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Behaviours that keep us trapped in anxiety DISTRACTING YOURSELF FROM ANXIETY: Trying to distract ourselves from anxious thoughts and feelings is often one of the first strategies we deploy to try and get rid of anxiety. However, trying to distract ourselves from anxious thoughts and feelings only reinforces the problem. This is because it reinforces the idea that anxiety is dangerous, and because anxiety is caused by apprehensive thinking, this only serves to perpetuate and exacerbate the problem. By being on ‘high alert’ in relation to anxious thoughts and feelings we continue to trigger our body’s ‘freeze, flight or flee’ stress response, resulting in more and more anxiety. Although distraction may bring some temporary relief, during this time we are still on high alert behind the scenes, apprehensively focusing on barring the thoughts and feelings. Instead, we must learn to accept and stay calm in the face of anxious thoughts and feelings, thereby allowing them to pass in their time and for our nervous system to slowly recover. SEEKING REASSURANCE ABOUT YOUR ANXIETY: Seeking reassurance is another strategy we might deploy to try and get rid of anxiety. Initially we may seek reassurance simply through ourselves, from our own inner voices, from websites, from books, and then when that does not help, we seek reassurance from others. Seeking reassurance treats anxiety as dangerous and, because anxiety is caused by apprehensive thinking, this only serves to perpetuate and exacerbate the problem. At first, reassurance seems to help. Our anxiety goes down a bit and we feel a sense of relief. But then the doubts come back in the form of ‘yes…but what if…’ and then we have to find some new assurance to that ‘what if’ question and so on which causes our anxiety to spiral out of control. Instead, we have to learn to see anxiety for what it really is – simply our body’s primitive survival response designed to help us ‘freeze, fight or flee’ in the face of danger - which we will trigger less and less as we start to learn to think less apprehensively. FEARING THE SYMPTOMS AND SENSATIONS OF YOUR ANXIETY: No matter how bewildering and frightening the symptoms and sensations of anxiety may initially seem, they are simply the symptoms and sensations of our body’s primitive ‘freeze, fight or flee’ survival stress response. If we allow ourselves to get frightened by them then we perpetuate and exacerbate the problem because anxiety is caused by apprehensive thinking. Instead, we need to learn to accept these symptoms and sensations and remain calm as we experience them, thereby allowing them to pass in their own time and for our nervous system to slowly recover. ENGAGING IN SAFETY OR AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOURS: To get some level of temporary relief from the unpleasant experience of anxiety, the catastrophic thinking we engaged in as a result, and the situations, event, person, place or thing we came to associate all this with, we may engage in safety and avoidance behaviours. For example, we might make sure we were with someone else in a public place (safety behaviour) or avoid public places completely (avoidance behaviour). Or we might make sure we were always driving and on our own in a car (safety behaviour), or we might avoid being in a car completely (avoidance behaviour). However, these safety and avoidance behaviours only serve to reinforce our anxiety. This is because they prevent our nervous system from habituating or, in other words, becoming accustomed to those symptoms and sensations, and the situations, events, persons, places or things we associated them with, and therefore relaxing with them. Consequently, those symptoms and sensations, situations, events, persons, places or things remain novel and fearful to us, and therefore arousing and anxiety provoking. Furthermore, avoidance tends to generalise/mushroom over time – for example, we might have started to avoid using an escalator at work and then, over time, we began to avoid all escalators, and then perhaps all buildings with escalators. Moreover, when we avoid something that scares us, we experience a sense of failure. Thus, every time we put an avoidance or safety behaviour in to place, our anxiety gains strength, whilst we lose some. The more we do this the more we accumulate experiences of failure, which we take as another piece of evidence attesting to our inability to overcome the problem. Furthermore, safety and avoidance behaviours also eliminate practice. Without practice we cannot gain mastery, and without mastery confidence is less likely to rise. Our attempts to avoid our anxiety through safety and avoidance behaviours will ultimately only magnify and reinforce it to the level of phobia. At this level, our nervous system hyperarousal is so high when we are faced with the situation, event, person, place or thing which we have conditioned ourselves to fear and avoid, that we lose all perspective and rational thought. We also go to such extreme lengths to persistently avoid this situation, event, person, place or thing, so much so that our fear and anxiety significantly interferes with other areas of our life – e.g., even when we are removed from the situation, event, person, place or thing, there is always an undercurrent of fear and lack of personal power/confidence/control. Instead, we must learn to engage with those situations, events, persons, places or things authentically through the process of exposure. TREATING UNWANTED INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS LIKE THEY MEAN SOMETHING/ARE IMPORTANT: Everyone gets unwanted intrusive thoughts from time to time. We are particularly vulnerable to them when our anxiety is heightened. This is because in high states of anxiety our primitive ‘freeze, fight or flee’ survival stress response is continually being triggered which causes us to have negative/dark thoughts – it does this because it wants to trick us in to feeling like we need to run or fight to escape and what better way to do this than to give you thoughts that make you feel like the present situation is frightening and unsafe. Instead, we must deal with unwanted intrusive thoughts by not giving them any attention or attaching any meaning or importance to them and simply seeing them for what they are – just harmless thoughts that need to be left alone to drift out of our mind again in their own time. TRYING TO PUSH UNWANTED INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS AWAY: An unwanted intrusive thought starts as just an ordinary harmless thought, as bizarre, repugnant, violent, crazy, frightening or disturbing as it might be. Rather than letting this thought drift out of our mind in its own time, believing that the thought is harmful or real, or worrying/getting frightened about it and trying to reject or fight it stops it from passing and so it gets stuck. After time, the thought attracts our anxious attention more and more and gets stuck more and more, triggering our body’s primitive ‘freeze, fight or flee’ stress response even more, until the thought arrives with a whoosh that feels awful, disgusting, dreaded, and/or dangerous. This whoosh can feel like an impulse to perform the unwanted action that our intrusive thoughts are related to or like the unwanted event our thoughts are related to are actually about to happen. This whoosh is created by our body’s primitive ‘freeze, flight or flee’ survival stress response – it is the result of chemicals and hormones being released into our body to trick us in to running or fighting to escape, that is all. We may try to push unwanted intrusive thoughts away in a whole host of ways, including by not trying to think about them, trying to distract ourselves from them, or by coming up with rituals and behaviours to neutralise them or by finding ways to reassure ourselves that they are not true. Instead, we need to understand that thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more and they stick because of the energy we expend in fighting them, so we learn to stop giving them energy by letting them be and letting them drift away in their own time. © Amanda Morgan When we have low self-esteem we can often experience high levels of fear and anxiety with regards to certain people and situations. To get some level of temporary relief from this fear and anxiety we might start to engage in safety and avoidance behaviours. For example, given we are afraid and anxious what people might think about us in a social gathering and how they might consequently react, we might make sure we are with someone else in a social gathering (safety behaviour) or avoid social gatherings altogether (avoidance behaviour), rather than engage with those people and situations authentically. What happens next is our continued safety and avoidance behaviours reinforces our fear and anxiety. This is because our safety and avoidance behaviours prevent us from habituating or, in other words, becoming accustomed to those people and situations that make us fearful and anxious, and therefore relaxing with them. Consequently, those people and situations remain novel and fearful to us, and therefore arousing and fear/anxiety provoking. Furthermore, avoidance tends to generalise over time and this may also be our experience – for example, we might have started to avoid the café at work and then, over time, we began to avoid all cafes, and then perhaps all buildings with cafes. Moreover, when we avoid something that scares us, we experience a sense of failure. Thus, every time we put an avoidance or safety behaviour in to place, our fear and anxiety gains strength, whilst we lose some. The more we do this the more we accumulate experiences of failure, which we take as another piece of evidence attesting to our inability to overcome the problem. Furthermore, safety and avoidance behaviours also eliminate practice. Without practice we cannot gain mastery, and without mastery confidence is less likely to rise. Consequently, our attempts to avoid fear and anxiety through safety and avoidance behaviours only serves to magnify and reinforce it to the point where it has reached the level of phobia. At this level, our fear and anxiety gets so high when we are faced with the person or situation we have conditioned ourselves to fear and avoid, that we lose all perspective and rational thought. We also go to such extreme lengths to persistently avoid this situation, event, person, place or thing, so much so that our fear and anxiety significantly interferes with other areas of our life – e.g., even when we are removed from the person or situation, there is always an undercurrent of fear and lack of personal power/confidence/control. Exposure is key in the recovery process. Exposure involves experimenting to see if your fears are really true. By finding out the truth you can break free from the cycle of fear once and for all. You do this by gradually and repeatedly exposing yourself to what you fear in a safe and controlled way. During this exposure process, you’ll learn to ride out your anxiety and fear until it inevitably dissolves. Through repeated experiences of facing your fear, you’ll begin to realise that the worst isn’t going to happen; your catastrophes/disaster predictions won’t come true. With each exposure, you’ll feel more confident and in control and your fear and anxiety will begin to lose its power and eventually dissolve. © Amanda Morgan Becoming aware of our feelings and constructively dealing with them is crucial for our personal healing and recovery. If we grew up in a family that was to some degree dysfunctional the likelihood is that we didn’t get all our healthy needs met. Not getting some of our needs met hurt us and created painful feelings. Since our parents and possibly other members of our family were unable to fully listen to us, support us, nurture and accept us, we often had nobody with whom we could share these painful feelings. We consequently shut these feeling out, away from our awareness (meaning we shut aspects of our True Self out, away from our awareness). Doing this allowed us to survive and function in the world, however, it came at a price. The price is that, as we have continued this behaviour in to adulthood, we have become progressively numb and out of touch with aspects of who we truly are (our True Self). The aspects of our True Self that we have lost touch with have been unable to grow and evolve. Growing and evolving enables us to feel alive, satisfied and fulfilled. Consequently, because some aspects of our True Self have been unable to grow and evolve, we feel stifled and un-alive; and consequently frustrated, confused, empty, low, depressed, and sometimes distressed. Our feelings are incredibly precious and important. They enable to understand what we truly need and want and what we don’t need and want. They also enable us to make sense of the world around us and process and assimilate our experiences, so that we can move forward, grow and evolve. Getting in touch with them and talking about them is therefore healthy and an essential part of our recovery. Although getting in touch with them for the first time may feel incredibly painful, and sometimes frightening and overwhelming, soon enough these feelings start to become our friends. They become our friends because we need them to feel whole, real and alive, and to enjoy a healthy relationship with our Self and others. Our feelings can be both joyful and painful. The spectrum includes: unconditional love, bliss, joy, compassion, empathy, enthusiasm, contentment, fear, hurt, sadness, shame, guilt, anger, confusion, emptiness, numbness. The way out of a painful feeling is through it. We may have buried many painful feelings and therefore, as part of our recovery, we need to carefully uncover and process them. This process includes sharing our feelings with safe others. © Amanda Morgan How do we get in the anxiety trap/become tricked by anxiety?
Four phases of experience can lead to us getting caught in the anxiety trap. PHASE 1 We experience overwhelming stress. PHASE 2 The overwhelming stress we experience causes us to behave (think and act) apprehensively, triggering our body’s freeze, fight, flee stress response to such an extent that the symptoms and sensations we experience are so bewildering and terrifying for us that we come to fear them. The fear we feel consequently perpetuates and heightens the activation of our body’s stress response and its accompanying symptoms and sensations and thus we get trapped in the fear and stress response cycle that goes like this: stress response – fear, stress response, fear, stress response – fear, stress response - fear, stress response - fear, stress response and so on. Rather than understanding right at the beginning that the anxiety symptoms and sensations we are experiencing are simply the symptoms and sensations of our body’s stress response and that they will eventually go when the stressor(s) that triggered them passes, or when we deploy better strategies for managing stress more effectively, allowing time for our body to recover and re-balance, we get caught in the anxiety trap/become tricked by anxiety. "Many people are tricked... A sudden or prolonged state of stress may sensitise adrenaline-releasing nerves to produce the symptoms of stress in an exaggerated, alarming way. This state of sensitisation is well-known to doctors, but so little known to people generally that, when first experienced, it may bewilder and dupe it's victims in to becoming afraid of it. If asked to pinpoint the beginning [of problematic anxiety]… I would say that it is the moment when the sensitised person becomes afraid of the sensations produced by severe stress and so places himself in a cycle of fear-adrenaline-fear. In response to this fear, more adrenaline is released and his already sensitised body is thus stimulated to produce more and more intense sensations, which inspire more fear. This is the fear-adrenaline-fear cycle.” (Dr Claire Weekes, ‘Self-Help for Your Nerves’ (1997), page 8) "Sufferers from these symptoms... are quite sure that there is something seriously wrong with them and cannot believe that anyone else could have such a distressing experience. Many feel convinced that they have a brain tumour (at least something 'deep seated') or that they are on the verge of madness. Their one wish is to be, as quickly as possible, the person they used to be before this 'horrible thing' happened to them. They are often not aware that their symptoms are nervous in origin and follow a well-recognised pattern shared by numerous others like themselves, the pattern of continuous fear and tension". (Dr Claire Weekes, ‘Self-help for Your Nerves’ (1997), page 11) It is incredibly easy to get tricked/caught in the anxiety trap given that most people are not sufficiently informed about the physiology of anxiety. Even when we are informed, the actual experience of acute anxiety – its symptoms and sensations - can take us by surprise and be so bewildering, frightening and terrifying that, at the time, the only context we feel the experience warrants is a catastrophic one. Examples of catastrophic thinking we might attach to the bewildering, frightening and terrifying symptoms and sensations of anxiety include:
The more we engage in catastrophic thinking, the more apprehensive and fearful we become, further heightening our body’s freeze, fight, or flee response and its symptoms and sensations setting up a vicious cycle of: stress response – fear, stress response, fear, stress response – fear, stress response - fear, stress response - fear, stress response, and so on. Furthermore, if we experience acute anxiety and catastrophic thinking when engaging with a specific type of situation, event, person, place or thing, we might come to associate that situation, event, person, place or thing with the sense of fear we felt. This is called fear association. For example, if we experience the symptoms and sensations of a panic attack in a in a public place we then might associate public places with a panic attack (this is how agoraphobic develops), or if we experience the symptoms and sensations of panic attack in a car we might then associate being in a car with a panic attack. PHASE 3 To get some level of temporary relief from the unpleasant experience of our nervous system hyperarousal, the catastrophic thinking we engaged in as a result, and the situations, event, person, place or thing we came to associate all this with, we engage in safety and avoidance behaviours. For example, we might make sure we are with someone else in a public place (safety behaviour) or avoid public places completely (avoidance behaviour). Or we might make sure we were always driving and on our own in a car (safety behaviour), or we might avoid being in a car completely (avoidance behaviour). PHASE 4 Our continued safety and avoidance behaviours reinforce our fear of the symptoms and sensations of our body’s freeze, fight, or flee response/nervous system hyperarousal, and the situations, events, persons, places or things with which we associate them with. This is because our safety and avoidance behaviours prevent our nervous system from habituating or, in other words, becoming accustomed to those symptoms and sensations, and the situations, events, persons, places or things we associate them with, and therefore relaxing with them. Consequently, those symptoms and sensations, situations, events, persons, places or things remain novel and fearful to us, and therefore arousing and anxiety provoking. Furthermore, avoidance tends to generalise over time and this may have also been our experience – for example, we might have started to avoid using the escalator at work and then, over time, we began to avoiding all escalators, and then perhaps all buildings with escalators. Moreover, when we avoid something that scares us, we experience a sense of failure. Thus, every time we put an avoidance or safety behaviour in to place, our fear and anxiety gains power and control, whilst we lose some. The more we do this the more we accumulate experiences of failure, which provide more and more evidence of our inability to overcome the problem. Furthermore, safety and avoidance behaviours also eliminate practice. Without practice we cannot gain mastery, and without mastery confidence is less likely to rise. Consequently, our attempts to avoid our anxiety through safety and avoidance behaviours only serve to magnify and reinforce it to the point where it has reached the level of phobia. At this level, our nervous system hyperarousal is so high when we are faced with the situation, event, person, place or thing which we have conditioned ourselves to fear and avoid, that we lose all perspective and rational thought. We also go to such extreme lengths to persistently avoid this situation, event, person, place or thing, so much so that our fear and anxiety significantly interferes with other areas of our life – e.g., even when we are removed from the situation, event, person, place or thing, there is always an undercurrent of fear and lack of personal power/confidence/control. © Amanda Morgan www.amandamorgancounselling.com Read more about recovery from problematic anxiety on my website |
AuthorAmanda Morgan is a counsellor practising online and in Cambridge, UK. She is passionate about supporting adults (18+) to recover from low mood, anxiety and low self-esteem and enjoys writing about these subject areas. Archives
October 2019
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