What is Anxiety? Pt. 1
When we think of anxiety, we often think of the familiar, heart-pounding sensation that floods us in moments of uncertainty, or the nagging worry that makes it absolutely impossible to focus or rest. But anxiety shows up in plenty of other, less obvious ways, and can present differently for everyone. It can be shocking to learn that the content of your anxiety is radically different from other people.
First of all, let’s clarify that anxiety refers to an emotional state premised on worry, apprehension, and a response to perceived threat. Everyone experiences anxiety at some point or another, even if they don’t experience it frequently or for prolonged periods of time.
Some people’s anxiety has specific triggers, while others experience what we call generalized anxiety that lingers in the background without any clear cause. Some people experience anxiety in the body as symptoms like air hunger or fidgeting, while for others it’s more of a mental experience of spiralling worry and worst-case scenarios playing on repeat. Some people’s anxiety arose suddenly following a period of acute stress, while for others it’s been around so long it’s practically a part of the family. Whatever it feels like for you, if you feel like anxiety describes part of your life, read on to learn more about how it manifests in the body and the mind, or in relationships and anxiety therapy in Part Two.
Anxiety in the Nervous System
People are sometimes surprised the first time they think of their experience as anxiety, because they don’t necessarily feel worried, they feel responsible – responsible for functioning perfectly, for other people’s emotions, for staying one step ahead of something they can’t name but are always sure is hot on their heels.
We feel anxiety so intensely because, evolutionarily speaking, our nervous systems are still catching up to the idea that not all threats are physical and immediate, which is exactly why you can be perfectly safe and still feel a very real sense of foreboding. Anxiety includes physiological changes to your nervous system often referred to as your stress or survival response - automatic adjustments that make it easier for you to overcome a threat.
Physical Symptoms of Anxiety You May Not Notice
If you’ve ever felt (or been told) that your anxiety was just too out of proportion to take seriously, you’re certainly not the only one. Lots of people deal with anxiety by minimizing it, making light of it, or even denying it altogether. It’s a well-known plight among anxiety therapists that clients can be entirely too funny when they’re trying to avoid something. Denying anxiety – also called avoidance – is an effective strategy as long as it’s truly less costly than engaging with it directly, but the effects of anxiety in our bodies are often our first warnings that may not be so. Even people already receiving counselling for anxiety may not connect these physical symptoms with anxiety. Here are some subtle ways anxiety can show up in your body:
Muscle tension/chronic aches and pains, especially in places in our bodies that hold the most tension like the lower back and the ‘coat hanger’ neck and shoulder region
Insomnia or waking up tired from poor-quality, restless sleep
Digestive discomfort or inconsistent appetite (especially for those of us in sedentary jobs)
Ironically, any of these symptoms can cause or be caused by anxiety, which makes it easy to attribute them to anything else. Your appetite has been inconsistent because you haven’t slept well, and you haven’t slept well because your back has been hurting, and your back has been hurting because you haven’t slept well – so on in circles. Treatment for anxiety isn’t always calming strategies or breathing exercises, often it’s a process of learning how to recognize these sensations, acknowledge that their relationship with anxiety is a two-way street, and practice compassion for the body that’s doing its very best to function despite them. (If therapy was only providing possible strategies for overcoming stress and anxiety, the internet would replace therapists!)
How Mental Anxiety Pretends to be Something Else
The sneaky thing about mental or cognitive anxiety is that it doesn’t always announce itself as such: when our default state is overwhelmed, we develop unconscious mental habits as a way to manage and redirect stress that we can’t release, like shifting a heavy bag from shoulder to shoulder. These habits may not feel stressful in the moment, but two ways to tell they’re anxiety-driven is that they are a) exhausting long term but b) you can’t turn them off.
For example, you may rehearse triggering encounters before they happen so that no possible outcome can take you by surprise. You may find yourself doing more than your share of shared responsibilities or taking responsibility for others’ emotions, which is stressful, but less stressful than the unpredictability you’d have to contend with if you didn’t. You may have the perpetual low-grade buzz of anxiety that you’ve forgotten to do something important, so you keep obsessive lists – maybe on paper, but you expend endless energy keeping them in your head too.
Even if you don’t consciously recognize these habits, you might know more about them unconsciously than you realize. Have you ever found yourself saying something like you’re “barely holding it together,” maybe as a joke that’s a little too honest? Notice how it implies that you’re holding something inside that there isn’t space for. What might you be holding inside?
If you notice any of these subtle signs of anxiety in yourself and want to understand further, feel free to book a free consultation or explore our resources to learn more. Read on in What Is Anxiety? Part Two about how anxiety shows itself in relationships, and finally what therapy for anxiety can look like.