Why doing less is making your anxiety worse not better

In this post I look at what anxiety is and why avoiding things that make you anxious, is growing your anxiety not shrinking it. One concept I like to use when exploring topics like this is ‘The Rule Book’. It’s the idea that every experience we have writes our personal rulebook that we live by. When it comes to Anxiety this chapter of the book is written each time we face any potential danger and how its resolved (or not in some cases).

What is Anxiety?

Healthy anxiety is our body’s warning system that alerts us to the possibility of danger. It is not confirmation that something is going to harm us.
Chronic anxiety as a mental health condition is the fear of fear, we become scared of feeling anxious and this is where avoidance steps in as a coping strategy.
Just like addiction, avoidance becomes a way of coping with discomfort that can lead to significant negative impacts on our broader health and quality of life.
The good news is, that just like with addiction, when you’re ready and with the right support, you can find other ways to cope.

What do feelings tell us?

All feelings and body sensations are a message and part of our body’s processes. The way we process information is actually the opposite to how most of us believe, it doesn’t start in our heads, it starts in our body and goes like this:

• Nervous system sends signals to the brain.
• Brain decodes this and responds to any needs that are identified.
• Action is taken to resolve the need.
• The need is met and the process is complete.

Take hunger for example, you might feel a little tired, irritable and get a rumbly tum. Your brain knows this means you need energy, to resolve this need food. You eat, the need has now been met and the cycle completes. Tiredness resolves, you’re less irritable and no rumblier tum.

The Anxiety Process

Anxiety is a sensation we experience when the unmet need relates to our safety. Safety isn’t just about your physical wellbeing, but all aspects of your wellbeing including:

• Emotional wellbeing
• Physical wellbeing
• Psychological wellbeing
• Relational wellbeing
• Spiritual wellbeing
• Sense of self

When your nervous system identifies an early sign that something might be unsafe you could notice sensations like tension in your body, a squirmy, knotted feeling in your stomach, sweaty palms, your heart rate and breathing might change too.

This is meant to be a short experience, we’re meant to quickly identify if there is a real threat to our wellbeing so we can respond to it and find safety, or identify the absence of danger so we can go back to feeling safe and calm.

Rulebook Chapter: Avoidance

Let’s get back to that rulebook I mentioned earlier, the rulebook doesn’t record every second of our lives, it’s a record of our repeated experiences and how we moved through them.

Within the book there is a chapter on “Risk Assessment” here we record what different things mean in terms of how we make sense of our environment. Things in this section might include, facial expressions, tones of voice, locations, sounds, smells etc, that our nervous system uses to identify safety, risk and danger.

Let’s say as a child when our adult smiled at us we knew we were safe and felt connected. Smiles get recorded as sign of safety. Now let’s imagine our adult would smile before punishing us, a smile would then be recorded as a sign something bad was about to happen. In this instance when we see someone smile, we’re going to feel anxious.

When we repeatedly avoid things that make us anxious, this causes “anxiety” to be recorded as something that is dangerous and this is how we become scared of feeling scared.

Creating lasting change

It might seem paradoxical, but to soothe anxiety, you need to things that make you feel a tiny bit anxious. We’re talking teeny tiny little bits of anxiety, let’s say phone calls are an anxiety trigger for you. The first step wouldn’t be to arrange a 30 minute phone call with a friend. A tiny step might be, looking at the phone and noticing how that feels, if your anxiety starts to build, we stop before it feels too much. We might do this several times before it begins to feel safe enough to take the next step.

It can feel inviting to try and get to the other side of this in one giant leap in hopes you’ll be able to skip the longer route. But this is rarely successful and is even more unlikely to result in long term change.

Real sustainable change happens in tiny little steps and it takes time, when working with our nervous systems we need to work slow and steady and what this looks like for you will be unique. So don’t try comparing your needs to someone else’s because it won’t look the same.

How counselling can help

Together we can figure out what those little steps look like for you, one of the ways I can help you do this is with the Window of Tolerance. This is the idea that we have a window of discomfort we can tolerate and within this we can create change, but if we go outside of this, we become overwhelmed. When we’re overwhelmed the parts of our brain needed to learn and grow temporarily disengage and this can reinforce the problem. So, we want to find the right balance that is going to create space for progress without being overwhelming.

By working within this window, I can stand beside you through your journey towards manageable anxiety. Together at a pace that feels right for you, we can identify what anxiety feels like in your body and how to know when to push, pause or pull back. Getting in touch with your body and learning to navigate these different levels alongside more tools to sooth anxiety can equip you to manage anxiety instead of being overwhelmed by it.

Disclaimer:
Often change isn’t linear, it includes setbacks and repeated steps before new ways of doing things become ingrained and natural. Setbacks are actually a good sign and I’ll walk beside you through those moments and help you get back on track to meet your goals.

If you’d like support to manage anxiety, get in touch to book a session and we can figure out where the best to start is together.