A humming wire, a racing heart, A mind that pulls the world apart. It’s shadows dancing on the wall. The quiet fear of a sudden fall. Breathe through the spiral, find your ground, Where peace is found.
Fear can be crippling, and anxiety is a result of fear. Our sensory system informs us that something about life is ''off"—that danger to our emotional, physical or psychological safety is present!
During an unprecedented time such as COVID, there was a strong sense of an unknown outcome or future. Anxiety can come from not knowing what is going to happen or from worrying about what might happen.
However, sometimes there is a general sense of foreboding, and we have no idea why. Logical thinking does not seem to help; the body starts to feel a certain way, and if it goes unchecked, it can lead to panic attacks.
So what is anxiety?
- Anxiety is hard to define, but if you've felt it, you know it can range from intense to a low but constant sense of dread.
- Anxiety can feel like a continual state, or it is something that can come and go without apparent cause. While the mind does not 'perceive' a threat, the body somehow does – the nervous system does.
- Anxiety is defined as a "state of tension and apprehension that is a natural response to a perceived threat" (Holt 2012); it has four components: behavioural, emotional, cognitive and somatic.
Feelings are the sensations we have in the body. Emotions are the way we categorise those sensations and make sense of them as labels. Anxiety is a label we use to describe the range of feelings in the body. If you were driving, it would feel like pressing the gas and brake at once, with tension from each pedal's pressure.
How is anxiety presenting itself?
A useful way of understanding this is to do the following exercise:
If you were going on a week-long vacation to a nice place, you would have to leave your anxiety with a friend who needs to do it for you. Can you describe exactly how to express anxiety to your friends so they can look after it for you while you are away? You will need to include exact instructions on following (like a recipe)
- What you think, feel and do
- The order in which you think, feel and do.
- Use this question: if you were going to teach someone how to do your anxiety, what would they do first? What next? What next? Until you build a picture of the current behavioural / emotional / thinking strategy (paradigm of existing, automatic strategy)
What can we do to help?
This section links to a number of different and more effective strategies you can use to support the unlearning of the paradigm of the existing, automatic strategy.
- Bach flower remedies – Aspen or mimulus relate to anxiety
- Movement that is enjoyable (running, dancing, weights, walking, swimming, playing badminton)
- Breath-work or pranayama - using the right breath-work practice to regulate
- Cognitive - developing observation, awareness and reflective practice around how you think.
References:
Holt, N. (2012). Psychology : the science of mind and behaviour. McGraw-Hill Education.
Schwartz, R.C. (2021) No bad parts: Healing trauma and restoring wholeness with the internal family systems model. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.