This post is the third in a series on Rethinking Anxiety—a series designed to provide a fresh perspective on anxiety. 

In my last post I shared that, even though the symptoms can be uncomfortable, anxiety doesn’t indicate a malfunction in the body. The symptoms are signs that the body is responding to a challenge or threat.

Take a moment and think about a time when you were startled or needed to defend yourself. I bet you never questioned why your heart was beating faster or why your jaw was tight in anger. That’s just what happens, right? Most of us expect to feel wound up after a frightening experience and realize it might take some time to wind down.

Why does anxiety seem so different?

This same mobilization is what’s happening when we get anxious. Why doesn’t it seem like that? There are a couple of reasons and they are intertwined.

Often with anxiety, it is difficult to match the reaction to the trigger. This is because much of the decision making in our bodies happens outside of our conscious awareness. Our nervous system responds to internal threats from our physiology, our thoughts, and our memories. I will come back to that in a moment.

Because anxiety often seems to come out of the blue, the changes in the body’s functioning can be frightening. Fear of our symptoms invariably increases their intensity. A quick physical response can turn into a prolonged experience. To learn more about how this happens, click here.

Now let’s spend some time looking at what your nervous system might be reacting to when your symptoms seem “out of the blue.”

Triggers from The Past

Sometimes our nervous system detects a threat because the brain has matched something in our current environment with something we experienced as dangerous in the past. It could be a time of year, a facial expression—really just about anything. 

The brain works hard to prepare us, and one of the ways it does this is by trying to predict what we will need in the current situation based on the past.

My fear of injections

When I was a child, I was deathly afraid of needles. This was the time when getting strep throat meant a shot in the butt, or as my pediatrician called it, an “Indian arrow.” Don’t ask me how he thought that would be helpful or appropriate. 

My mother often had to chase me around the block to get me my shot. At other times, as my siblings and I waited in line at the health department for our vaccinations, I usually fainted or threw up, long before it was my turn. My poor mother . . .

Mom often pondered whether my fear came from her having knelt on a quilting needle while pregnant with me. Maybe that was the start of it—who knows? 

What I do know is that at even the mention of needles, I can feel my body responding. I started to add an image of a needle to this post, and immediately felt a bit sick. My nervous system had just reacted to a threat coming from my brain having matched the current situation with my past experiences. 

It happens instantaneously. I don’t even need to think about the needle and I can feel myself starting to feel faint. If I do start to think and worry about it, I up my chances of landing on the floor.

This connection is fairly obvious to me. Sometimes the threat the brain perceives is more subtle like an expression or a smell. 

And at other times, the mobilization is resulting from a physiological change.

Changes in physiology

I have at times been out for my morning walk, enjoying the morning and time with my dogs when all of a sudden, I feel anxious, on edge, shaky, and a bit out of it. It’s a frightening feeling, especially when I am out in the woods. 

Usually, at first, I’m a bit clueless. I wonder why in the heck I’m feeling so anxious, shaky, and lightheaded. Finally, it dawns on me that my blood sugar has dropped—a condition I have been sensitive to since young adulthood.

When this happens, it is startling and scary. My body is reacting to this drop in available fuel, and I feel it. I feel anxious.

As with my blood sugar, physiological changes can manifest as anxiety. So, if you struggle with anxiety, it is important to have your health care provider rule out a medical basis for your symptoms.

Is the discomfort there for a reason?

If those uncomfortable sensations weren’t there when my blood sugar dropped, how would I know that my blood sugar was low? Would I lose consciousness—never realizing that my blood sugar had dropped?

Or, if my nervous system didn’t react to that loud bang in the parking lot, would I simply carry on with my day and miss the person with the gun?

Without the actions of our nervous system, we would be in deep trouble.

I read somewhere that a baby’s cry is at a decibel very hard for adults to tolerate or ignore. It isn’t comfortable, and it serves a purpose. It is hard for mothers to ignore the cries of their babies.

I wonder if the symptoms of anxiety play a similar role.

I’m going to come back to that idea in a later post because I want to share an interesting study suggesting those with an anxious temperament play an important role in the survival of our species. 

For now, I want to plant the seed that your symptoms don’t really come “out of nowhere”—that something has triggered your nervous system to sound an alarm.

Shouldn’t we really be saying “thanks”?

So, instead of scaring ourselves with a fear of anxiety, shouldn’t we really be saying, “Thank you, body, for working so hard to keep me safe”?  

And, wouldn’t it make sense to deal directly with what’s triggering the nervous system to react rather than trying so hard to stop the body from helping us?

What might happen in an anxious moment if you were to put your hand on your heart or give yourself a butterfly hug (arms crossed in front of your chest and rubbing your opposite arms) and felt grateful for having such an amazing body—so willing to help you?

Will you share?

I’d love to hear about what you notice if you try thanking your body or any other thoughts, questions, or reactions you might have to what I have shared. To do that you can leave a comment below or email me at [email protected]. And if you know someone who might benefit from this information, please share.

With warmth and kindness,
Deb

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If you find it hard to be yourself in the world, need to keep others happy to feel okay about yourself, or get derailed by disapproval, check out my book Never Enough—Separating Self-Worth from Approval

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