Anxiety is a useful emotion that is out of our control
Anxiety may not be everyone’s favored emotion but is not actually bad; it may be uncomfortable or disordered sometimes however, it has its functions. Anxiety is designed to help us avoid danger. We are supposed to feel anxious when we need to know that something is important to us. A few hours to that big job interview that you need to ace or the night before your final exams, you may feel anxious and this anxiety is letting you know that you need to prep, study and wear your best outfit to give a good impression.
For the things that are important to you, anxiety alerts and prepares you to take action.
Something that may be interesting to note is that we feel anxious as a result of an underlying core emotion.
In this classification of emotions, fear is a core emotion that often shows as anxiety – an inhibitory emotion. The core emotion is not subject to conscious control and is triggered by the environment. When it gets too overwhelming for the brain to handle, it gives way to the inhibitory emotion to prevent us from emotional overwhelm. Anxiety creates a chemical reaction in our bodies – adrenaline sparks our sympathetic activation enabling us to act.
Let us try to understand what sympathetic activation is.
The Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) is responsible for mobilization when we experience stress or fear. Within it is the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal Axis (HPA axis), our stress response system, which releases cortisol to activate the SNS.
Cortisol increases blood pressure and cardiac output, providing more blood to our skeletal muscles and increasing the circulation of glucose in our bodies, when we need to defend ourselves through mobilization – what is known as the fight or flight survival response.
This process is normal and good because it allows our bodies to protect us by enabling us to flee or fight in situations of danger. But just like a lot of things in life, we only need it in moderation and when necessary. An overactive SNS will lead to disordered anxiety – as long as there is a continued perception of threat/fear, the HPA axis will continue to release cortisol keeping us hyper-vigilant – on edge.
We currently live in an age of anxiety; this is reinforced by what defines our lives. It is more normal and even expected to constantly be on the move and in search of the next thing. We are left with little to no time for ourselves, to explore our feelings and appreciate how far we have come in our lives.
In a previous article, I write about our current addiction to being busy and its effects to our well-being. A lot of conditions of anxiety come as a result of fantasies of fear about what is going to happen to us, or what might happen when we do certain things.
When does anxiety becomes disordered?
When anxiety makes us feel like we are in danger when we are safe (in cases of perceived fear) and stops us from going to work or school or enjoying life, it can be said to be disordered anxiety.
In this situation, anxiety interferes with our ability to function and in attempting to avoid it, we stop facing life. This is made stronger the more we try to avoid it. Our world becomes shrunken. We miss out on good relationships as our world gets more constraint, small and unhappy. When we feel anxiety, we find ourselves giving up on opportunities before they even begin and can have debilitating effects when it takes over our lives.
Here is where it gets a little more interesting, the occurrence of anxiety exists in a cycle that could possibly become a never-ending loop without the right interventions.
It begins with our thoughts, here, an activity is interpreted as dangerous, leading us to run away from experiencing that activity, and the brain experiences relief – “if this had happened, it would have led to death”. This is not true but is what the brain believes. In order for it to be registered more permanently in the brain, it will encourage you to repeat thinking about the activity and avoiding it again, so, it increases the feeling of anxiety – anxiety goes up.
Every single time we experience a threat and survive, our brains think let us do that again and lays down neural pathways to reinforce that behavior. Our brain is convinced and increases the anxiety. This is our biology.
We can see from this illustration that avoidance feeds disordered anxiety. It is important to note that avoidance can show up not just in physical but also, emotional ways. An example of avoidance in relationships is the protection of self from getting hurt by being emotionally distant or non-committal. Social media, anger, blame can be ways to be avoidant.
There is good news! It is possible to rewire your body to be less anxious.
In the brain, it happens through a process known as neuroplasticity. During neuroplasticity there is a creation of new neural pathways. The brain works in rules of 3 when creating patterns.
The first time something happens, we think it just happens, the second times, we think it is a coincidence but the third time it happens, our brains register it as a pattern.
I hope that using this information will be the beginning of use being active operators of our brains.
We can create new patterns through our actions, when we feel anxiety but are safe and we stay to experience the emotions and sensations without dying, the brain registers that I am safe, and I can do this again. A surge of relief comes and a gradual decrease of anxiety and increase of emotional muscles that help our ability to feel emotions that are uncomfortable without needing to escape them. The Brain lays down new neural pathways and releases fewer stress hormones.
So, take a look at the anxiety cycle for a moment and think of where we can intervene to reduce or even reverse the anxiety, we feel about certain things and situations. In the coming weeks, we will take a deeper look at the brain and the nervous system and ways we can rewire them to serve us better.
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