Anxiety is the overestimation of risk and the underestimation of our abilities to cope. However, fear and anxiety are important and functional for all of us – this is why we say in treatment having no anxiety is a deadman’s goal. We want clients to have a new relationship with their anxiety and learn that when they try to control their anxiety, more fuel is added to the flame. Remember, we have to have fear to keep ourselves alive, but not as much fear that we stop living.

We know that the more intolerant someone is to uncertainty, the stronger their anxiety is, and this is a core feature of anxiety disorders.  For individuals with anxiety, it is important to remember that it is not always about feeling better in the moment, it’s about improving your ability to feel your feelings.  Discomfort is not dangerous, and being uncomfortable is not intolerable. 

With that being said, it is important to discuss the purpose of emotions, specifically in the case of anxiety.  Firstly, we experience physical reactions to ALL emotions, and we can choose to act on our emotional reactions or not. Sometimes in the case of anxiety our brain misfires and thinks there is a threat when there isn’t. For example, someone might avoid riding an elevator because they have the belief something terrible will occur. Our body and brain work so well together that our body starts to physically react when we see elevators, we maybe begin to sweat, have shortness of breath, or our chest maybe feel tight.  These are all NORMAL reactions to anxiety; however, the evaluator is not a physical threat to our safety. 

What makes anxiety interesting is that those who struggle with anxiety make meaning of it and chase their anxious thoughts. For example, someone who isn’t fearful of an elevator may think that the elevator may malfunction, but they don’t give the thought much power and move on with their day, hence little to no anxiety about elevators. However, those with anxiety may think about the ‘what ifs’ and think about times they heard about an elevator malfunctioning and focus on the worst-case scenario.  As you can see from this example, individuals with anxiety can get overly fixed on intrusive anxious thoughts and then respond to them accordingly (avoidance for example). Hence, feeding the tiger of anxiety.  When an individual avoids their anxiety of elevators, they may take the stairs, avoid conversations about elevators or avoid looking at them. These are called safety behaviors and stop us from fully experiencing our biggest feared outcome not coming true and keep the anxiety going. 

In treatment, we want to target the relationship clients have with their anxious thoughts and their behavioral response to anxiety (safety behaviours).  It is important to learn that anxiety and fears are a crucial part of our most basic survival (we cannot get rid of it), and through systematic learning without safety behaviors, clients can begin to learn something new about their feared situation. This is where the coping phrase ‘we can do hard things’ is important to remember – along with exposure therapy. Stay tuned for our next blog about exposure therapy.