Looking back on your life (so far), do you regret more the mistakes you’ve made or the great things you didn’t accomplish? We may never get around to the top of our bucket lists due to the endless distractions of daily life. But sometimes, the causes are self-doubt and fear.
What would you do if you weren’t afraid to try?
Why Anxiety Exists
Anxiety is an essential human emotion.
We exist – and anxiety exists in us – because of its evolutionary value. Without fear, your ancestors would have not run from a tiger or sounded the village bell when the enemy was approaching. Without anxiety, you wouldn’t plan and save for the future. The instinct of fear alerts us to potential danger.
Yet we all have different alarm settings. For some with generalized anxiety, the alarm may be too sensitive and they worry about a variety of things most of the time. For others, the anxiety alarm is triggered by specific situations or circumstances. With social anxiety, specific social situations – such as an interview, meeting new people or talking in front of a group – trigger emotional distress. With phobias, the specific triggers can be spiders, heights or needles.
Anxiety can be paralyzing. Panic attacks can be experienced as dramatic physical symptoms including sweating, shortness of breath, chest tightness and tingling in the extremities. They can be triggered by certain situations, such as crossing bridges, or they can come without warning. Some sufferers become fearful of the next attack.
With obsessive compulsive disorder, increased anxiety triggers obsessive thoughts or the compulsion to carry out a particular ritual action, such as washing the hands or checking locks.
How Anxiety Limits Us
Like other strong emotions, anxiety can hijack our brains. When emotions – anger, sadness or anxiety – are aroused, the limbic system (a part of the human brain that developed first in early mammals) takes over.
When this happens, the higher centres of the cerebral cortex that can reason and calm us are inhibited. The emotion shapes what we see and how we think.
When we are anxious, we overestimate danger and risk, and we can catastrophize, imagining the worse possible outcome. We underestimate our own abilities and resources. Our sense of self contracts. We can feel like frightened mice.
The Origins of Anxiety
There can be a genetic predisposition to anxiety.
Our early experiences – and how we remember them – shape our core beliefs about ourselves and the world. Did you come to believe that the world is safe and life predictable, or were you raised in a dangerous world in which bad things can happen at any time?
Anxiety can limit our life choices – we may never venture beyond our comfort zones. Anxiety can rob us of potential happiness by preventing us from connecting with others, saying what we need to say, and pursuing our greatest dreams.
If you suffer from excessive anxiety, talk to your family doctor, a counsellor or another mental health professional. We can offer a variety of effective treatments, and not necessarily medication. These include cognitive behavioural therapy, stress management, mindfulness and self-hypnosis.
In my next column, I’ll explain how these treatments work and how you can learn to change how your brain functions.
