Thoughts About Anxiety
“I was told that my thoughts are leading to my anxiety, and that changing my thoughts would get rid of my anxiety, but it doesn’t seem to work. What are your thoughts on this?”
That was one of the questions asked at our recent Let's Talk About Anxiety event at The Hague Natural Health Centre.
When I became a mother for the first time I was gripped by intense anxiety. Yes, the anxiety was partly triggered by negative thoughts about the safety of my baby. However, there was something much deeper that my body was feeling yet my mind could not understand. It was much later on when I engaged in therapy that I understood what it was: trauma.
Your negative thoughts can lead you to experience anxiety, because our brain does not decipher between what is real and what is imagined. However, depending on your unique circumstances, being simply told to change your thoughts to get rid of your anxiety, as the attendee shared, is not helpful. In fact, on top of the anxiety you might feel like a total failure.
In addition, we are not always consciously aware of our thoughts, and anxiety can also be a response to not only our cognitive processes, but also to our Body which, as Bessel Van Der Kolk wrote, Keeps The Score.
The deeper question to ask is: why do some people have the tendency towards negative thoughts in the first place, or have the tendency to feel things more deeply than others?
The answer lies in one’s personal history. Your life experiences shape who you are, and have an impact on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, as well as your capacity to handle the various types of stresses that life throws at you.
Imagine that you carry a container into which you dump the stress you come across from day to day. This container also has a tap from which you can occasionally empty some of that stress. Things that help you relieve the stress, or empty out your container, include exercise, mindful activities, talking to a friend or doing a hobby. If anything interferes with this regulation system of the container, for example an unexpected big life event which fills up your container with a sudden huge amount of stress, or a blockage to the tap due to, say, missing out on regular exercise, then your container will overflow. Some signs of overflow can be irritability, sleep disturbance, being withdrawn, or outbursts of strong emotions. The idea is to be self-aware and closely monitor your container and take action in order to avoid overflow.
Another thing to consider is that the capacity to hold stress differs from person to person.
What causes this difference?
The answer again lies in our personal history. If you have had a life filled with childhood traumas, losses and upsets, then your container size will be smaller due to the sediments that such life experiences cause, which take up space in your container. These sediments get dislodged when you face life challenges and interfere with the flow. Talking to a professional can help process these life experiences and break the sediments into much smaller pieces that can easily flow out of your container. Also, you may be carrying baggage that does not belong to you which also adds to the sediments in your container. Again, a therapist will help you identify what is yours and return what is not to the rightful owners. This creates space in your container.
Someone whose life was devoid of drama will have a much bigger container with no sediments and therefore have a bigger capacity to handle stress.
So, if you have had a life filled with traumatic events then you become a person who is more likely to have negative thoughts, and is generally more vigilant and defensive. That is because your experience taught you that the environment is not safe, that people are not to be trusted. You have a heightened sensitivity to your environment, and thus a more anxious personality. You are in survival mode. You go through life preparing to fight, flee or freeze, as expressed by one client who said,
“I feel that my head is full, I can’t focus or think clearly. All I want to do is run.”
Understanding that how she was feeling is normal considering the severe trauma she has been through, already brings a degree of calm. She is not crazy. She is emotionally wounded and has not been given the appropriate first aid treatment.
The more you address and heal the wounds of your past, the calmer you become and the safer you feel. We underestimate how much past events impact our present.
Of course, challenging your negative thoughts and practicing positive thinking is great, provided you have done the deeper work.
