Anxiety can feel like it comes on for no reason. Perhaps you’re waking up with anxiety, your heart starts racing whilst you’re sitting on the couch, or everything is going well in your life but you have the feeling like something is wrong or about to happen.
This experience of anxiety is confusing and extremely unsettling. There are many reasons why this might be a person’s experience, from stress, health conditions, personality, and coping patterns. It can be reflected in our nervous system.
Anxiety doesn’t always actually reflect current danger, though we often can’t ‘think’ our way out of it. Despite this, there are many options for hope and healing.
Anxiety Isn’t Always About What’s Happening Now
Most people assume anxiety works like this: Danger > Anxiety
But often it works like this:
Past experience > Nervous system expectation > Anxiety
For example:
- Someone driving safely may still feel panic after a car accident
- Someone in a loving relationship still fears abandonment
- Someone in a secure job constantly fears failure
This is because our brain predicts rather than reacts. It’s one of the ways humans evolved over the centuries, by learning to adapt and survive.
Your Brain Is Trying to Protect You
Unfortunately, our brain’s primary job isn’t about happiness, rather it’s job it’s about survival.
This was particularly useful in ages ago, where we might have been running from predators. With the development of technology, healthcare, and our 21st century lives, our nervous system finds itself running a bit behind.
Despite evolving in many ways, parts of our brain and body are intelligent but basic with a focus on learning from danger.
For example:
- We get burned on a stove, we fear touching a hot stove
- We get bitten by a dog, we learn to avoid dog bites
- We nearly drown, we could fear deep water
Emotional learning happens in a similar way. The brain doesn’t always question ‘is this actually dangerous’, rather it can automatically flip into a hypervigilant state. This happens before conscious thinking occurs. Further, conscious thinking often can’t undo this state.
Why Logic Often Doesn’t Reduce Anxiety
People often say:
- “I know it’s irrational.”
- “I know I’m safe.”
- “I know it doesn’t make sense.”
This happens because you have different areas of your brain dedicated to different functions.
Out thinking brain does the following:
- evaluates facts
- reasons
- plans
Whereas our survival brain focuses on:
- detects patterns
- predicts danger
- reacts quickly
If survival systems activate first, logical reassurance arrives afterwards. These are two important systems that can serve us in many important ways
How the Nervous System Learns Anxiety
Repeated stress teaches the body:
- People aren’t safe
- Conflict is dangerous
- Making mistakes is risky
- Being judged is threatening
The body becomes faster at detecting these situations and can become hypervigilant to prepare for danger/threats before they occur.
Hypervigilance can appear as:
- fight
- flight
- freeze
- fawn
These are natural responses to danger to help keep us safe.
Anxiety Can Have Many Causes
Anxiety is NOT always trauma. Trauma is over sensationalised on social media because it sells. It’s important to properly understand the causes of your trauma so you can regulate yourself and grow as a person
Causes of anxiety include:
- General life stress
- Work pressure
- Sleep deprivation
- Hormonal changes
- Medical conditions
- ADHD
- Autism
- Panic disorder
- Generalised anxiety disorder
- Substance use
- Childhood experiences
- Trauma
- Family environment
- Genetics
Each cause can help you to unravel your brain and body’s clues about why it’s stuck on survival mode.
Childhood Experiences Can Shape Adult Anxiety
It’s worth reading up on attachment and how it can shape adult anxiety. Basically, it’s about the quality of the child caregiver attachment bond that can shape adult life experiences.
Serious issues in attachment can create developmental trauma, however sub-threshold to this diagnosis could be considered attachment disruptions.
Factors that play into attachment issues include:
- Emotionally unavailable parents
- Criticism
- Bullying
- Domestic violence
- Parentification
- Parents with mental health issues
- Absence of a caregiver
- Inconsistent caregiving
Children often adapt brilliantly to this. For example, a child that experience being ignored by a caregiver might learn to become a perfectionist or have extremely high standards of themselves to receive love.
The problem is, adaptive childhood strategies sometimes remain active in adulthood.
For examples:
- People pleasing
- Perfectionism
- Constant reassurance seeking
- Difficulty relaxing
- Fear of conflict
- Overthinking
These are most often unhelpful for independent adults and are often a strong source of anxiety that perpetuate nervous system activation.
Why Avoidance Makes Anxiety Worse
This is basically the anxiety cycle for many people.
Trigger > Anxiety > Avoidance > Short-term relief > “I survived because I avoided.” > Anxiety strengthens
Here are some examples that might feel relatable:
- Avoiding phone calls
- Avoiding driving
- Avoiding conflict
- Avoiding dating
- Avoiding leaving home
- Avoiding making decisions
What Actually Helps?
Here are some reliable and evidence-based starting points. You’ll need to figure out your own combination. Everybody is different, but you’ll need to find aspects from each of the three subheadings.
Lifestyle foundations
Sleep
Exercise
Nutrition
Reducing alcohol
Stress management
Breathing
Mindfulness
Connecting with identity and purpose
Psychological approaches
CBT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Schema Therapy
EMDR (especially where anxiety is connected to distressing memories or experiences)
There are many other therapies that don’t have as much of an evidence base for anxiety, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t just as beneficial.
Nervous system regulation
Slow breathing
Grounding
Body awareness
Movement
Self-compassion exercises
Not to eliminate anxiety but to teach the nervous system to come back to the present
When Anxiety May Be Connected to Trauma
Sometimes anxiety persists because the nervous system continues responding to experiences that were never fully processed.
Examples include:
- Accidents
- Medical trauma
- Childhood neglect and developmental trauma
- Assault
- Witnessing violence
- Relationship betrayal
- Long-term bullying
- Oppression, discrimination, and marginalisation
Sometimes the brain and body don’t learn how to switch off and the resulting anxiety can turn into an anxiety disorder, such as social anxiety disorder or even PTSD.
EMDR can help the brain process these memories differently so they no longer trigger the same level of emotional and physical response.
When Should You Seek Help?
First of all, check the signs. Is anxiety affecting:
- Work
- Relationships
- Parenting
- Sleep
- Physical health
- Avoidance increasing
- Panic attacks
- Constant worry
- Feeling exhausted
- Feeling disconnected
You don’t need to wait until anxiety becomes unbearable. Just because you have these symptoms doesn’t mean you have an anxiety disorder or trauma. Getting help is just about living your best life, learning to handle anxiety better, and being able to make room for more important things.
If you’d like some support and ready to make a change, feel free to visit my page.
FAQ Section
- Why do I feel anxious even when everything is okay?
There are various reasons, but from a neurophysiological perspective, out nervous system is hyperactive
- Can anxiety happen for no reason?
Yes and no. It can feel that way, absolutely. But there’s always underlying factors that need to be addressed.
- Why does my body feel anxious when my mind feels calm?
Our body is being primed to respond to threat/danger, even though our thinking mind knows we’re safe.
- Can childhood experiences cause anxiety as an adult?
Absolutely. Especially in instances of lack of emotional support, childhood neglect, and domestic violenc
- Why doesn’t positive thinking stop anxiety?
Thinking doesn’t access all the parts of our brain and body. We need different techniques to respond to ourselves holistically.
- Can anxiety make you feel physically unwell?
Yes. This is often mistaken for health issues, and can actually even create health issues.
- Is anxiety always caused by trauma?
No, there are a variety of factors including stress, genetics, and others.
- Can EMDR help with anxiety?
EMDR has a strong evidence base for anxiety, as well as CBT, DBT, ACT and mindfulness.
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