This post covers the following topics:
- Healthy vs unhealthy anxiety
- Zero anxiety is not ideal – the need for balance
- Anxiety is universal & pervasive
- When anxiety teams up with shame
- When control doesn’t seem to work
- Some good news
Healthy vs Unhealthy Anxiety
Emotions are essential for us to function. Without them we would be completely lost in making choices, protecting ourselves and for understanding our own unique identity. In this way the experience of anxiety can be healthy and adaptive to the situations you find yourself in.
Healthy anxiety is the natural response to a perceived threat. If you’re walking on a trail and as you come around a turn you come across a long, slender shape on the ground there is a good chance you will jump back. Your nervous system processes the perceived threat of a snake before your thinking mind has the chance to process it and create a thought.
Our brains are programmed through evolution to jump to anxiety first, evaluate later. The cave people that had nervous systems that didn’t make this assumption and didn’t survive as well as us fidgety types. In the big picture, better safe than sorry is a winning strategy for survival.
A more relevant situation might be if if you read someone’s body language as being critical or rude to you then as you anticipate conflict with this person you might take one of three responses
- confront them (fight – anger)
- avoid them (flight – fear/anxiety)
- or just look down and wait for the situation to pass (freeze – guilt/shame)
Anxiety pushes us toward the second path. It is healthy to back away from a conflict if the other person is drunk and looking for a fight. This would be a useful, adaptive response to a situation. Thanks anxiety.
A Delicate Balance
Rationally speaking, the idea of having a useful balanced relationship with anxiety is simple. If we had no stress or no concerns we would not get anything done or know what to prioritize. Without some stress about a date you wouldn’t put in the effort to wearing that shirt that looks really good on you. Without some concern about failing a test you wouldn’t take the time to study.
In the early 1900’s two psychologists were able to put this into a very simple graph.
There is of course the other side as well, unhealthy anxiety. Unhealthy anxiety is exaggerated anticipation of threat, the habitual anticipation that something bad will happen, the excessive reliance on being prepared and the over use of avoidance in situations when other responses would be more appropriate.
To take the example above if the person’s body language you are reading is a partner and you’re anticipating conflict then it might only further your pain and hurt the relationship if your only response is to avoid and keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself, only to breed resentment later.
Healthy, naturally occurring anxiety requires that you perceive a threat in your immediate surroundings. Unhealthy anxiety doesn’t need anything at all from the outside to kick into gear. Thoughts that anticipate that something bad will happen where you won’t be enough or have enough can become unfortunately quite familiar.
Anxiety supplies its own trigger and its own fuel to keep it going.
Anxiety is Universal & Pervasive
If you struggle with anxiety, you are far from alone. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health struggle in the U.S. While anxiety is universally a very human struggle with the difficulties of life, it is particularly pervasive in our culture. If you look around over the course of your day you’ll see yourself surrounded by people lost in their heads, wrapped up in self comparisons.
Even if you logically understand this, it can often seem as though others don’t have nearly as much anxiety as you do though because we easily forget that we are comparing our inner, inside-the-skin experience to what someone else looks like from the outside. As a general rule of thumb we don’t appear as nervous to others as we assume we do.
Even though it is a very common struggle, less than 40% people every reach out for professional help and are left to suffer in silence. The tragedy is most people with significant anxiety respond well to therapy. It’s one of the places that the field of psychotherapy tends to shine.
Anxiety + Shame | A Recipe for Self-Bullying
If you’ve experienced anxiety for long enough then you may have experienced anxiety’s good friend – shame. Shame and anxiety often pair up and bully with thoughts like:
- WHY CAN’T YOU JUST RELAX?
- HOW COME EVERYONE IS MORE EASY GOING THAN YOU?
- YOU’RE SUCH A …
In it’s own twisted way these self-shaming thoughts are trying to help. The intention can be to put more energy into figuring out what is wrong or to beat others to the punch with self-criticism. In they end they are destined to fail at their mission to help or protect.
Most people see how unhelpful these thoughts are and they try to stop the pattern. When the pattern doesn’t seem to stop just because that’s their wish the pressure just increases. When they find that they can’t seem to beat their anxiety they can be left to feel even more frustrated and more self-critical. Anxiety builds and self-confidence plummets.
If you think that because you haven’t been able to overcome your anxiety that it is proof that there’s something wrong with you, that you’re not smart enough or that you’re too lazy, then I’d like to invite you to consider an alternate explanation.
Proof or Just Misunderstanding?
Perhaps your attempt to control anxiety or get rid of it haven’t worked because anxiety isn’t something you can just control or get rid of. These are reasonable solutions to most problems.
- If you break out with a bad rash, you can go to the doctor and get some type of pill or cream to get rid of it.
- If the hot water heater at your home breaks you can call someone to come fix it.
- If you have a friend you no longer like, you can avoid them.
The difference here is that these are all problems that are external, they are outside your skin.
Anxiety is an internal experience. Experiences and struggles that happen inside your skin work by a different set of rules.
#1 | THE MORE YOU DON’T WANT ANXIETY, THE MORE YOU HAVE IT.
#2 | FIGHTING ANXIETY ONLY BINDS YOU TO IT.
If anxiety is seen as the enemy, as something to get rid of, or something to overcome then this will only produce more of it.
Good News
If you can relate to this information and you’ve been applying your energy to a set of rules and strategies that are destined to fail then there is good news here for you.
First, it is worth repeating that struggles with anxiety are way more common than most people assume, so you’re not alone here. Secondly, struggles with anxiety are often treatable once you take the courageous step of putting down the armor and trying something different.
You can learn new skills and try a different set of strategies that are much more likely to help.