What is the most important question to ask about anxiety?

 

Let’s imagine you are talking to someone who has been trying to manage anxiety… what would be the best question to ask?

What symptoms have you been experiencing?  What seems to trigger the anxiety?  

 Is there anything that has helped previously? 

We might even ask… how long have you been feeling anxious? 

Obviously all are important questions…but what about… WHY have you been suffering with anxiety? When did you first remember feeling anxious? These might be the most illuminating questions because they are moving away from focusing on the direct symptoms of anxiety and beginning to consider what the CAUSE of the anxiety might be.

Anyone with anxiety is going to have thought about where it might have started. They will have spent many hours pondering over the possible causes, but even then they will admit that those causes somehow don’t seem right.

This leads to the hypothesis that there must be a cause that they haven’t worked out yet; perhaps an unconscious one which has been triggered. Perhaps the possible causes they thought of previously are the triggers? If this is true, we could say that their anxiety is caused by something that inside their mind, but outside their control.

A working description of the anxiety/panic attack would look something like this:

The heart is beating significantly faster than we are used too. There is a shortness of breath, as though we fighting for air; which can be accompanied by a tightening of the chest. An increase in sweating will commonly accompany a desire to remove ourselves from the current environment. At times that desire is not successfully achieved as the we feel rooted to the spot. The observer will note that the behaviour shows all the hallmarks of a person in intense danger.

I am sure you can see that the symptoms described above are really not that different from the physiological stress response. All the offence and defence mechanisms of the body are on full alert to deal with the pending danger, but of course in the case of an anxiety attack the danger is not logical. The person experiencing the anxiety will afterwards agree to the illogical nature of their behaviour, but that does not prevent it happening time and time again.

The physiological response to the anxiety attack is the same as the stress response, so we make the connection between stress and anxiety. The difference is where it is located; where it originates.

Think of anxiety as a stress that is coming from inside a person’s mind. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung talked of ‘free floating fear’ in regard to anxiety. A fear is ‘floating’ around inside the person’s mind and they feel it as a rumbling dread, worry and concern.

The external stresses we face (relationships, work, financial e.t.c.) are those that we can make sense of and logically deal with most of the time. Anxiety is inner stress. We have stress floating around inside our mind and because we don’t know where it is coming from (it’s inside us) or what it is related to, we have no way of gaining mastery over it. We cannot flight or flight from it so all we can do is stifle it down; push it away and manage the problem. Once we understand that anxiety is a stress within ourselves (our psyche) then it makes more sense as to why the external world can be calm and yet we still feel anxious.

In my experience, anxiety is the result of an accumulation of emotion largely from our development. As we were growing up, we had many experiences, and associated negative emotions tucked away inside ourselves. The experiences (good and bad) have the benefit of teaching us about the world and how we should behave in the future to ensure a better outcome. Nevertheless, the emotion is still tucked away inside of us, not to be replaced by the last negative one but to add to it.

The accumulated emotion builds up over time and it has the effect of a pressure cooker. The pressure builds up within our mind and we feel it as a growing anxiety within ourselves, no matter that we do not know where it came from.

Of course the external pressures of our day to day lives exacerbates the situation. The greater the inner stress/anxiety a person has, the more they will find their ability to cope is reduced. 

The inner stress/anxiety that we are battling with does not give in to changes in our external environment, so even when our lives are calm and causing us little obvious stress we still feel anxious and unsettled. This is a problem for our conscious mind. We are desperately trying to make sense of this feeling, after all there must be a logical explanation.

The anxious person feels this growing fear and our conscious mind is left floundering trying to explain it. It does they only thing it can do, project the fear onto an external ‘reason’ and creates a symbolic representation of the anxiety. When this happens the anxious person begins to develop anxiety symptoms such as phobias, panic attacks, depression, even some physical symptoms.

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive 

and will come forth later in uglier forms.” (Freud) 

The benefit to the psyche is that this nameless, formless, free floating fear has been given a ‘name’. Like a pressure value the symptom acts a release, a way of making sense of the fear. Not to get rid of it, simply to make sense of it. Therefore, the person who is claustrophobic (fear of enclosed spaces) now ‘understands’ the anxiety. Their mind has given them an explanation: “I’m afraid of enclosed spaces; that’s why I feel the way I do.”

It is also worth noting, that this projection would only be fully useful to the psyche if it included other reasons for the anxiety. After all what happens if the person just stays away from the enclosed spaces? Does the anxiety go away? Of course not. The pressure is still there. Our psyche does the same thing and projects onto another symptom. The anxiety sufferer finds that overtime their anxiety has crept into many other aspects of their life.

I can say, with all honesty, that I have yet to meet an anxiety sufferer who only has one symptom. The claustrophobic will also describe how they have started to have panic attacks in other situations for no explainable reason. They may also flippantly report that they are now avoiding social situations (social anxiety) as these also make them feel uncomfortable, or that they have developed a nerve rash their doctor explains as stress-related.

 

I can say, with all honesty, that I have yet to meet an anxiety sufferer who only has one symptom. The claustrophobic will also describe how they have started to have panic attacks in other situations for no explainable reason. They may also flippantly report that they are now avoiding social situations (social anxiety) as these also make them feel uncomfortable, or that they have developed a nerve rash their doctor explains as stress-related.

It’s important to understand that the anxiety sufferer may not know that these other “character quirks” were projections of their anxiety. How could they? Many times they would simply think to themselves ‘it was just the way I am’. But we observe that as time goes by the inner stress/anxiety will make greater and greater demands upon them. It seems, on occasion, that their unconscious anxieties are trying to get their attention and when they attempt to push one symptom away, another will appear to gain more and more of their attention.

It is not surprising that the anxiety sufferer (whatever their symptoms) will describe it as though they are fighting against themselves. In a way, they are! They are trying to consciously control an unconscious anxiety which is making greater and greater demands upon them.

How would someone know if what they were experiencing is anxiety related? It’s a difficult question because it is difficult to put into words how any one of us is feeling. We could say that it is impossible for someone to objectively know their unconscious, and therefore how can they know that the symptoms they are suffering from are due to inner stress (anxiety) and not something else?

The anxiety sufferer feels their emotions stirred, but would be hard pushed to be able to explain it away with complete success. A good starting point would be to think of anxiety symptoms in terms of an exaggeration of what would be expected behaviour (given the context) or an absence of a behaviour that would be expected (given the context). For example:

• Reduced confidence where previously a person would have felt comfortable and capable. 
• Over-thinking or dwelling on people, or situations (more so than is warranted). 
• Avoiding social situations. A person will have lost contact with their friendship group, with a lack of drive to socialise. 
• Irritability - More than would be expected in the context. 
• Unexplained weight loss or weight gain. 
• Extended periods of illness away from work - without other explanation. 
• Reduction in exercise compared to what would be normal for that individual. 
• Relationship difficulties. 
• Physical symptoms that flare up when the individual is under greater everyday stresses. 

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, many people suffering even with low levels of anxiety will recognise some of these characteristics. The important thing to remember is that they are beyond what we would expect from the context. What is going on in the person’s life at that time? Is it expected that we should see some of the above, given the circumstances? If yes, the chances are, with support, things will become easier once the circumstances become less taxing to them. If the situation continues to be stressful then this may also increase the chances they would develop more debilitating anxiety symptoms.

Inner stress (anxiety) is exacerbated by the stressful circumstances; like poking at an open wound it becomes more of a problem.

The anxiety sufferer would still lay the blame completely at the current, external circumstances without a thought to what unconscious anxiety may be contributing to the problem. Then again, how could they…if it is unconscious how would they know that?

Ask the anxiety sufferer to explain their symptoms, and most likely you will hear first hand the conscious reasoning behind their symptoms. For example: the claustrophobic will describe how they cannot use lifts anymore, even long car journey’s and visits to the cinema are becoming difficult. Ask them why they feel that way - what caused it - and they will likely give you an explanation. Usually they would describe some event from their past which has ‘made’ them claustrophobic. They might say: 

“When I was ten my sister locked me in the cupboard under the stairs. She wouldn’t let me out for ages and I remember how terrifying it was in the dark.” 

Or the person with the pathological fear of air travel (aviophobia), will say:

“Many years ago we had a terrible flight home from our holiday. The turbulence was so bad and I panicked. That’s why I’m frightened now.”

Once we work from the perspective that the symptom is a symbolic representation of an inner fear, we have to assume that the reason they give for their phobia (for example) must be mistaken. If it really was that, wouldn’t they have made sense of it and with their adult mind reasoned it? Did all those people on the flight develop Aviophobia? I doubt it. There are many people who become trapped in enclosed spaces during their childhood; do they all become claustrophobic? No, of course not.

Understanding that, we have to assume that the explanation we give ourselves is really an erroneous (wrong) association. We have erroneously associated one conscious experience with the anxiety we feel. This gives us a sense of control, but it does little to alleviate the problem.

The erroneously associated cause of the anxiety is often why people can be forgiven for thinking that is just the stresses in their current circumstances that cause their problems; they will say: ‘I have a really stressful job and I’m going through a divorce at the moment, that’s why I have anxiety.’ Of course the stresses of their environment are going to have a negative impact on their anxiety, but to be the root cause of it is less likely. Why? Many people have stressful jobs, relationship problems and generally stressful day to day lives, but not all people suffer with anxiety, and not necessarily the same symptoms.

Once we accept this we have to also accept that there must be something else. There must be some other reason for their anxiety which is being exacerbated by the stressful life events.

What if the anxiety sufferer remembered what had caused the anxiety again? In fact not just remembered it, but thought through (processed) it with an adult mind? 

That inner anxiety which has accumulated over time and is made up on infantile emotions, could be thought through again but this time with an adult intellect. Our anxiety sufferer would now truly KNOW where it came from and understand it so that their mind has no need to project those feelings onto symptoms and they could be free from the anxiety.

How would they do that?

Hypnoanalysis is a kind of talking therapy that follows the view of cause and effect. Rather than seeking to simply control the symptom, the therapy aims to uncover and resolve the cause of the problem. Hypnoanalysis is a way to resolve the bottled up pressures that can lead to anxiety, helping to bring back a person’s resilience.

Far from using post-hypnotic suggestion to control the symptoms, Hypnoanalysis removes the cause of the anxiety and as a result the symptoms are relived for good.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make that phone call, attend that social event, be free from that phobia or give that presentation without the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety getting in the way?

Find out more at about anxiety and Hypnoanalysis or contact me to book a free, no obligation consultation.