Why am I Being so Anxious?
Anxiety is the anticipation of fear. It is the alarm system in the brain that keeps you away from potential danger. Anxiety is not the problem; it only becomes one when it gets excessive and uncontrollable. Have you had an experience where you just can’t stop feeling anxious even though your logical part of self tells you that you don’t have to feel this way? Sometimes it even gets in the way of our sleep, hygiene, appetite, day-to-day tasks, and relationships.
When a situation happens, the alarm system takes in sensory data from the environment, compares it with your past experiences, and decides whether it is dangerous or not. However, when someone has lived through prolonged stress or traumatic events, this alarm system can become overly sensitive. It may begin to send out false alarms in situations that are not actually dangerous. In many ways, your nervous system is responding based on what happened in the past, not what is happening in the present.
The good thing is whatever is learned in the past can be relearned. Your brain is constantly adapting. Through new experiences, it can update old patterns and form new associations that better match your current reality. For example, if you developed anxiety about driving after a car accident, you might begin avoiding driving altogether. In therapy, you would gradually learn to face driving situations while using strategies to calm your nervous system. With repeated experiences of safe driving, the connection between “driving” and “danger” weakens. Over time, your brain learns that not all driving leads to accidents.
In addition, anxiety disorders often grows from fear of uncertainty, aka the “what if”. It often feels safer to have a sense of control of the situation. However, the problem is that there is no way to ever have 100% control over it. Even if you use the same coffee machine every morning, there is still a small chance it could break tomorrow. Natural disasters, accidents, unexpected events—there is always some level of uncertainty in life.
Yet, we don’t walk around constantly thinking about these possibilities. We still go to work, go to school, and live our lives.A lot of times, it is not about trying to eliminate the “what if“, it is about accepting it and letting go.
Treatment to anxiety disorders can vary depending on what you need and where the problems come from. Anxiety is not your enemy! It may seem annoying at times, but it comes from a place of protection, and it just needs the right tools to better support you!
Ashley Liu, LICSW
