Anxiety is a natural human response to our body experiencing stress or perceiving a threat. In some cases, the feeling of anxiety might even be a protective factor. Once you understand how the mind works and the cycle of anxiety you can learn how to use it to your advantage and break the cycle of unhelp anxiety.
What is Anxiety
Generally, anxiety is triggered by an event, thought, memory or body sensation that will result in feelings of worry, fear or unease about a further event. These feelings can be real or imagined. Once a trigger occurs, our nervous system goes into action. There are two main branches of our autonomic nervus system, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) most known as the “fight or flight” and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) – “rest and restore”. The purpose of the SNS is to raise the alarm and signal to your body that something feels unsafe. Similar to a car’s alarm that goes off easily. While the PNS is designed to bring the system back to calm.
When we experience anxiety, the body prevents the parasympathetic nervous system from fully activating because it does not believe it is safe. Often, we avoid discomfort by trying to ease or escape our feelings. This approach might provide some immediate relief, but it does not address the underlying issue. If we continue to avoid our feelings it could lead to a pattern of avoidance. Over time, this pattern increases anxiety because the parasympathetic nervous system never returns to the rest and restore state.
You might have heard the common phrase that the body holds our traumas. Well, this is how it happens. When your body and mind do not process the trigger and fail to enter the rest and restore phase, we eventually develop a buildup of tension in our bodies. This can come in the form of tight shoulders, stiff neck and even upset stomachs.
Of course, it is important to consult your primary health care professional on all health-related matters. But as we become more aware of our body and mind we can begin to pinpoint and differentiate between triggers caused by feelings of anxiety and other issues. At some point in our lives, we have all had to present a project in front of our class or haven been called out to do something and felt an instant feeling of fear, your palms might start sweating and you can feel your face turning red. When we understand these sensations as triggers signaling that something feels wrong, we can guide the body back into the rest-and-restore state. This helps break the cycle of anxiety.
Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an evidence based psychological treatment that is proven to be an effective treatment for managing anxiety. The practice of CBT involves teaching clients’ new ways of thinking and behaving that can help them to get control over their anxiety. CBT focuses on the present moment rather than the cause of the problem, because understanding the cause alone does not always lead to change. Another key focus of CBT is doing the ‘homework’. This means that clients will need to practice the skills learned in therapy to create a lasting change. The good news is that the more you use these skills the easier it gets and the easier it is to manage anxiety.
So how will CBT break the cycle of anxiety? Simply explained it is about learning how to change your thoughts and behaviors so you can change your feelings associated with the incident. Our thoughts, behaviors and feelings all interact and influence each other.
If we can change the way we think about a situation then our actions or behaviors will change which will impact the way we feel about the situation. This is why doing your homework is key. As you work with a therapist to understand your thoughts you can try various strategies to challenge these thoughts. Completing the homework allows you to work with your therapist to understand what approaches worked and which ones did not. Learning to take a closer look at your thoughts and coming up with more balanced and realistic thoughts is an important tool for managing anxiety.
This is the kind of work we support at Lumina Therapy and Counselling—helping people recognize anxiety patterns, respond with greater awareness, and move toward feeling more grounded in everyday life.
