Why Am I So Anxious?
Anxiety can feel really out of control, like it has you in a vice grip
It can feel like no matter what you do, you just can't quite break free. But the reality is that anxiety is incredibly treatable and resolvable, if you just know what to do to interrupt the cycle.
What you do to interrupt the cycle of anxiety depends a lot on the underlying cause
People tend to think that they just have anxiety, that it's just part of them that they can't change, and that they'll always have to just do the best they can to manage it with medication and/or coping that helps but doesn't heal.
Anxiety can be an organic issue that persists over time even when you do everything you can to manage it well, but more often I find that anxiety has an underlying cause that's fully resolvable, and that it's possible for people to so greatly reduce their anxiety by learning why it happens, how to use specific skills and strategies to break the cycle, and resolving the underlying root cause that they barely experience it anymore in the way that it can be so disruptive to life.
We all have some anxiety some times, but normal anxiety is typically connected to a specific situation, is time limited, and provides valuable information to help keep us safe... it doesn't affect our day to day life, overwhelming us and making us feel out of control most of the time. There are 3 main reasons you may be stuck in high anxiety, that you may not know are causing your anxiety, and that you may be able to fully resolve with the right approach.
Disconnecting from feelings can cause high anxiety
First, suppressing emotion can lead to anxiety. For many different reasons, people often suppress their difficult emotions like sadness, fear, or anger to avoid being overwhelmed by pain. Over time, emotions that have no way out can get internalized and morph into other feelings and symptoms like anxiety.
Sometimes our minds are working really hard to keep out pain, to tell us we're doing great, that we're not really feeling bad, that we're already past hard things that have happened - this is a natural and understandable form of self-protection when feelings are overwhelming. But when we have anxiety, our nervous system is telling us a different story - strong reactions, being easily triggered, feeling emotionally dysregulated, and a constant hum of anxiety are all signs and symptoms of unacknowledged or unresolved emotion.
Often anxiety relieves when emotions that are suppressed have a way out. Once internalized pain or anger can be felt and processed through helpful outlets, anxiety goes back down. This can feel really scary - your mind is keeping out emotional pain for a reason after all - but while emotions can feel big and overwhelming when you experience them they don't last long, as opposed to anxiety that can feel like it takes a hold and doesn't let go.
Living in survival mode consistently over time can cause high anxiety
Second, prolonged and heightened life stress can lead to anxiety. We are all hard wired with an automatic stress response system designed to keep us safe in the face of something life threatening. This is an important part of our survival, and we need it - but sometimes it can get activated in the face of very high stress that we experience over long periods of time when it's not actually needed for survival.
When this happens, our brains and bodies live as though we're in a constant fight or flight state. We have heightened cortisol and adrenaline. We're anxious because our brains perceive a threat around every corner. If this goes on long enough, it's common to crash and also reach a low and depressed state.
The solution is to interrupt the automatic stress response cycle, help your brain and body recognize that it's not needed for the kind of stress you're facing, and heal your nervous system. Once you're able to interrupt the cycle and reset your nervous system, anxiety diffuses, your mind clears enough to problem solve, and you can better manage the stress you're facing.
Past or present trauma can put you on constant high alert and cause persistent high anxiety
Third, trauma that's unresolved can lead to intense anxiety. Traumatic experiences that are very overwhelming at the time they happen interfere with the normal memory making process of the brain. This is why they can feel like they continue to live on in the present even when you know they're in the past. Trauma memories get stuck in a trauma vortex, keeping you stuck in trauma time, causing your brain and body on a very primitive level to not acknowledge that those events are over and in the past. When this happens, it creates a constant state of nervous system hyperarousal that is often experienced as never-ending and overwhelming anxiety.
The most powerful way I have seen to resolve traumatic experiences and move forward from the trauma vortex and trauma time is EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy helps your brain and body process and resolve trauma both where it's frozen in time in your memory, and held at a physiological level in your body. Through EMDR, people can resolve past trauma so that present anxiety resolves completely.
If we know the reason for persistent high anxiety, then it's much easier to know what to do to resolve it
In each of these situations that can create high anxiety, anxiety is so resolvable. However, it can be hard to know what to do on your own. If you could use help understanding and resolving your high anxiety, this is what I specialize in as a therapist, and you can
