phobias are like a light switch you turn on or off. For someone who has a fear of spiders, before you see a spider you are calm, in control and working from your conscious mind (the switch is off). When you see a spider you instantly switch into your fight/flight system and the body acts accordingly (the switch is on). Once the spider has been delt with, you revert back to being calm, in control and back working from your conscious mind (the switch is now off).
So, ‘How does it work? What we don’t realise is that our brain remembers past trauma and stressors, even if consciously you don’t. Unconsciously the brain does and will pick up on this, and it’s not only when we are faced with future challenges or stressful situations, but also when we think of them. The brain will tell the body there is trouble ahead and the body will respond accordantly, releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Let’s take public speaking as an example. You might not remember how your body was reacting when you were 7 and had to stand up in front of the class and talk, your body releasing the stress chemicals as you slowly stand up with everyone looking and the boy at the back of the class laughing, or the time your work presentation went wrong, the stress, adrenalin and embarrassment you felt as you sat back down, but your brain remembered! It remembered every single second of how your body reacted when the chemicals got released, it then documented it and stored it. It not only documented how the body was feeling internally, but all the information externally as well. The smell of the classroom, the people, even colours and from this day forward the brain sees this as a potential threat.
Moving forward to a new public speaking event, or even if you are just thinking about public speaking, the brain will pick up on the slightest trigger pattern, matching these signs to the original event and immediately tell the body to release the stress chemicals, setting off the alarm bells and sending you into an anxious state of thought (the body’s way of protecting you from the threat), moving you away from the event. This is when your inner voice kicks in, telling you the things it thinks you need to hear; ‘Oh I can’t possibly speak in public’, ‘What will people think of me’, ‘What if I mess up, like last time and get laughed at’, ‘What if I forget what to say and stand there looking stupid’. Your dimmer switch is now slowing being turned up, reminding you of what happened the last time. Anxiety then starts to build, getting stronger and more and more intense, the more you think about the event. This response then becomes excessive and from that moment on the constant thinking and inner voice will convince you that this is ‘Something that you just can’t do’, and then you don’t. The brain and body congratulate themselves by releasing calming chemicals, it moved you away from the dangerous threat and takes great satisfaction that it has done its job! kept you safe by avoiding the situation.
We have now entered a vicious circle and this becomes our new default mechanism in life, falling victim to ourselves, staying right where we are, comfortably getting used to the uncomfortable.
So here comes that all-important question. ‘How can we overcome Anxiety’? The answer is to ‘Take small steps’, to push through our own thought processes around situations and events that make us feel like this. Our brain will tell us not to do something that we are not comfortable with, it wants to keep us safe, but pushing through these thought processes and stepping out of our comfort zone will make us grow and overcome challenges that stop us in life. Changing our behaviour for the better is a process. It’s like learning a language, we are not fluent in a language after one day of learning, or we don’t get Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles after one session at the gym. It’s a process that we work on over time. This is the same when we are changing our behaviour, a habit or even our own state of mind. Taking small, easy, manageable steps that we are in control of.
If you suffer from public speaking, Start Small! and work your way up! Ask two or three family members/ friends if you can speak in front of them and add another person when you feel comfortable. If you have anxiety about driving, just do small drives to the end of your street and back and when you are ready, go a little bit further. Every time this goes well your body will release the chemical serotonin (the body’s natural happy drug), feel-good feelings will start to flow and you will start to feel a sense of achievement. The brain will document this, remembering it as a new positive memory and not a threat. This then becomes your new default mechanism and overtime it will become easier to work from there, in manageable chunks. This, combined with slow breathing, NPL tools (taught techniques that pattern interrupt these thoughts and calm the inner voice), visualisation and repetition work, will over time train the brain to look at a situation and understand that it is a non-threat, enabling you to think more logically, positively and allowing you to enjoy life without avoiding the things that you want to do.