Anxiety
What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling of unease, worry, or fear that can range from mild and manageable, to overwhelming and debilitating. We all feel anxiety some of the time, it is completely normal to have an anxious reaction to common life circumstances such as a job interview, a medical exam and so on.
What can cause anxiety?
External circumstances and events
Anxiety can be caused by normal events like those described above, but for some others, it can be triggered by unresolved childhood issues (such as childhood abuse or neglect, bullying, loss and bereavement at a young age). It can be caused by physical and mental health issues (such living with chronic illness or as a symptom of other mental health problems), or as a reaction to certain prescribed medications. For some, alcohol and recreational drug use can also cause the feeling of anxiety.
For many, the way that we live our lives now also induces feelings of anxiety: working long hours, too much screen time, feeling financial pressures and so on.
Our thoughts
Our thoughts have a powerful impact on our emotional experiences. Ruminative worry can have a life of its own, consistently interfering with all other thoughts. It is common to have a negativity bias, and an internal negative critical voice. These things combined with not being present (i.e. our minds being too much in the past, the future or locked into a critical running commentary) can all create an overwhelming sense of unease and anxiety.
Sometimes, we are not even consciously aware this is what is happening, and we have to learn to become aware of what our default thought processes are and the emotional responses they create.
The body
The mind and body are highly interconnected. Not getting enough sleep, feeling overly hungry, having a glucose spike a few hours after a very sugary meal can all result in spiked levels of anxiety. This anxiety can be easily ‘post rationalised’ in the brain and assigned meaning.
For example: If it is 10 a.m., I have missed breakfast and I am getting too cool sitting under the office air conditioning, my brain will begin to signal all of this as distress and a sense of anxiety will now start to flood through me. If I am not attuned enough to myself, I may not catch any of this happening in time. I could be at risk of misreading an email from my manager which has just arrived in my in-box, interpreting the tone as harsh and in my anxious state assume I have done something wrong. Messages coming up from the body can often be ‘misinterpreted’ in the brain like this, with stories created in the prefrontal cortex to explain the feelings (and very often wrong).
When thinking about managing anxiety, we must include the body as part of that, not just our thoughts. Especially if we have now started to experience a constant low-level hum of anxiety.
Anxiety creates a hormonal response (the creation of cortisol, adrenaline, and testosterone). Having a constant low level of anxiety could mean these levels are always slightly too high – hence we feel on edge, and unable to relax.
Our brain wiring
Certain parts of the brain, such as the amygdala, hippocampus and brainstem are all associated with our anxiety responses. The amygdala processes threat a bit like a fire alarm system. The hippocampus and brainstem are responsible for helping us self-regulate and recover from our anxiety and stress responses. People who have certain experiences in childhood events have different density and sizes of these parts of the brain, so the ease with which anxiety is created and then managed can be different for some. We also know that our attachment (created in early childhood) affects the shaping of some of this brain circuitry.